Everything beyond a certain length, I want to read on my Kindle; much more comfortable than a computer screen, or printed form, or my phone.
Of course, there's no reason academic papers can't be provided in multiple formats; PDF, HTML, ePUB and MOBI should all be doable. I'd like to help SI with this.
Of course, there's no reason academic papers can't be provided in multiple formats; PDF, HTML, ePUB and MOBI should all be doable. I'd like to help SI with this.
Ciphergoth, talk to me! I'm the most technical of the guys Luke has producing his papers and Luke has recently had me investigating the possibility of alternate publication formats. In particular I have looked at the production of HTML formats for display on the website. Definitely possible but based on the various obstacles that would need to be overcome and the time estimate I gave him Luke ha...
In our discussion of academic papers, Lukeprog argued that lots of smart people preferred to read ideas in academic paper format. Based on my observations, I mostly disagree. But that's just anecdotal evidence. Let's use Science!
Suppose someone at the Singularity Institute thought up a cool new idea: it could be about rationality, Friendly AI, decision theory, making money, or any of the other topics we discuss here on LW. Explaining it takes about ten pages, and it's nontechnical enough that it can be explained to a general audience of non-mathematicians. Which of the following explanations would you be most likely to actually sit down and read through?
EDIT: To state the obvious, this poll will be biased in favor of blog postings, since it's on a blog. However, I still think it'll provide data that's much better than anecdotal guessing. I've emailed a few rationalist mailing lists to try and counteract this effect.