James_Miller comments on BOOK DRAFT: 'Ethics and Superintelligence' (part 1) - Less Wrong

11 Post author: lukeprog 13 February 2011 10:09AM

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Comment author: James_Miller 13 February 2011 07:17:27PM *  5 points [-]

The first sentence is the most important of any book because if a reader doesn't like it he will stop. Your first sentence contains four numbers, none of which are relevant to your core thesis. Forgive me for being cruel but a publisher reading this sentence would conclude that you lack the ability to write a book people would want to read.

Look at successful non-fiction books to see how they get started.

Comment author: lukeprog 13 February 2011 07:41:24PM *  6 points [-]

This is not a book for a popular audience. Also, it's a first draft. That said, you needn't apologize for saying anything "cruel."

But, based on your comments, I've now revised my opening to the following...

Compared to science, philosophy moves at a slow pace. A few decades after the Wright Brothers flew their spruce-wood plane for half the length of a football field, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Meanwhile, philosophers are still debating the questions Plato raised more than two millennia ago.

But the world is about to change. Maintaining philosophy’s slow pace and not solving certain philosophical problems in the next two centuries may lead to the extinction of the human species.

This extinction would result from...

It's still not like the opening of a Richard Dawkins book, but it's not supposed to be like a Richard Dawkins book.

Comment author: James_Miller 14 February 2011 12:00:57AM 7 points [-]

Better, but how about this:

"Philosophy's pathetic pace could kill us."

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