In case it’s useful, here’s my quoted comment in full:
If the eventual human-read versions of this creative stuff and/or the MIRI conversations are high quality in my view (see below), I’m willing to personally guarantee (say) at least $500 for a mic (if the person doesn’t have one already and it costs that much) and $20/hr for up to 5 times as many hours as the cumulative total run time across all the episodes produced, with the guarantee being capped at $1500 total.
Fine print:
It’s also plausible I’d personally provide a larger amount, and I’d guess that a funder like EAIF would provide a grant for this and would do so up to a larger amount (that’d be my preferred starting point, with me as a backup, unless the total amount requested is <$1k in which case I might just provide it right away myself). This is just what I’m willing to personally guarantee right now, without thinking about it further.
Note that EAIF has recently made larger grants for projects that are in some sense smaller, e.g. ~$5k for one relatively short and simple video.
I haven’t checked or thought about how much mics cost; what’s a reasonable ratio of hours spent preparing, recording, editing, and publishing to hours of content produced; or what’s a reasonable hourly rate. That’s among the reasons it’s plausible I’d provide a larger amount of compensation, and especially why it’s plausible a funder like EAIF would.
It’s probably best if you contact me before you make these things, and maybe do one quick reading with whatever mic you already have so I can confirm that it seems your final version will be high-quality-as-deemed-by-me.
If you haven’t done that, it’s possible I’ll later deem the thing you make insufficiently high quality, which is bad for its impact and also means I probably wouldn’t pay up, and that’d also be uncomfortable and awkward.
In contrast, if you have done that, I might also provide part of the money in advance or something, if necessary.
I’d definitely count as “high-quality” readings as high-quality as Rob Miles’ readings of the Alignment Newsletter and the human-read versions of HPMOR and Rationality: A to Z. I’d probably also count somewhat lower-quality readings as high-quality. I wouldn’t count something that’s only as high-fidelity and engaging as the Nonlinear Library’s machine reading as high-quality, since then there’s not much point having humans read it.
This only applies as a guarantee if the people involved don’t already get funding elsewhere and if it doesn’t seem more logical for them to get funding elsewhere.
Though it’s also plausible I’d top up someone’s compensation even if they get some funding elsewhere.
Although I’m a guest manager on EAIF, I’m writing this in my personal capacity.
This doesn’t mean I’m confident that a given reader of this comment should spend their time on this.
There are many other things I’d also personally guarantee funding for if I thought that would increase the chance that they’d happen and if the topic came up.
(E.g., I’d probably prefer if Fin doesn’t do this himself unless he’d find it engaging enough to not trade off against “regular work hours”, since I think the opportunity cost of Fin’s time is quite high)
Michael—we have a bunch of the infrastructure in place for this, at least an Airtable system and an Anchor-hosted podcast… might be worth linking arms here … with the EA Forum podcast
I’ve listened to a couple episodes of the EA Forum Podcast, and the fact it contains digressions and commentary (by the reader, not just what’s in the thing being read) makes it seem much less engaging/useful for me personally, and means I actually prefer Nonlinear Library’s machine-read versions when both podcasts have read the same thing. I’d guess that many people would feel the same, though I haven’t checked that at all. I’d also guess that that would make the podcast seem more “weird” and less “professional” than if it had no digressions/commentary, which seems problematic from an “early-in-the-funnel outreach” perspective.
So I personally wouldn’t count that approach as “high-quality” for my purposes/to my taste.
In other words, it seems to me much better if these creative pieces and/or the MIRI conversations were:
read without any digressions/commentary
in a feed where everything else either also has no digressions/commentary or is like a clearly marked “special episode” where the digressions/commentary can be quarantined to (so that people can easily opt out of those eps if they’re uninterested, and can be confident that in other cases their listening experience will just be straight readings of the content they want)
I’d weakly guess other EAIF people would feel the same, but that’s again basically just extrapolating from myself rather than me having checked.
Separate point: I started listening to an episode on a Toby Ord piece yesterday and found the switching of the audio from left to right a bit distracting/annoying/unprofessional-seeming, which further contributed to me not finishing that episode.
(This comment is kinda blunt and maybe rude. Apologies for that. It felt like it’d be worthwhile to say anyway, in this context, since this is a context where I want to actively encourage specific activities and am also promising funding for a certain fuzzily specified version of those activities. But I do acknowledge that it’s a bit odd for me to say this in this public way.)
Also, on the Toby Ord episode, I’ve found a way to strip most/all of my comments from previous episodes. I’ve done this and posted a new version here … (and on all podcatchers).
This is an edited repost of a previous reading (reader David Reinstein); I removed my commentary so you can listen to the full essay uninterrupted.
Let me know what you think I may do this for other prior episodes (remove the comments), if there is interest. I’m thinking for future readings to save my comments for the end, if at all (maybe still including a few explainers if they don’t distract from the flow.) … but if I were to do the MIRI thing I probably wouldn’t add any comments or even explainers, as I have little or know expertise there.
The commenting (including clarifications) and the audio switching was all my doing, I think. I don’t think any of the other readers did this. I tried to denote these episodes separately. For the Toby Ord episode I had a lot to say and some knowledge in this area and I wanted to get my thoughts out there. So it was a “different sort of thing”.
For some other readings I commented less, or almost not at all.
The left/right thing was meant to distinguish between the original text and the comments. Perhaps there is some better way of doing this?
I can definitely see the argument for “reading without commenting” in many cases, or for putting these separate.
For me it was more like “I want to read and comment on these and I thought that while doing so it would be worth posting them”.
Anyways the main point is that ea forum podcast could probably handle doing these, at least some of them and we wouldn’t add commentary… at least if the funding were there I think we could get these done.
Thanks for this post!
