Re: Tom McCabe:
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Way to dismiss the rest of the human species out of hand. It's people like you 'wot cause evaporative cooling. Nice little ingroup vibe there, sure to P.O. everyone who isn't already in the cult.
But since you ask, the obvious ulterior motive is that seven years after the book's publication, I can hire researchers who read the popular book as grad students, went on to read the massive tome, and then read a few dozen technical math books while refining their practice of rationality until they became ready to think about FAI without their head exploding; funded by hedge-fund traders who read the popular book as undergrads, went on to read the massive tome, and then read semipopular cognitive psych books while refining their practice of rationality until they were ready to trade without their head exploding.
The best time to plant a tree is thirty years ago; the second best time is now. Most of SIAI's human intake today is from people who read stuff I wrote ten years ago. But the stuff I wrote ten years ago is garbage by my present standards. Going back and doing it over is a huge pain in the neck, but it has to be done, and the sooner the better, because those seeds will take time to ripen. Nobody but nobody becomes a high-level rationalist without practicing for years - starting after they get onto basically the right track.
One million cumulative daily visits! Woot n' stuff. Also we're in the top 5,000 of all blogs on Technorati, and one of the top 10 econblogs by Technorati rank.
Seems like a good time to mention that I'll be appearing at Penguicon, a combination open-source/science-fiction convention in Troy, MI, Apr 18-20, as a Nifty. I'll be doing an intro to Bayesian reasoning that you probably don't need if you're reading this, possibly a panel on the Virtues of a Rationalist, some stuff on human intelligence upgrades, and definitely "The Ethics of Ending the World" with Aaron Diaz (Dresden Codak).
After the jump, you can see some proposed cover art for the blook.
For the benefit of the humor impaired: Yes, this is a joke. Erin, my girlfriend, Photoshopped this when she heard I was planning to do a book.
This is all taking longer than I expected - as expected - but I do think I'm getting there.
My current serious strategy for the blook is as follows:
If you've got more experience in the publishing industry and you see some reason that any of this won't work, i.e., "No one will talk to you if you've ever done anything with Wowio or Lulu" or "Today's readers don't want short popular books, they want 500-page tomes" or something like that, please email me or comment.