1: compelling, but may attract an audience you wouldn’t want/give the audience an attitude/framing that’s going to result in net negative engagement. Takemongers/discourse enjoyers are not people who apply ideas to achieve sane, bipartisan policy outcomes, they have no interest in that, and successful discourses are usually those that find some way to bypass them, or resolve the conversation before they have a chance to polarise it. If Discourse (the optimization process) could be said to have a goal, its goal is to make its participants triumphant in their paralysis. The goal of a discourse is to sustain itself indefinitely, not to resolve with actionable conclusions and stop talking and take those actions. The incentives of the press and academia and in some cases the senate by default point towards that form of paralysis. You don’t particularly want those readers first, in these quantities. In the outcomes where you fail, it’s because of hyperpartisan brainworms. We are currently failing in that way.
2: This is excellent and probably my top pick. Somehow the font immediately gives a sense that this is about a book, anyone who so much as glances in the ad’s direction will read the title, and in this presentation reading the title will give them a surprise (tonal mismatch but in a fun way) and they’ll feel a strong need to know more. Most viewers will only read two quotes, so these are good quotes to pick out and scale up. There should probably be an image of the book though, saying “in stores now” or something? So that people can just pick it up at a bookstore instead of having to type out the url in their phone which seems like a large obstacle.
3: Feels strongly to me like it’s advertising a movie or tv series or something, which isn’t too bad, and it might be more likely to get people curious enough to click through than an obvious book ad, but the people who click on this wont be the same set as the people who are interested in reading a book, they might not overlap much at all.
4: Says too little about what it’s selling, annoying, I’d have no patience for this if I didn’t already know what it was about. I think “this is not a metaphor” is a common rationalist phrase (eg “not a metaphor” was the name of a ship in Unsong, there was stuff in the sequences about the “stop interpreting reports of unfamiliar experience as metaphorical” mental move) so I think people are underestimating the extent to which non-rats will just not interpret this as anything. Generally the response will be “why would ‘if anyone builds it everyone dies’ be spoken as a metaphor in the first place? Like what the hell did you mean by that”. They will not know that you’re referencing the “an existential risk (for jobs)” stuff.
5: I like this. The industrial/code style evokes the thing being discussed, machines as we’ve always known them; rough, inhuman, scaling faster than humans can adapt. If the viewer has anxieties about such things, this will remind them of them. A succinct argument. Wont be interpreted by everyone though. Not going to be clear what “unaligned” means. Again wont necessarily attract people who’re in the mood for a book.
6: The style is too strong or something, I would’ve just glossed over this one without reading. Vibes like it’s gonna be a self help book for ex-sportsmen who are interested in premium shaving products or something. I guess the most concrete thing I can say is I don’t think the style evokes anything relevant. This layout with the same style as the book cover would have landed better.
1: compelling, but may attract an audience you wouldn’t want/give the audience an attitude/framing that’s going to result in net negative engagement. Takemongers/discourse enjoyers are not people who apply ideas to achieve sane, bipartisan policy outcomes, they have no interest in that, and successful discourses are usually those that find some way to bypass them, or resolve the conversation before they have a chance to polarise it. If Discourse (the optimization process) could be said to have a goal, its goal is to make its participants triumphant in their paralysis. The goal of a discourse is to sustain itself indefinitely, not to resolve with actionable conclusions and stop talking and take those actions. The incentives of the press and academia and in some cases the senate by default point towards that form of paralysis. You don’t particularly want those readers first, in these quantities. In the outcomes where you fail, it’s because of hyperpartisan brainworms. We are currently failing in that way.
2: This is excellent and probably my top pick. Somehow the font immediately gives a sense that this is about a book, anyone who so much as glances in the ad’s direction will read the title, and in this presentation reading the title will give them a surprise (tonal mismatch but in a fun way) and they’ll feel a strong need to know more. Most viewers will only read two quotes, so these are good quotes to pick out and scale up. There should probably be an image of the book though, saying “in stores now” or something? So that people can just pick it up at a bookstore instead of having to type out the url in their phone which seems like a large obstacle.
3: Feels strongly to me like it’s advertising a movie or tv series or something, which isn’t too bad, and it might be more likely to get people curious enough to click through than an obvious book ad, but the people who click on this wont be the same set as the people who are interested in reading a book, they might not overlap much at all.
4: Says too little about what it’s selling, annoying, I’d have no patience for this if I didn’t already know what it was about. I think “this is not a metaphor” is a common rationalist phrase (eg “not a metaphor” was the name of a ship in Unsong, there was stuff in the sequences about the “stop interpreting reports of unfamiliar experience as metaphorical” mental move) so I think people are underestimating the extent to which non-rats will just not interpret this as anything. Generally the response will be “why would ‘if anyone builds it everyone dies’ be spoken as a metaphor in the first place? Like what the hell did you mean by that”. They will not know that you’re referencing the “an existential risk (for jobs)” stuff.
5: I like this. The industrial/code style evokes the thing being discussed, machines as we’ve always known them; rough, inhuman, scaling faster than humans can adapt. If the viewer has anxieties about such things, this will remind them of them. A succinct argument. Wont be interpreted by everyone though. Not going to be clear what “unaligned” means. Again wont necessarily attract people who’re in the mood for a book.
6: The style is too strong or something, I would’ve just glossed over this one without reading. Vibes like it’s gonna be a self help book for ex-sportsmen who are interested in premium shaving products or something. I guess the most concrete thing I can say is I don’t think the style evokes anything relevant. This layout with the same style as the book cover would have landed better.
(may discuss the rest in a reply)