"Since a subscription costs $10/month, this is technically an infinity dollar value!"
Well Actually, thanks to present value discounting, it really isn't - let's see, assuming a 1% annual interest rate, the value would be $119.95 per year, and dividing by .01 for the perpetuity gives $11,995 total. Assuming you're immortal, that's quite a bit more than the monetary prizes, but it's not nearly infinite!
If a subscription to A 10 costs $10/month, assuming no inflation and that AC10 goes on forever, the value of an infinity subscription to AC10 would be equal to the value of a risk-free dollar denominates security that pays dividends equal to $10/month.
I wrote one of the runners-up (about bears) and am super-impressed with the quality and variety of reviews that people put together for this contest. They show what a huge and curious readership SSC and ACX have enjoyed, and provide lots of food for thought. (NB: probably better in most respects for your community than providing food for bears, according to the book I reviewed.)
If I remember correctly, the contest generated an order of magnitude or so more entrants than Scott first expected.
Congratulations to the winners and runners-up, and to Scott for inspiring so many people to participate in this.
Thanks so much to everyone who voted and wrote reviews. Just getting promoted to finalist by readers really meant a lot, especially after looking at the other reviews and seeing how rigorous and well-written a lot of them were. The results couldn't have me happier, as the 'Progress and Poverty and 'On the Natural Faculties' reviews were definitely my favorites of the bunch.
I've just started a blog where I plan to review more books and hopefully do longer write-ups on LW and ACX adjacent topics. In my most recent post, https://whimsi.substack.com/p/responding-to-comments-on-down-and I respond to some of the comments on the Orwell review and try to flesh out a couple of ideas I only gestured at. Forgive me if I'm rough in places, as that Orwell review is the first long-form piece I've ever published online. Still very much trying to figure out tone, topics, etc.
So once again, thanks a lot to Scott and everyone that participated! I'm a long-time reader of the blog, and to see that people in this community enjoy my writing means more than I can put into words in a single comment.
Congratulations to the finalists! This contest was a delight. A special shout out to Solenoid Entity who recorded an audiobook worth of podcasts to help folks like myself consume it all.
I thought all of the reviews were good, and most were excellent; but, just in case the authors look through these comments, I wanted to express extra appreciation for:
-- Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are, reviewed by Jeff Russell (not as deeply philosophical as I expected but also much more pleasant and fun than I expected)
-- Why Buddhism Is True, reviewed by Eve Bigaj (didn't agree with a good chunk of the reviewer's ideas, but made me think and I am by no means sure I'm right and she's wrong)
--Through The Eye Of A Needle, reviewed by Tom Powell (fascinating subject, good book, great review)
--Addiction By Design, reviewed by Ketchup Duck (I had some criticism about this one but can no longer remember it, while I do still remember that it was very interesting and enjoyable)
--The Accidental Superpower, reviewed by John B (really impressed by the thoroughness and skill of the reviewer; I wouldn't be surprised if I got more out of this review than from the book itself; but the book is also a very interesting one as well)
*******
Thanks to all the reviewers and congratulations to all finalists and winners! Also: please note, if you didn't make it into the "finalists", well, I read a couple in there I thought were easily good enough to make it in and have a decent chance of coming out a winner. I wish we could have had more than one "community choice" review!
Yay! My favourite one won! Sorry to see Addiction by Design and The Collapse of Complex Societies didn't make it into the top 3. I loved those ones too.
What I _really_ want to know, though, is whether Scott was correct in his very confident prediction that [redacted] would win the book review contest! I was amazed to see it at the time, that he was willing to put 60% probability on just one out of 17 finalists. Does he really know us that well? Also, I expect he won't tell us, but I'd love to know how close it was, even just in qualitative terms.
I'd be curious to see more detail about the voting results - even just a rank order of number of votes each received would be interesting (even though I think there's a decent chance I got the fewest), but also correlations between them. I understand if that kind of thing feels bad to share though.
I don't think I received an email about my subscription. I was already a subscriber, so maybe that's expected?
Could we collect all the other reviews on another site?
During the downtime of SSC, I floated the idea that those of us who wanted to keep the tradition of SSC alive could start a group blog, practicing epistemic charity, and trying to contribute similarly long and thoughtful essays. Or essais.
I still think that such a blog - with Scott's blessing, of course - might be an interesting experiment. And starting with all these reviews from people who are clearly SSC/ACX readers would be fascinating.
This contest was amazing! Really glad my preferred ones ended up winning, and even more that you decided to quintiple their winnings! What an awesome gesture 🙂
Is anyone else kind of disappointed that while Scott massively increased the prizes, he didn't expand the number of prize-winning reviews? Both Scott and the commenters liked to emphasize that many of the reviews were very good, but now the implication is that the three winners were many leagues above the others, which I don't really feel to be the case... It would be interesting to see what the final tally of votes was, and how many points Scott himself awarded to each of the finalists.
