Is it me or are the majority of these basically “pay someone’s rent
so they can write and dick around with computers?”
Not that I think we shouldn’t be paying people to write and dick
around with computers, and all sorts of other things, but calling it
‘effective altruism’ is a bit much.
Isn’t that book freely available online? Might as well just send a
link to the science price winning children instead. This is basically
just a transfer of 30,000 bucks to Yudkowsky’s bank account.
Fun little thing, as soon as somebody makes money out of this, there is a huge risk of trademark law problems and lawsuits.
If I was paranoid, I would almost think this is an EA insider trying to bring the EA community into big problems with trademark law.
Wow rebooted just in time. What are you trying to do? Be careful, messing with my password in acausalrobotgods light cone might have dire consequences. (or not, more likely is not, but can you take that risk?).
He's not getting the money. It's ~$40 a copy they've got to POD and distribute 2,000 pages, so 3-4 books. They probably won't go for the cheapest possible POD option, and they'll presumably be taking a cut for expenses.
Wait why do they have to print it out? I’m not dense, I swear, but I don’t see why you need to spend money to read fanfiction. It’s not paywalled or anything.
$28k to distribute 5MB of Yud's masturbatory fanfic and waste roughly 1M pages of paper.
I wouldn't normally argue against the existence of more books, but given that this org's stated mission is about *effective* altruism, i.e. using each dollar most rationally and most efficiently to maximize utilitons, sentimentality (of things like printed material) be damned! And the fact that the book their printing is fucking HPMOR, it's all just a little rich for my blood.
Then again, apparently reading comprehension is higher with printed rather than e-books (so I hear/remember reading at some point), so perhaps someone has really drunk the kool-aid and believes that the marginal increase of comprehension of the **bold new ideas** and **scintillating writing** that comes with printing the material rather than distributing it digitally is worth at least $28k to society as a whole.
I think I find it less distasteful to imagine someone who hasn't thought this grant out very well (on the requesting or distributing end!) than someone who has.
can we also not overlook the fact that HPMOR is absolute godawful drivel from the first word to the last? it would be better for the world to spend that money reprinting literally any thirteen year old girl's extremely sweaty fanfic where Captain America kisses Bucky.
I haven't read it, I've seen excerpts that hurt the part of me that cares about good writing.
I never read the original Harry Potter either, my mom was one of those who thought it was pro-demons and shit, though my grandmother got me and my brother a copy of the fourth book as a joint birthday present, I believe I was about 10. I was a voracious reader, but alas, it was the fourth fucking book and I had no idea what was going on, so I didn't get very far. It seems as though every woman I have dated has been very into HP though, and encourage me to read the series so that I can share in their enthusiasm. I'm... not going to though. I have nothing against the series, I just can't really bring myself to read YA, and anyway feel like I would have had to grow up with the books to really experience that magic (no pun intended).
A much-too-long fanfic written by a narcissist whose goal is to have their characters smarmily espouse a Manichean worldview where the opposing forces are rationality and ignorance when the author himself is a bright, beaming example of how one can fool oneself into believing they are rational while being ignorant would be too on the nose for an allegory. I enjoy sneering, but taking the time to wade into that swamp of terrible writing and embodiment of tragic irony would be about three klicks too far, considering I haven't even read the originals!
so if we accept the ~5000 bucks per malaria life saved figure that
gets thrown around, by EA logic they’ve just sacrificed like 6 kids to
give harry potter fanfiction away
I don’t want to dox myself so i’ll be light on details: based on what
I know of IMO winners and people who qualify for the high levels of the
national science olympiads, most of them are into rationalist ideas
anyways. That’s where I was first introduced to rationalism actually. So
I don’t predict this is going to cause a big change in the number of
people who read HPMOR - I already got copies of said book for free from
people who recommended it but found it boring and full of pretentious
arrogance. The point is, I don’t think this will actually have much of
an impact in spreading Rationalist Thought (TM) and is a waste of
money.
Haha but that was ages ago, nothing wrong with laughing at EA folk but… wait does that say 2019?
Is it me or are the majority of these basically “pay someone’s rent so they can write and dick around with computers?”
Not that I think we shouldn’t be paying people to write and dick around with computers, and all sorts of other things, but calling it ‘effective altruism’ is a bit much.
Lauren Lee wants 0k to learn to ride a bike and think about rationality.
Unless they are Ron.
(And yes i know we talked about this proposal before).
I’d much rather send “My Immortal”, thanks.
Isn’t that book freely available online? Might as well just send a link to the science price winning children instead. This is basically just a transfer of 30,000 bucks to Yudkowsky’s bank account.
And to what sounds like 650 recipients: Are they really saying it will cost 3 per book?!
so if we accept the ~5000 bucks per malaria life saved figure that gets thrown around, by EA logic they’ve just sacrificed like 6 kids to give harry potter fanfiction away
I don’t want to dox myself so i’ll be light on details: based on what I know of IMO winners and people who qualify for the high levels of the national science olympiads, most of them are into rationalist ideas anyways. That’s where I was first introduced to rationalism actually. So I don’t predict this is going to cause a big change in the number of people who read HPMOR - I already got copies of said book for free from people who recommended it but found it boring and full of pretentious arrogance. The point is, I don’t think this will actually have much of an impact in spreading Rationalist Thought (TM) and is a waste of money.
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