EA Still Needs an Updated and Representative Introductory Guidebook

Strongly upvoted. It's not clear to me introducing people to EA through books is the best way to go. I think if people first find EA by other means, and it appeals to them, giving books to people who initially find EA appealing could be a better way to get them to stick around. I think having free ebooks like this is something great to have to introduce to people who first become cognizant of EA. That it's a free ebook that doesn't have to try to strike some perfect balance between different causes makes it easier for people who just want to learn about one thing at a time. I wish more dedicated EA organizations did something like this.

The only other EA-aligned organization I'm aware who does something similar is MIRI. A lot of the books they release are way too long for most people, or aren't as directly related to AI alignment. Smarter Than Us by Stuart Armstrong is freely available online as an ebook through MIRI, and fits the bill though.

Thanks for the feedback. That sound reasonable. I wrote the OP because this was a resolvable issue that lots of people disputed over EA that appeared to be left unfinished. There are other introductory guidebooks for effective altruism for different causes, etc. So that there isn't a general guidebook right now that satisfies different relevant parties in EA doesn't seem like a huge problem. Michael Chen pointed out multiple major problems with one article in the current EA Handbook 2.0. They're significant mistakes that the article needs changed for it to hold up. I figure for the EA Handbook to deliver its message with integrity, it has to do that for all the articles in the EA Handbook. Since most of the articles were initially written as blog posts, I expect there are other holes in each which with hindsight we could point out. It's just that the articles in the EA Handbook 2.0 may not have been as professionally written as published books or scholarly articles by effective altruists, which is a quality we should ostensibly aspire to if an introductory book to EA is about EA putting its best foot forward to people new to EA.

Siebe Rozendal suggested an updated version of Doing Good Better. I thought this would be too much work, but it seems like it might be less work to update DGB than it would be to update the EA Handbook, since that poses multiple difficulties. I thought that would require Will doing most to all of the work to update DGB himself, but The Life You Can Save (the organization) has worked with Singer to update the book of the same name. Jon Behar, who works for The Life You Can Save, explains it here. It's a new edition 8 years later, so there must have been a lot to change. So, the CEA could do something similar where Will works with them to update DGB. CEA could consult with TLYCS (the organization) or work with them in some capacity to replicate the process they've used with Singer to update TLYCS (the book).

I honestly think it might be more tractable and more effective to update DGB than the EA Handbook 2.0. If that's the case, given that DGB is written more as an intro to EA as well, and it's more popular, I imagine some EAs would be willing to donate time and/or money to see an updated version of DGB happen.

Is that something you think Will and/or the CEA wold consider?

At first I thought just updating Doing Good Better would be too hard. After reading Michael Chen's comment on what needs to be corrected in the current articles in the EA Handbook, on top of everything else that would need to be updated about it, it seems like it would be more work than updating DGB. It seems like DGB has probably been subjected to more stringent and professional editing since it had to go through external, commercial publication, and so updating an already solid work that covers the core facets of EA is probably easier than creating a new handbook from scratch. It also sounds like based on Jon Behar's comment that The Life You Can Save organization helped quite a lot in updating Singer's original TLYCS book. I hadn't thought of an idea a whole organization could give some time to updating an EA book, as opposed to a single assistant or editor. So the CEA or another organization could help will with that, which would make the job of updating DGB a lot easier.

One question to ask is what the goal of such a book is. If it's to spread the basic ideas as far and wide as possible, a popular book like Will's or Singer's books seems like a good start. I'm not sure how those books have panned out for all the goals they were intended to serve, since I don't know who has measured them. I think there have been some attempts to measure the impact of DGB in various ways, but I haven't kept track of them.

I was thinking an updated edition of Doing Good Better might work. Unfortunately, with how busy Will is, it seems unrealistic to expect he'd be able to update date it soon. I was hoping someone else would come up with a suggestion with how a better EA Handbook could be created.

I was more thinking a new guidebook to EA that is more satisfying to more people in the EA community would be better, since it seems like a lot of people were dissatisfied with the EA Handbook 2.0 release from last year.

Well, after reading the article on climate change, I think that's something that should be updated in the book. It also didn't mention AI alignment much, so it could be more, but it doesn't have to be a lot more.

Sorry, here is the link. I will also update the OP.

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BwDAN9pGbmCYZGbgf/does-climate-change-deserve-more-attention-within-ea