1. What software did you use to make the book? (I’m guessing some variant of LaTeX.)
The books were all designed in InDesign. Maybe one day we will have mastered LaTeX sufficiently to typeset a whole book like this, but today is not that day.
2. What inspired this project?
Here is a random shortform I wrote like two years ago. There I said:
Printing more rationality books: I’ve been quite impressed with the success of the printed copies of R:A-Z and think we should invest resources into printing more of the other best writing that has been posted on LessWrong and the broad diaspora.
I think a Codex book would be amazing, but I think there also exists potential for printing smaller books on things like Slack/Sabbath/etc., and many other topics that have received a lot of other coverage over the years. I would also be really excited about printing HPMOR, though that has some copyright complications to it.
My current model is that there exist many people interested in rationality who don’t like reading longform things on the internet and are much more likely to read things when they are in printed form. I also think there is a lot of value in organizing writing into book formats. There is also the benefit that the book now becomes a potential gift for someone else to read, which I think is a pretty common way ideas spread.
I have some plans to try to compile some book-length sequences of LessWrong content and see whether we can get things printed (obviously in coordination with the authors of the relevant pieces).
The goals of the book are of course also closely entangled with the goals of the review. I think having a physical book has a real finality to it that gives the annual reviews some real stake, and makes generally contributing to LessWrong feel more rewarding.
3. Are there any plans to produce further volumes like these in future? And has anything like this been published previously (apart from Yudkowsky’s Rationality book)?
We will publish another book like this for the 2019 Review. We also have some interest in curating some books more centered around specific topics on LessWrong. Ben has been playing around with the idea of a book on Slack. I am very excited about creating a really high-end version of the sequences, as well as a printed version of the Codex we have on the site, but none of these are definite.
I do not know of any super comparable projects to this. Someone recently compiled a bunch of SSC essays into a book, but that was much much lower effort, and misses crucial elements of the post, like all the images.
4. Do you plan to publish a “Best of the Best” collection—all-time bests, rather than best of that year? (I expect such a collection would exclude the Yudkowsky essays already published in his book.)
I am not sure. I have been playing with the idea of doing a “let’s review the decade before 2018” review, where we activate our review infrastructure for everything written before 2018, excluding the original sequences, and maybe compile a book out of that, but that’s all just in the early brainstorm stages. Maybe after we’ve done this for 10 years can we do a “let’s review all the essays that were in the books and create a super-book”.
Just want to flag that I like the idea of topic-specific books, perhaps with an additional author to help rewrite things and make them consistent and clean. It’s especially enticing if you can find labor to do it that doesn’t have a high opportunity cost for other LessWrong style things.
The books were all designed in InDesign. Maybe one day we will have mastered LaTeX sufficiently to typeset a whole book like this, but today is not that day.
Here is a random shortform I wrote like two years ago. There I said:
The goals of the book are of course also closely entangled with the goals of the review. I think having a physical book has a real finality to it that gives the annual reviews some real stake, and makes generally contributing to LessWrong feel more rewarding.
We will publish another book like this for the 2019 Review. We also have some interest in curating some books more centered around specific topics on LessWrong. Ben has been playing around with the idea of a book on Slack. I am very excited about creating a really high-end version of the sequences, as well as a printed version of the Codex we have on the site, but none of these are definite.
I do not know of any super comparable projects to this. Someone recently compiled a bunch of SSC essays into a book, but that was much much lower effort, and misses crucial elements of the post, like all the images.
I am not sure. I have been playing with the idea of doing a “let’s review the decade before 2018” review, where we activate our review infrastructure for everything written before 2018, excluding the original sequences, and maybe compile a book out of that, but that’s all just in the early brainstorm stages. Maybe after we’ve done this for 10 years can we do a “let’s review all the essays that were in the books and create a super-book”.
Just want to flag that I like the idea of topic-specific books, perhaps with an additional author to help rewrite things and make them consistent and clean. It’s especially enticing if you can find labor to do it that doesn’t have a high opportunity cost for other LessWrong style things.