I'm suddenly interested in taking you up on your offer to review fiction. I definitely have Things To Say beyond the plot and aesthetics, such as the likelihood of the world looking anything like the author's premise and the implications of that for the current world.
"pitch me any other pieces they have that they think would make good SSC posts"
Can you make like an open ended poll where we can input answers and also upvote them? Here's a system I found but it's old and I'm sure others have a better more name-brand solution: http://www.rkursem.com/poll/
Still working on that review of Nassim Taleb's 'Antifragile'. And by 'working on' I mean that I promised to do it then delayed for a year and just started last week. Here we go!
The original "Call for Entries" linked to the tag "book reviews" ... which gave them to you one at a time. If you're a book review junkie (I am), having a consolidated list would be preferable. So I made one, culled from the main Archives page. If anyone else is interested, I saved it as a Gist:
Has the Sovereign Individual been submitted? I've been reading it and would like to write up a summary - someone on the early post had mentioned it it as one of a cple titles.
I'm not very optimistic that my review will be top 5, given my mediocre writing skills and choice of book/topic. So on a completely unselfish note, I hope that the 25+ reviews that don't make the top 5, will still get a decent amount of attention.
Scott used to regularly do link posts on SSC (that I hope will come back here) and I would like to suggest something similar for the book reviews outside the top 5. So a brief blurb for each review with a link to where-ever the reviews get hosted.
I also would prefer that the reviews get hosted at a place that allows comments.
(Mini book review:) I only wrote ~1/4 of my review of Godel Escher Bach before losing momentum, and after some reflection I don’t think I learned anything noteworthy enough to be worth finishing it. It was a fun read, educational, and a somewhat interesting attempt to untangle the “thing referencing itself” model of consciousness, but i came away with the sense that that model is wrong. I think “consciousness” is better defined as “enough intelligence to manipulate your environment and/or self in novel ways” and the hard part becomes defining intelligence. (Also Hofstadter was a proto-Eliezer with just a somewhat mistaken focus.)
I might throw in last-minute a review of Ernst Cassirer's "an essay on man" (1944, so no need to rush the review; but it is relevant to many of SSC/ACTs topics). If someone is interested to see this and would like to help with proofreading the review, please leave a comment (I'm no native english speaker and there's a frustratingly fine line between good-to-read and stupid/offensive wording). To be clear, I haven't started writing so this may or may not arrive in time.
I have most of a draft of a book review ready but have another book I'm starting soon that I strongly expect is a good book review candidate. Am I allowed to submit two reviews or should I just pick one?
Scott, if I take the option of submitting in .txt format, I assume you mean the same sort of formatting as in an old SSC comment? In other words, I mark italics and hyperlinks using HTML, but there's no need to mark up paragraphs and submit a full web page?
I hesitate to ask The Scott Alexander about a word count, but is there a target we should try to stay under so that you have time to effectively read the entries?
I was unable to complete the review in time. Will submissions be accepted until you start reading? Otherwise I guess I'll just post it somewhere else, but it would be a pity.
I am wondering when the next Book Review Contest will open again for submissions? March 2024 or sooner? Is there a page for submission guidelines and rules etc. Sorry if this is a lame request.
So the two comments from the first 5 minutes are gone again.
One was a request to publish a list of all reviewed books.
How do you a "+1" to a something not existing?
I'm suddenly interested in taking you up on your offer to review fiction. I definitely have Things To Say beyond the plot and aesthetics, such as the likelihood of the world looking anything like the author's premise and the implications of that for the current world.
"pitch me any other pieces they have that they think would make good SSC posts"
Can you make like an open ended poll where we can input answers and also upvote them? Here's a system I found but it's old and I'm sure others have a better more name-brand solution: http://www.rkursem.com/poll/
I am reading "Hun Sen's Cambodia" by Sebastian Strangio, on the advice of Tanner Greer.
Are you fine with me tidying up a book review that I posted up Facebook? Or does that count as posting it on a blog?
Still working on that review of Nassim Taleb's 'Antifragile'. And by 'working on' I mean that I promised to do it then delayed for a year and just started last week. Here we go!
Did you ever write a review of “Why We’re Polarized,” and if not, should we still avoid it?
Scott, can we please use approval voting? Plurality has no place here!
The original "Call for Entries" linked to the tag "book reviews" ... which gave them to you one at a time. If you're a book review junkie (I am), having a consolidated list would be preferable. So I made one, culled from the main Archives page. If anyone else is interested, I saved it as a Gist:
https://gistlog.co/dajare/35f2ee891ef52956a2641e929685b904
Has the Sovereign Individual been submitted? I've been reading it and would like to write up a summary - someone on the early post had mentioned it it as one of a cple titles.
I'm not very optimistic that my review will be top 5, given my mediocre writing skills and choice of book/topic. So on a completely unselfish note, I hope that the 25+ reviews that don't make the top 5, will still get a decent amount of attention.
Scott used to regularly do link posts on SSC (that I hope will come back here) and I would like to suggest something similar for the book reviews outside the top 5. So a brief blurb for each review with a link to where-ever the reviews get hosted.
I also would prefer that the reviews get hosted at a place that allows comments.
(Mini book review:) I only wrote ~1/4 of my review of Godel Escher Bach before losing momentum, and after some reflection I don’t think I learned anything noteworthy enough to be worth finishing it. It was a fun read, educational, and a somewhat interesting attempt to untangle the “thing referencing itself” model of consciousness, but i came away with the sense that that model is wrong. I think “consciousness” is better defined as “enough intelligence to manipulate your environment and/or self in novel ways” and the hard part becomes defining intelligence. (Also Hofstadter was a proto-Eliezer with just a somewhat mistaken focus.)
Could you tell us what 31 books have already been picked so we can pick something else?
I might throw in last-minute a review of Ernst Cassirer's "an essay on man" (1944, so no need to rush the review; but it is relevant to many of SSC/ACTs topics). If someone is interested to see this and would like to help with proofreading the review, please leave a comment (I'm no native english speaker and there's a frustratingly fine line between good-to-read and stupid/offensive wording). To be clear, I haven't started writing so this may or may not arrive in time.
I have most of a draft of a book review ready but have another book I'm starting soon that I strongly expect is a good book review candidate. Am I allowed to submit two reviews or should I just pick one?
Scott, if I take the option of submitting in .txt format, I assume you mean the same sort of formatting as in an old SSC comment? In other words, I mark italics and hyperlinks using HTML, but there's no need to mark up paragraphs and submit a full web page?
I hesitate to ask The Scott Alexander about a word count, but is there a target we should try to stay under so that you have time to effectively read the entries?
I was unable to complete the review in time. Will submissions be accepted until you start reading? Otherwise I guess I'll just post it somewhere else, but it would be a pity.
I am wondering when the next Book Review Contest will open again for submissions? March 2024 or sooner? Is there a page for submission guidelines and rules etc. Sorry if this is a lame request.
Thanks!