For the record, I’m 2 weeks into my first Peter-style personal review.
Bitton
Karma: 109
EA Origin Story: Changing
My suggestion: if you can’t think of an existing resource that answers one of these criticisms, then write it yourself.
Some reasons for choosing this topic were:
It’s easy for anyone to write about
It doesn’t rehash information that’s already known and
Provides reasonably useful data about movement-building.
I’ve already written my origin story but only intend to publish it on my blog as I consider it off topic for this forum.
Figuring Good Out—December
I’d be interested in joining Gratipay but I don’t seem well suited for it as I’m not currently working on a specific project that requires funding.
Case by case basis, I’d say. If you haven’t spoken to this person in years and they didn’t respond, then a second email is pretty much spam. If it’s someone you know better, a second email might be worth it.
Thanks for the post!
I would add:
Consider the scale of the issue (how many people are being harmed or killed by this problem?)
Consider the tractability of the action (how much difference will this cause actually make toward solving the problem?)
Consider the room for more funding of an organization (what would this organization do with more money?)
As a general rule of thumb, aim for the world’s worst off individuals
These are pretty basic but I think most mainstream social causes (e.g. Black Lives Matter, ALS Ice Bucket Challenge) fail to take these considerations into account.
How about co-creating summaries together?
Here’s my summary of Chapter 1 of Principles of Marketing. It took me 4 hours of work. Here is a link to the book.
Anybody reading this can feel free to edit my writing or work on upcoming chapters. If everybody works on it a little at a time, it could get done several times faster than if I summarize the 600 page book on my own. Summarizing books seems perfectly suited for crowdsourcing.
I’d consider summarizing a sequence.
Any suggestions on what would be most useful and practical to summarize? Peter’s list was geared toward marketing, outreach, persuasion, and activism. I think that’s a good idea. I’ve started working on a marketing textbook called Principles of Marketing but I can tell that it’s going to take me a very long time to do well and I might give up on it after the first chapter.
In the same vein as skimming—I sometimes like to just read a bunch of abstracts or literature reviews in a row.
In the same vein as being choosy—textbooks are really good places to start reading about a new subject.
I find that it can help me to read several books at once, also choosing the one I’m most excited to read in that particular moment. I often get bored of books in middle, especially if I’m reading them to learn and don’t feel like I’m learning.
Just for you, I threw together an <3 page summary but I think it’s a lot less useful. It summarizes the basic idea of the book but has no room for examples.
Summary of Cialdini’s Influence
So my post is up: Investing in Yourself
If you write a post, link to it in this thread so it gets noticed.
Also, let me know if you want to choose next month’s topic.
I wasn’t able to make it. Maybe next time!
Eyal: “Should we count the death of a one day old baby expected otherwise to live many years as a far worse tragedy than the death of a college student expected to live a few less years forthwith?”
I’ve wondered this before. What do people think?
I can’t find most people’s email addresses but the group is here for people to join.
Off the top of my head:
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
The Origins of Virtue by Matt Ridley
Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene
Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by Dennett
Freedom Evolves by Dennett
The Expanding Circle by Peter Singer
They might mean that our evolved morality is “good” in a different sense than you’re looking for.
I haven’t read them yet but The Ant and the Peacock, Moral Minds, Evolution of the Social Contract, Nonzero, Unto Others, and The Moral Animal are probably good picks on the subject.