Eliezer changed the original text of the first chapter a fair bit...
Ah, you are right. I was looking at an old .pdf copy when I accused you of excessive abridging. As for abridging the flash-forwards, you probably made the right choice. Though you could present them before the announcement of chapter name and title and other boilerplate.
As for the echo chamber, I would save it for things done in 'Magical Voice' - spell invocations, oracular pronouncements, sorting hat, etc. I do agree that the letter-writing and thoughts-to-self ought to be distinguished in some way, and perhaps in the same way, but the echo/reverb just doesn't seem right for them. They should somehow be less portentious, rather than more.
Like far too many people, I have a job that for decent chunks of my day doesn't require much concentration. I listen to various podcasts and ebooks to alleviate the boredom at these times, as well as to get me through my daily commute. I have several friends with plenty of audio-listening time, a fair bit of which is given to amateur podcasts (in the "not getting paid for it" sense), who have much less time available for straight reading. I have, on more than one occasion, thought "Wouldn't it be great if Methods of Rationality was available in audio format?"
Well, now it is.
At least, the first chapter is, in a "testing the waters" sort of way.
If you have 17 minutes free and any interest, here's the file - http://www.filedropper.com/hpmorpilot
I have one over-riding question to anyone/everyone: is this of any value? Would this be useful to anyone here, either personally, or to share with others? Would a spruced-up first chapter, and regular production of further chapters, be something you want more of?
A closely-related follow-up question: if so - am I the right person to do this? Even "acceptable", I'm not shooting for perfection. Or is something about my voice/manner so grating I should stick to non-radio work.
If the answer to these is "yes", then are there any comments/suggestions? I'm new to this recording thing. I got a decent mic and a pop-filter, and I've played around with the software a bit, but I'm still learning. I have noticed that I need to enunciate more, it turns out my "can't win" sounds just like my "can win". Further suggestions? I'm thinking of varying my pitch when different characters are talking to make it more apparent when dialog is switching back and forth, hopefully that won't be too cheesy.
If people want more of this I'll get an actual server to host the files and make it available through iTunes as a podcast.
Again: http://www.filedropper.com/hpmorpilot