Over in this thread, Said asked the reasonable question “who exactly is the target audience with this Best of 2018 book?”
By compiling the list, we are saying: “here is the best work done on Less Wrong in [time period]”. But to whom are we saying this? To ourselves, so to speak? Is this for internal consumption—as a guideline for future work, collectively decided on, and meant to be considered as a standard or bar to meet, by us, and anyone who joins us in the future?
Or, is this meant for external consumption—a way of saying to others, “see what we have accomplished, and be impressed”, and also “here are the fruits of our labors; take them and make use of them”? Or something else? Or some combination of the above?
I’m working on a post that goes into a bit more detail about the Review Phase, and, to be quite honest, the whole process is a bit in flux – I expect us (the LW team as well as site participants) to learn, over the course of the review process, what aspects of it are most valuable.
But, a quick “best guess” answer for now.
I see the overall review process as having two “major phases”:
I think the first phase should be oriented entirely around “internal consumption” – figuring out what epistemic standard to hold ourselves to, and how, so that we can do better in the future. (As well as figuring out what ideas we’ve developed that should be further built upon). Any other benefits are incidental.
The final book/sequence is at least somewhat externally facing. I do expect it to be some people’s first introduction to LessWrong, and other people’s “one thing they read from LW this year”. And at least some consideration should be given to those people’s reading experience (which will be lacking a lot of context). But my guess is that should come more in the form of context-setting editor commentary than in decisions about what to include.
I think “here are the fruits of our labors; take them and make use of them” is more of what I was aiming for. (Although “what standards are we internally holding ourselves to, and what work should we build towards?” is still an important function of the finished product). It’d be nice if people were impressed, but a better frame for that goal is “Outsiders looking in can get an accurate picture of how productive our community is, and what sort of things we do”, and maybe they are impressed by that or maybe not.
(I realize this comment doesn’t really address the broader questions underlying the discussion, but wanted to at least get this out there. My preference is to spend the next few days actually attempting to write a variety of reviews, so that week I have more examples to point to when writing up a more comprehensive post about what sorts of reviews I think are most useful and why)
I’m looking forward to a bookshelf with LW review books in my living room. If nothing else, the very least this will give us is legitimacy, and legitimacy can lead to many good things.
Over in this thread, Said asked the reasonable question “who exactly is the target audience with this Best of 2018 book?”
I’m working on a post that goes into a bit more detail about the Review Phase, and, to be quite honest, the whole process is a bit in flux – I expect us (the LW team as well as site participants) to learn, over the course of the review process, what aspects of it are most valuable.
But, a quick “best guess” answer for now.
I see the overall review process as having two “major phases”:
Phase 1: Nomination/Review/Voting/Post-that-summarizes-the-voting
Phase 2: Compilation and Publication
I think the first phase should be oriented entirely around “internal consumption” – figuring out what epistemic standard to hold ourselves to, and how, so that we can do better in the future. (As well as figuring out what ideas we’ve developed that should be further built upon). Any other benefits are incidental.
The final book/sequence is at least somewhat externally facing. I do expect it to be some people’s first introduction to LessWrong, and other people’s “one thing they read from LW this year”. And at least some consideration should be given to those people’s reading experience (which will be lacking a lot of context). But my guess is that should come more in the form of context-setting editor commentary than in decisions about what to include.
I think “here are the fruits of our labors; take them and make use of them” is more of what I was aiming for. (Although “what standards are we internally holding ourselves to, and what work should we build towards?” is still an important function of the finished product). It’d be nice if people were impressed, but a better frame for that goal is “Outsiders looking in can get an accurate picture of how productive our community is, and what sort of things we do”, and maybe they are impressed by that or maybe not.
(I realize this comment doesn’t really address the broader questions underlying the discussion, but wanted to at least get this out there. My preference is to spend the next few days actually attempting to write a variety of reviews, so that week I have more examples to point to when writing up a more comprehensive post about what sorts of reviews I think are most useful and why)
Thank you, this is a useful answer.
I’m looking forward to a bookshelf with LW review books in my living room. If nothing else, the very least this will give us is legitimacy, and legitimacy can lead to many good things.
+1 excitement about bookshelves :)