I would love to read this! This seems extremely high value.
The other commenters who are saying that this information is available elsewhere have a point, but not, I think, a particularly strong one. There’s nothing wrong with explaining something that someone else has already explained. Some pointers to the existing literature might be helpful, though.
Indeed pretty much all the practical advice is available elsewhere. I will particularly recommend Eric Tyson’s Personal Finances for Dummies. Anyone who doesn’t want to wait for me to finish (or even start) should go read that now.
What I’m mulling over is two-fold:
Is there value to be had by talking about these topics in the language of epistemic and instrumental rationality?
Are there topics that need to be addressed for the LessWrong audience that aren’t covered in the usual literature? For instance, a mainstream audience probably doesn’t need to be convinced that they should still save for retirement despite existential risks.
Are there topics that need to be addressed for the LessWrong audience that aren’t covered in the usual literature?
I would personally be interested in a discussion of unusual financial decisions in the pursuit of unusual goals, somewhat along the lines of Early Retirement Extreme—for example, how does your financial outlook change if you don’t plan on buying a house or having a family, if you’re willing to invest a large percentage of your income rather than spend it, if you’re optimizing for efficient charity, etc.
Not buying a house is actually well treated in many good books on financial planning. Indeed, that’s one of the signals you can use to distinguish the good from the bad. Good books rationally discuss the upsides and downsides of home ownership, and who it is and is not appropriate for. Bad books tell everyone to buy a home (sometimes more than one) and make provably false statements like “home prices never go down” or “if you rent, you’re just throwing money away.”
Not having children just means everything gets a lot easier. You have a lot more money to play with without kids, but it shouldn’t change most of your financial practices.
Optimizing for maximal charitable donations: now that’s an interesting one I have not run across in the standard texts. I’d have to research that. One thing I would hope to gain by posting chapters here first would be harnessing the collective knowledge of LessWrongers who have thought about topics like to improve the content. I don’t have a lot to say about optimizing for charitable donations, but I know some other folks here do.
Elharo, I’m interested in reading your sequence topics in inverse proportion to how usual it is to find them in the literature.
So I’d love to hear your thoughts on spouses, number of incomes and other topics with magnitudes ranging 7 to eight figures that no one talks about (to my knowledge).
I would not love that much read about compound interest, tax advantages etc…
So here is the interesting thing. While I agree with others that you should optimize for hard data and equations, I don’t think you should select for hard data and equations, because the topics were more hard data exist are exactly those in which your efforts would be unnecessary.
But then again, you’ll be shot with all the arrows people have been shooting me in many of my longer texts here, where I usually delve into territory where adjacent data exists, and make extrapolations from that data into unexplored territory.
As I see it you have 4 avenues:
1)Write about stuff where hard data already exists and be counterfactually irrelevant, have a lot of work, and be mildly praised.
2)Write about the areas where available content is not a lot, and be downshot by many who will claim you have no data to back your advice. On the other hand you will be counterfactually relevant and praised by a small majority.
3)Write all of it, and be downshot because of the non-backed parts, and downshot on the backed parts for re-writing what is already out there. Newcomers, and the small majority above will still like it, but hardcore LW won’t.
4)Be awesome, and be praised by your awesomeness.
If you evaluate 4 as out of the way, for whichever reason, I would go for 2, and be as far away from 3 as I can, because it is frustrating.
Also, about the book, I wouldn’t buy it even for $1.00 . Nowadays I’ll only buy a book if I know I want to mark it with a pen, read it outside after my cell runs out of bateries or if the author is one of my heroes.
We are drowning in an information ocean, and I am firmly convinced that for the same reason I don’t pay for alcohol because I know I drink so rarely that I can afford to drink only when somehow I’m being given drinks, I never (99%) need to pay for written knowledge again. Not because I don’t read, but because with a large certainty, everything I want to read has an equivalent (itself included) available online, instantly, and free.
I would love to read this! This seems extremely high value.
The other commenters who are saying that this information is available elsewhere have a point, but not, I think, a particularly strong one. There’s nothing wrong with explaining something that someone else has already explained. Some pointers to the existing literature might be helpful, though.
Indeed pretty much all the practical advice is available elsewhere. I will particularly recommend Eric Tyson’s Personal Finances for Dummies. Anyone who doesn’t want to wait for me to finish (or even start) should go read that now.
What I’m mulling over is two-fold:
Is there value to be had by talking about these topics in the language of epistemic and instrumental rationality?
Are there topics that need to be addressed for the LessWrong audience that aren’t covered in the usual literature? For instance, a mainstream audience probably doesn’t need to be convinced that they should still save for retirement despite existential risks.
I would personally be interested in a discussion of unusual financial decisions in the pursuit of unusual goals, somewhat along the lines of Early Retirement Extreme—for example, how does your financial outlook change if you don’t plan on buying a house or having a family, if you’re willing to invest a large percentage of your income rather than spend it, if you’re optimizing for efficient charity, etc.
Not buying a house is actually well treated in many good books on financial planning. Indeed, that’s one of the signals you can use to distinguish the good from the bad. Good books rationally discuss the upsides and downsides of home ownership, and who it is and is not appropriate for. Bad books tell everyone to buy a home (sometimes more than one) and make provably false statements like “home prices never go down” or “if you rent, you’re just throwing money away.”
Not having children just means everything gets a lot easier. You have a lot more money to play with without kids, but it shouldn’t change most of your financial practices.
Optimizing for maximal charitable donations: now that’s an interesting one I have not run across in the standard texts. I’d have to research that. One thing I would hope to gain by posting chapters here first would be harnessing the collective knowledge of LessWrongers who have thought about topics like to improve the content. I don’t have a lot to say about optimizing for charitable donations, but I know some other folks here do.
Elharo, I’m interested in reading your sequence topics in inverse proportion to how usual it is to find them in the literature.
So I’d love to hear your thoughts on spouses, number of incomes and other topics with magnitudes ranging 7 to eight figures that no one talks about (to my knowledge).
I would not love that much read about compound interest, tax advantages etc…
So here is the interesting thing. While I agree with others that you should optimize for hard data and equations, I don’t think you should select for hard data and equations, because the topics were more hard data exist are exactly those in which your efforts would be unnecessary. But then again, you’ll be shot with all the arrows people have been shooting me in many of my longer texts here, where I usually delve into territory where adjacent data exists, and make extrapolations from that data into unexplored territory.
As I see it you have 4 avenues:
1)Write about stuff where hard data already exists and be counterfactually irrelevant, have a lot of work, and be mildly praised.
2)Write about the areas where available content is not a lot, and be downshot by many who will claim you have no data to back your advice. On the other hand you will be counterfactually relevant and praised by a small majority.
3)Write all of it, and be downshot because of the non-backed parts, and downshot on the backed parts for re-writing what is already out there. Newcomers, and the small majority above will still like it, but hardcore LW won’t.
4)Be awesome, and be praised by your awesomeness.
If you evaluate 4 as out of the way, for whichever reason, I would go for 2, and be as far away from 3 as I can, because it is frustrating.
Also, about the book, I wouldn’t buy it even for $1.00 . Nowadays I’ll only buy a book if I know I want to mark it with a pen, read it outside after my cell runs out of bateries or if the author is one of my heroes.
We are drowning in an information ocean, and I am firmly convinced that for the same reason I don’t pay for alcohol because I know I drink so rarely that I can afford to drink only when somehow I’m being given drinks, I never (99%) need to pay for written knowledge again. Not because I don’t read, but because with a large certainty, everything I want to read has an equivalent (itself included) available online, instantly, and free.