And like, this is why it’s normal epistemics to ignore the blurbs on the backs of books when evaluating their quality, no matter how prestigious the list of blurbers! Like that’s what I’ve always done, that’s what I imagine you’ve always done, and that’s what we’d of course be doing if this wasn’t a MIRI-published book.
If I see a book and I can’t figure out how seriously I should take it, I will look at the blurbs.
Good blurbs from serious, discerning, recognizable people are not on every book, even books from big publishers with strong sales. I realize this is N=2, so update (or not) accordingly, but the first book I could think of that I knew had good sales, but isn’t actually good is The Population Bomb. I didn’t find blurbs for that (I didn’t look all that hard, though, and the book is pretty old, so maybe not a good check for today’s publishing ecosystem anyway). The second book that came to mind was The Body Keeps the Score. The blurbs for that seem to be from a couple respectable-looking psychiatrists I’ve never heard of.
Yeah, I think people usually ignore blurbs, but sometimes blurbs are helpful. I think strong blurbs are unusually likely to be helpful when your book has a title like If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All.
I second this. “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies” triggers the “find out if this is insane crank horseshit” subroutine. And one of the quickest/strongest ways to negatively resolve that question is credible endorsements from well-known non-cranks.
Yep. And equally, the blurbs would be a lot less effective if the title were more timid and less stark.
Hearing that a wide range of respected figures endorse a book called If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All is a potential “holy shit” moment. If the same figures were endorsing a book with a vaguely inoffensive title like Smarter Than Us or The AI Crucible, it would spark a lot less interest (and concern).
If I see a book and I can’t figure out how seriously I should take it, I will look at the blurbs.
Good blurbs from serious, discerning, recognizable people are not on every book, even books from big publishers with strong sales. I realize this is N=2, so update (or not) accordingly, but the first book I could think of that I knew had good sales, but isn’t actually good is The Population Bomb. I didn’t find blurbs for that (I didn’t look all that hard, though, and the book is pretty old, so maybe not a good check for today’s publishing ecosystem anyway). The second book that came to mind was The Body Keeps the Score. The blurbs for that seem to be from a couple respectable-looking psychiatrists I’ve never heard of.
Yeah, I think people usually ignore blurbs, but sometimes blurbs are helpful. I think strong blurbs are unusually likely to be helpful when your book has a title like If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All.
I second this. “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies” triggers the “find out if this is insane crank horseshit” subroutine. And one of the quickest/strongest ways to negatively resolve that question is credible endorsements from well-known non-cranks.
Yep. And equally, the blurbs would be a lot less effective if the title were more timid and less stark.
Hearing that a wide range of respected figures endorse a book called If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All is a potential “holy shit” moment. If the same figures were endorsing a book with a vaguely inoffensive title like Smarter Than Us or The AI Crucible, it would spark a lot less interest (and concern).