Given that $10,000 ended up being given away as prizes, awarding e.g. $250 for 4th and 5th place, and $100 each for places 6-10, wouldn't impact the top 3 prizes very much, but it would motivate more readers to compete in the future. Writing a book review feels rather Sisyphean if only about 3% of entries actually get a cash prize; in the last adversarial collaboration, for comparison, 25% of entries ended up getting a prize. An ACX subscription is great too, but I'm not sure how many people would be willing to go through the trouble of writing a lengthy review, when the only prize they could realistically hope for was a free subscription.
(Disclaimer: I wrote one of the runners-up, so take everything above with a pinch of salt.)
I have a pet theory that game designers are an underappreciated resource in today’s society, because they’re taught to think very deeply about human systems and how those systems might affect people’s behaviour in both expected and unexpected ways. They’ve probably spent more time theorizing about, and more importantly *experimenting with*, human systems, than almost any other profession. (Though as a hobbyist game designer myself I may be biased.)
All this to say: congrats Lars, and don’t sell yourself short. You may well have been the perfect person to analyze and summarize Georgism for this blog’s readers, because ultimately Georgism is nothing more than a proposal to change the rules of the IRL games that we play. A follow-up post would be more than welcome.
The most striking part of the experience for me (Humankind reviewer) was that within a couple of hours of the review going up, I'd learnt far more about the subject from reading the comments, than I had from hours of reading the book. Feedback from this community is startlingly insightful.
I also really enjoyed Why Children Fail. I feel like I heard many of those ideas floating around, but this review made a good case for them in a way that swayed me for the first time.
> All finalists win a permanent free subscription to Astral Codex Ten - since a subscription costs $10/month, this is technically an infinity dollar value!
I thought these were generally quite good!
Runner up reviews link (at the very bottom) has permissions misconfigured!
Whoa. Was not expecting this result. I am seriously, seriously humbled everyone. Thank you so much.
"Since a subscription costs $10/month, this is technically an infinity dollar value!"
Well Actually, thanks to present value discounting, it really isn't - let's see, assuming a 1% annual interest rate, the value would be $119.95 per year, and dividing by .01 for the perpetuity gives $11,995 total. Assuming you're immortal, that's quite a bit more than the monetary prizes, but it's not nearly infinite!
If a subscription to A 10 costs $10/month, assuming no inflation and that AC10 goes on forever, the value of an infinity subscription to AC10 would be equal to the value of a risk-free dollar denominates security that pays dividends equal to $10/month.
I wrote one of the runners-up (about bears) and am super-impressed with the quality and variety of reviews that people put together for this contest. They show what a huge and curious readership SSC and ACX have enjoyed, and provide lots of food for thought. (NB: probably better in most respects for your community than providing food for bears, according to the book I reviewed.)
If I remember correctly, the contest generated an order of magnitude or so more entrants than Scott first expected.
Congratulations to the winners and runners-up, and to Scott for inspiring so many people to participate in this.
The reader's choice award, Disunited Nations vs. Dawn Of Eurasia links to the runners-up document instead.
If they post here under a different name, could you add that?
For the guy who did 'through the eye of a needle' i got the book on audible, well worth it. Thanks.
Thanks so much to everyone who voted and wrote reviews. Just getting promoted to finalist by readers really meant a lot, especially after looking at the other reviews and seeing how rigorous and well-written a lot of them were. The results couldn't have me happier, as the 'Progress and Poverty and 'On the Natural Faculties' reviews were definitely my favorites of the bunch.
I've just started a blog where I plan to review more books and hopefully do longer write-ups on LW and ACX adjacent topics. In my most recent post, https://whimsi.substack.com/p/responding-to-comments-on-down-and I respond to some of the comments on the Orwell review and try to flesh out a couple of ideas I only gestured at. Forgive me if I'm rough in places, as that Orwell review is the first long-form piece I've ever published online. Still very much trying to figure out tone, topics, etc.
So once again, thanks a lot to Scott and everyone that participated! I'm a long-time reader of the blog, and to see that people in this community enjoy my writing means more than I can put into words in a single comment.
Congratulations to the finalists! This contest was a delight. A special shout out to Solenoid Entity who recorded an audiobook worth of podcasts to help folks like myself consume it all.
A big thanks to all reviewers! There were so many amazing reviews, even among the non-finalists!
I thought all of the reviews were good, and most were excellent; but, just in case the authors look through these comments, I wanted to express extra appreciation for:
-- Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are, reviewed by Jeff Russell (not as deeply philosophical as I expected but also much more pleasant and fun than I expected)
-- Why Buddhism Is True, reviewed by Eve Bigaj (didn't agree with a good chunk of the reviewer's ideas, but made me think and I am by no means sure I'm right and she's wrong)
--Through The Eye Of A Needle, reviewed by Tom Powell (fascinating subject, good book, great review)
--Addiction By Design, reviewed by Ketchup Duck (I had some criticism about this one but can no longer remember it, while I do still remember that it was very interesting and enjoyable)
--The Accidental Superpower, reviewed by John B (really impressed by the thoroughness and skill of the reviewer; I wouldn't be surprised if I got more out of this review than from the book itself; but the book is also a very interesting one as well)
*******
Thanks to all the reviewers and congratulations to all finalists and winners! Also: please note, if you didn't make it into the "finalists", well, I read a couple in there I thought were easily good enough to make it in and have a decent chance of coming out a winner. I wish we could have had more than one "community choice" review!
