I propose that LessWrong should produce a quarterly magazine of its best content.
LessWrong readership has a significant overlap with the readers of Hacker News, a reddit/digg-like community of tech entrepreneurs. So you might be familiar with Hacker Monthly, a print magazine version of Hacker News. The first edition, featuring 16 items that were voted highly on Hacker News, came out in June, and the second came out today. The curator went to significant effort to contact the authors of the various articles and blog posts to include them in the magazine.
Why would we want LessWrong content in a magazine? I personally would find it a great recruitment tool; I could have copies at my house and show/lend/give them to friends. As someone at the Hacker News discussion commented, “It’s weird but I remember reading some of these articles on the web but, reading them again in magazine form, they somehow seem much more authoritative and objective. Ah, the perils of framing!”
The publishing and selling part is not too difficult. Hacker Monthly uses MagCloud, a company that makes it easy to publish and sell PDFs into printed magazines.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the skills or time to do this myself, at least not in the short-term. If someone wants to pick up this project, major tasks would include creating a process to choose articles for inclusion, contacting the authors for permission, and designing the magazine.
There’s also the possibility of advertisements. I personally would be excited to see what kinds of companies would like to advertise to an audience of rationalists. Cryonics companies? Index funds? Rationalist books? Non-profits seeking donations?
Should advertising be used just to defray costs, or could the magazine make money? Make money for whom?
If people think it’s a good idea but no-one takes it on, I might have some time free early next year to make this happen. But I hope someone gets to it earlier.
I don’t think there’s enough content on LW to be worthwhile publishing a magazine. However, Eliezer’s book on rationality should offer many of the same benefits.
Not all of the content needs to be from the most recent quarter. There could be classic articles too. But I think we might have enough content each quarter anyway. Let’s see...
Maybe not all of those are appropriate for a magazine (e.g. Bayes Theorem Illustrated is too long). So maybe swap a couple of them out for other ones. Then maybe add a few classic LessWrong articles (for example, Disguised Queries would make a good companion piece to Diseased Thinking), add a few pages of advertising and maybe some rationality quotes, and you’d have at least 30 pages. I know I’d buy it.
Well, I’d like to keep the diagrams if the article is to be used. I do like Bayes Theorem Illustrated and I think an explanation of Bayes Theorem is perfect content for the magazine. If I were designing the magazine I’d want to try to include it, maybe edited down in length.
A yearly anthology would be pretty good, though. HN is reusing others’ content and can afford a faster tempo; but that simply means we need to be slower. Monthly is too fast, I suspect that quarterly may be a little too fast unless we lower our standards to include probably wrong but still interesting essays. (I think of “Is cryonics necessary?: Writing yourself into the future” as an example of something I’m sure is wrong, but was still interesting to read.)
This post both made me laugh AND think it was a good idea; I’d love to see a magazine that was more than once a year. There’s a bit of discussion of the most recent quarter; if people don’t think that it is long enough (or that the pace will continue, or that people will consent to their articles being put in journals) a slight delay should help but a four times delay seems excessive.
I propose that LessWrong should produce a quarterly magazine of its best content.
LessWrong readership has a significant overlap with the readers of Hacker News, a reddit/digg-like community of tech entrepreneurs. So you might be familiar with Hacker Monthly, a print magazine version of Hacker News. The first edition, featuring 16 items that were voted highly on Hacker News, came out in June, and the second came out today. The curator went to significant effort to contact the authors of the various articles and blog posts to include them in the magazine.
Why would we want LessWrong content in a magazine? I personally would find it a great recruitment tool; I could have copies at my house and show/lend/give them to friends. As someone at the Hacker News discussion commented, “It’s weird but I remember reading some of these articles on the web but, reading them again in magazine form, they somehow seem much more authoritative and objective. Ah, the perils of framing!”
The publishing and selling part is not too difficult. Hacker Monthly uses MagCloud, a company that makes it easy to publish and sell PDFs into printed magazines.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the skills or time to do this myself, at least not in the short-term. If someone wants to pick up this project, major tasks would include creating a process to choose articles for inclusion, contacting the authors for permission, and designing the magazine.
There’s also the possibility of advertisements. I personally would be excited to see what kinds of companies would like to advertise to an audience of rationalists. Cryonics companies? Index funds? Rationalist books? Non-profits seeking donations?
Should advertising be used just to defray costs, or could the magazine make money? Make money for whom?
If people think it’s a good idea but no-one takes it on, I might have some time free early next year to make this happen. But I hope someone gets to it earlier.
Does anyone else find the idea of creating a printed magazine rather anachronistic?
The rumors of print media’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
This comment would seem much more authoritative if seen in print.
I don’t think there’s enough content on LW to be worthwhile publishing a magazine. However, Eliezer’s book on rationality should offer many of the same benefits.
Not all of the content needs to be from the most recent quarter. There could be classic articles too. But I think we might have enough content each quarter anyway. Let’s see...
There were about 120 posts to Less Wrong from April 1 to June 30. The top ten highest-voted were Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease by Yvain, Eight Short Studies On Excuses by Yvain, Ugh Fields by Roko, Bayes Theorem Illustrated by komponisto, Seven Shiny Stories by Alicorn, Ureshiku Naritai by Alicorn, The Psychological Diversity of Mankind by Kaj Sotala, Abnormal Cryonics by Will Newsome, Defeating Ugh Fields In Practice by Psychohistorian, and Applying Behavioral Pscyhology on Myself by John Maxwell IV.
Maybe not all of those are appropriate for a magazine (e.g. Bayes Theorem Illustrated is too long). So maybe swap a couple of them out for other ones. Then maybe add a few classic LessWrong articles (for example, Disguised Queries would make a good companion piece to Diseased Thinking), add a few pages of advertising and maybe some rationality quotes, and you’d have at least 30 pages. I know I’d buy it.
It’s not actually all that long; it’s just that the diagrams take up a lot of space.
Well, I’d like to keep the diagrams if the article is to be used. I do like Bayes Theorem Illustrated and I think an explanation of Bayes Theorem is perfect content for the magazine. If I were designing the magazine I’d want to try to include it, maybe edited down in length.
Monthly seems too often. Quarterly might work.
A yearly anthology would be pretty good, though. HN is reusing others’ content and can afford a faster tempo; but that simply means we need to be slower. Monthly is too fast, I suspect that quarterly may be a little too fast unless we lower our standards to include probably wrong but still interesting essays. (I think of “Is cryonics necessary?: Writing yourself into the future” as an example of something I’m sure is wrong, but was still interesting to read.)
How about thirdly!?
This post both made me laugh AND think it was a good idea; I’d love to see a magazine that was more than once a year. There’s a bit of discussion of the most recent quarter; if people don’t think that it is long enough (or that the pace will continue, or that people will consent to their articles being put in journals) a slight delay should help but a four times delay seems excessive.
There’s certainly enough content to do at least one really good issue.