NB: The first draft of the book is now complete. This post is no longer very relevant, but I've left it up for posterity. You can find the most up-to-date info on the book's website.
I have a plan to write a sequence that I can turn into a book about . I'm calling it "Fundamental Uncertainty" since I think it's a better name and it identifies the thing the problem of the criterion exposes. Yes, there's already an idea of "fundamental uncertainty" in the literature but that's okay because the existing name points to a special case of what I mean by the term. Maybe I'll come up with a better name before I finish and I'll switch to that.
Why write a book? Although I can adequately make my points in just a few blog posts and assemble a path to convey my points by linking to existing material on the internet and saying "read this and think real hard about it", most people won't do that. Books have a few advantages.
First, they carry weight. When someone takes the time to write a book they demonstrate the subject is important enough to put in that level of effort, so it signals that the topic is more likely than any other random topic to be worth knowing about.
Second, books let a reader spend time with ideas. When you read a blog post you can easily go on to the next, unrelated thing. When you read a book you stay with the same ideas for a long time, come back to them over time if you don't read the whole book in one sitting, and have some of the deep thinking about the ideas the author would like you to do happen automatically by giving the ideas time to seep into your brain as you spend time with them in a long-form format.
Third, it's an opportunity to put a lot of related ideas together in one place and make clear how they fit together. It's easy to miss a blog post or not see how a set of blog posts fit together. Books naturally put ideas together in one place and encourage showing how they are related.
Fourth, publishing a book conveys status to the author, and I shouldn't discount the signaling value in being a "published author" above and beyond the minor status bump from having published journal articles, conference papers, and of course blog posts in various places.
My post today is meant to serve as a rough table of contents, mostly for myself, and to incentivize me a bit to write all the parts (and not give up on it when it seems hard to flesh out some of the chapters, especially when I'd rather link to someone saying similar things better) by having said in public that I planned to.
Here's my initial draft for the table of contents:
I'll probably work on the chapters out of order and add them to the sequence here slowly as I make progress. Chapter 2, 3, and 4 are totally unwritten by me, other than in passing in other posts. Chapter 5, 6, and 7 already exist as blog posts, but could stand substantial revision, especially to fit as part of a book. Chapter 1, 8, and 9 need to be written but basically come last, with chapter 8 likely being where I'll dump a bunch of tangents that get cut from other chapters to streamline them.
If I manage to make it to the end, I'll figure out something to do about publishing. If you have thoughts about what's planned in the chapter outline above, the publication process, or other general thoughts on the idea of this book, this is a great post to discuss them. For example, maybe I'm missing something really important or you think something seems off topic and should be cut. Let me know in the comments!
I'm also mildly interested in a co-author. Writing a book is hard, and many parts of the book don't benefit from specifically me writing them, or could be written by me providing initial drafts and my co-author turning them into polished work. I'd be happy to work with you to figure out funding if that would be needed to support you getting involved (I think there's a strong case to get money from an EA fund to support this work since I see it as vital to several existential risk mitigation missions). Ideally you'd be someone with a track record of quality published material (blog posts, books, articles, etc.), interested in this topic, and generally on board with my take on the problem of the criterion. I'd be looking for you to take on writing the earlier chapters in the book and help me improve the later chapters (i.e. help me better convey what I'm trying to say to readers without watering down what I want to say). If that sounds interesting, let's chat!
I'm not sure what my timeline is for completing the book. Without a co-author it's long, likely 2-3 years. With a co-author maybe it would be something like 18 months? Just trying to be realistic given I'm working a full time, mentally taxing job and otherwise have a life, but also know that writing comes in spurts and is often motivationally "free" vs. other things I might do. We'll see.