This contest was a really good idea. The reviews were great.
Yay! My favourite one won! Sorry to see Addiction by Design and The Collapse of Complex Societies didn't make it into the top 3. I loved those ones too.
Well done everyone!
What I _really_ want to know, though, is whether Scott was correct in his very confident prediction that [redacted] would win the book review contest! I was amazed to see it at the time, that he was willing to put 60% probability on just one out of 17 finalists. Does he really know us that well? Also, I expect he won't tell us, but I'd love to know how close it was, even just in qualitative terms.
No. 99 here:
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/mantic-monday-predictions-for-2021
Congratulations to the winners and finalists! My top three were: 1. On the Natural Faculties, 2. How Children Fail, 3. Addiction by Design
The results indicate that modern non-fiction did not have a chance.
I'm confused by the readers choice award? Who awarded the other possitions if not the readers?
Congratulations to the winners and many thanks to Scott for what was probably heaps of work and hassle. Plus the extremely generous prizes.
Congrats to the winners!
I'd be curious to see more detail about the voting results - even just a rank order of number of votes each received would be interesting (even though I think there's a decent chance I got the fewest), but also correlations between them. I understand if that kind of thing feels bad to share though.
I don't think I received an email about my subscription. I was already a subscriber, so maybe that's expected?
The top three were reviews that I liked, so I'm happy with the result! Congratulations to everybody and I hope we can do this again sometime!
Could we collect all the other reviews on another site?
During the downtime of SSC, I floated the idea that those of us who wanted to keep the tradition of SSC alive could start a group blog, practicing epistemic charity, and trying to contribute similarly long and thoughtful essays. Or essais.
I still think that such a blog - with Scott's blessing, of course - might be an interesting experiment. And starting with all these reviews from people who are clearly SSC/ACX readers would be fascinating.
Anyway, I throw that into the mix.
This contest was amazing! Really glad my preferred ones ended up winning, and even more that you decided to quintiple their winnings! What an awesome gesture 🙂
Is anyone else kind of disappointed that while Scott massively increased the prizes, he didn't expand the number of prize-winning reviews? Both Scott and the commenters liked to emphasize that many of the reviews were very good, but now the implication is that the three winners were many leagues above the others, which I don't really feel to be the case... It would be interesting to see what the final tally of votes was, and how many points Scott himself awarded to each of the finalists.
Given that $10,000 ended up being given away as prizes, awarding e.g. $250 for 4th and 5th place, and $100 each for places 6-10, wouldn't impact the top 3 prizes very much, but it would motivate more readers to compete in the future. Writing a book review feels rather Sisyphean if only about 3% of entries actually get a cash prize; in the last adversarial collaboration, for comparison, 25% of entries ended up getting a prize. An ACX subscription is great too, but I'm not sure how many people would be willing to go through the trouble of writing a lengthy review, when the only prize they could realistically hope for was a free subscription.
(Disclaimer: I wrote one of the runners-up, so take everything above with a pinch of salt.)
I have a pet theory that game designers are an underappreciated resource in today’s society, because they’re taught to think very deeply about human systems and how those systems might affect people’s behaviour in both expected and unexpected ways. They’ve probably spent more time theorizing about, and more importantly *experimenting with*, human systems, than almost any other profession. (Though as a hobbyist game designer myself I may be biased.)
All this to say: congrats Lars, and don’t sell yourself short. You may well have been the perfect person to analyze and summarize Georgism for this blog’s readers, because ultimately Georgism is nothing more than a proposal to change the rules of the IRL games that we play. A follow-up post would be more than welcome.
This contest was really fun.
The most striking part of the experience for me (Humankind reviewer) was that within a couple of hours of the review going up, I'd learnt far more about the subject from reading the comments, than I had from hours of reading the book. Feedback from this community is startlingly insightful.
@scott It might be a good idea to add bylines to the guest reviews now that the authorship isn't a secret.
I also really enjoyed Why Children Fail. I feel like I heard many of those ideas floating around, but this review made a good case for them in a way that swayed me for the first time.
> All finalists win a permanent free subscription to Astral Codex Ten - since a subscription costs $10/month, this is technically an infinity dollar value!
"He gave you a billion dollar raise?"
"It's not as good as it sounds."
https://dilbert.com/strip/2009-01-11
Is there any way to "sort by controversial"? I'd love to know which review was the most polarizing.