In case it’s useful, here’s my quoted comment in full:
If the eventual human-read versions of this creative stuff and/or the MIRI conversations are high quality in my view (see below), I’m willing to personally guarantee (say) at least $500 for a mic (if the person doesn’t have one already and it costs that much) and $20/hr for up to 5 times as many hours as the cumulative total run time across all the episodes produced, with the guarantee being capped at $1500 total.
Fine print:
It’s also plausible I’d personally provide a larger amount, and I’d guess that a funder like EAIF would provide a grant for this and would do so up to a larger amount (that’d be my preferred starting point, with me as a backup, unless the total amount requested is <$1k in which case I might just provide it right away myself). This is just what I’m willing to personally guarantee right now, without thinking about it further.
Note that EAIF has recently made larger grants for projects that are in some sense smaller, e.g. ~$5k for one relatively short and simple video.
I haven’t checked or thought about how much mics cost; what’s a reasonable ratio of hours spent preparing, recording, editing, and publishing to hours of content produced; or what’s a reasonable hourly rate. That’s among the reasons it’s plausible I’d provide a larger amount of compensation, and especially why it’s plausible a funder like EAIF would.
It’s probably best if you contact me before you make these things, and maybe do one quick reading with whatever mic you already have so I can confirm that it seems your final version will be high-quality-as-deemed-by-me.
If you haven’t done that, it’s possible I’ll later deem the thing you make insufficiently high quality, which is bad for its impact and also means I probably wouldn’t pay up, and that’d also be uncomfortable and awkward.
In contrast, if you have done that, I might also provide part of the money in advance or something, if necessary.
I’d definitely count as “high-quality” readings as high-quality as Rob Miles’ readings of the Alignment Newsletter and the human-read versions of HPMOR and Rationality: A to Z. I’d probably also count somewhat lower-quality readings as high-quality. I wouldn’t count something that’s only as high-fidelity and engaging as the Nonlinear Library’s machine reading as high-quality, since then there’s not much point having humans read it.
This only applies as a guarantee if the people involved don’t already get funding elsewhere and if it doesn’t seem more logical for them to get funding elsewhere.
Though it’s also plausible I’d top up someone’s compensation even if they get some funding elsewhere.
Although I’m a guest manager on EAIF, I’m writing this in my personal capacity.
This doesn’t mean I’m confident that a given reader of this comment should spend their time on this.
There are many other things I’d also personally guarantee funding for if I thought that would increase the chance that they’d happen and if the topic came up.
(E.g., I’d probably prefer if Fin doesn’t do this himself unless he’d find it engaging enough to not trade off against “regular work hours”, since I think the opportunity cost of Fin’s time is quite high)
Michael—we have a bunch of the infrastructure in place for this, at least an Airtable system and an Anchor-hosted podcast… might be worth linking arms here … with the EA Forum podcast
Shared airtable
signup to read or edit form
I’ve listened to a couple episodes of the EA Forum Podcast, and the fact it contains digressions and commentary (by the reader, not just what’s in the thing being read) makes it seem much less engaging/useful for me personally, and means I actually prefer Nonlinear Library’s machine-read versions when both podcasts have read the same thing. I’d guess that many people would feel the same, though I haven’t checked that at all. I’d also guess that that would make the podcast seem more “weird” and less “professional” than if it had no digressions/commentary, which seems problematic from an “early-in-the-funnel outreach” perspective.
So I personally wouldn’t count that approach as “high-quality” for my purposes/to my taste.
In other words, it seems to me much better if these creative pieces and/or the MIRI conversations were:
read without any digressions/commentary
in a feed where everything else either also has no digressions/commentary or is like a clearly marked “special episode” where the digressions/commentary can be quarantined to (so that people can easily opt out of those eps if they’re uninterested, and can be confident that in other cases their listening experience will just be straight readings of the content they want)
I’d weakly guess other EAIF people would feel the same, but that’s again basically just extrapolating from myself rather than me having checked.
Separate point: I started listening to an episode on a Toby Ord piece yesterday and found the switching of the audio from left to right a bit distracting/annoying/unprofessional-seeming, which further contributed to me not finishing that episode.
(This comment is kinda blunt and maybe rude. Apologies for that. It felt like it’d be worthwhile to say anyway, in this context, since this is a context where I want to actively encourage specific activities and am also promising funding for a certain fuzzily specified version of those activities. But I do acknowledge that it’s a bit odd for me to say this in this public way.)
Also, on the Toby Ord episode, I’ve found a way to strip most/all of my comments from previous episodes. I’ve done this and posted a new version here … (and on all podcatchers).
This is an edited repost of a previous reading (reader David Reinstein); I removed my commentary so you can listen to the full essay uninterrupted.
Let me know what you think I may do this for other prior episodes (remove the comments), if there is interest. I’m thinking for future readings to save my comments for the end, if at all (maybe still including a few explainers if they don’t distract from the flow.) … but if I were to do the MIRI thing I probably wouldn’t add any comments or even explainers, as I have little or know expertise there.
The commenting (including clarifications) and the audio switching was all my doing, I think. I don’t think any of the other readers did this. I tried to denote these episodes separately. For the Toby Ord episode I had a lot to say and some knowledge in this area and I wanted to get my thoughts out there. So it was a “different sort of thing”.
For some other readings I commented less, or almost not at all.
The left/right thing was meant to distinguish between the original text and the comments. Perhaps there is some better way of doing this?
I can definitely see the argument for “reading without commenting” in many cases, or for putting these separate.
For me it was more like “I want to read and comment on these and I thought that while doing so it would be worth posting them”.
Anyways the main point is that ea forum podcast could probably handle doing these, at least some of them and we wouldn’t add commentary… at least if the funding were there I think we could get these done.