most reasonable readers looking at a curated collection of LessWrong posts titled “Epistemology,” “Agency,” or “Alignment” would assume that this was a collection of the best ever LW[2] posts on that topic as of ~date of publication
One of the most frustrating things about writing physical books is the long time delays. It has been 17 months since I mentioned my upcoming book here, and now, 8.5 months after we submitted the full book for review, & over 4 months after 7 out of 7 referees said “great book, as it is”, I can finally announce that The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life, coauthored with Kevin Simler, will officially be published January 1, 2018. Sigh.
The post was in Feb 2017, which meant he had to wait another 10 months for it to come out. Overall that means the book came out at least 2 years and 3 months after he began writing it, and 1 year and 6 months after it was finalized and finished. I don’t know if Oxford University Press is always this slow. But I don’t think that if someone read the book then heard about it, they’d feel especially upset to find out it didn’t represent Robin’s ideas on date-of-publishing but in fact was 1.5 years out-of-date.
The essays in the book were the best new essays on LW at the time we decided to make it into a book, which is 2 years ago, so we’re a little slower than OUP (in large part because we have a self-imposed 1-year break in the middle_), and I think next time I’ll just do the whole thing quicker (now that we’ve learned how to use all the software, how to interface with the printers, how to interface with Amazon, how to interface with editors, etc).
I understand Howie to be saying that he would expect posts from e.g. 2014 to be included, I.e. the emphasis is on older essays, not newer essays. It does seem really hard to have the best essays since the date of publication included, though I agree that we will reduce the gap of publication to essay collection in the future.
Consider this quote from Robin Hanson:
The post was in Feb 2017, which meant he had to wait another 10 months for it to come out. Overall that means the book came out at least 2 years and 3 months after he began writing it, and 1 year and 6 months after it was finalized and finished. I don’t know if Oxford University Press is always this slow. But I don’t think that if someone read the book then heard about it, they’d feel especially upset to find out it didn’t represent Robin’s ideas on date-of-publishing but in fact was 1.5 years out-of-date.
The essays in the book were the best new essays on LW at the time we decided to make it into a book, which is 2 years ago, so we’re a little slower than OUP (in large part because we have a self-imposed 1-year break in the middle_), and I think next time I’ll just do the whole thing quicker (now that we’ve learned how to use all the software, how to interface with the printers, how to interface with Amazon, how to interface with editors, etc).
I understand Howie to be saying that he would expect posts from e.g. 2014 to be included, I.e. the emphasis is on older essays, not newer essays. It does seem really hard to have the best essays since the date of publication included, though I agree that we will reduce the gap of publication to essay collection in the future.