All of kastrel's Comments + Replies

I haven't used it in anger yet, but I think Semantic Scholar only searches databases that give you free access to the PDFs - so if you want to know you'll actually be able to click through and read the article, that's an advantage over Google Scholar, which will bring citations which are paywalled or unavailable online as results.

I believe also only searches (fairly) respectable databases like ArXiv and PubMed Central, so you are less likely to get poor-quality results.

Thanks! I can't recommend Sci-Hub or I might have my librarianship license revoked! But that archive looks really interesting.

Thanks! I really didn't want it to be boring and dry, and I'm not on here a lot so I though having a face to put to the blog would help.

How thorough you need to be absolutely depends on what you're working on - obviously if you're writing a literature review for publication you need to do a bit more due diligence than if you're just looking for the next thing to read. I would recommend Semantic Scholar as a more finely-tuned alternative to Google Scholar while still having a lot of free content.

0
Chris Leong
6y
"I would recommend Semantic Scholar as a more finely-tuned alternative to Google Scholar while still having a lot of free content" - any specific ways in which it works better?

Thanks for flagging this up - I think I've fixed that now.

Hi, I'm planning a post on finding relevant literature (I'm a librarian), as well as using reference management software to save time. Does anyone have any great suggestions for places they go for academic writing on EA-related topics, or for datasets? I'm thinking things beyond Google Scholar/Arxiv/JSTOR. All input valued.

I'd just like to say that this is the first month I've made an effort to read the EA Newsletter, and it has been a hugely rewarding experience. Although I'm not sure I'll get through everything on there before the next one, it's really highlighted loads of great writing and speaking that I would not otherwise have sought out.

I don't know about dedicated people being better at recruitment. I have found my friends to be more receptive to me as a 'softcore EA' because we can relate to each others' lifestyles easily and they are more likely to make small changes than large ones. If I donated a really high proportion of my income (say 50%), I think I would not talk about that with them as they would find it instinctively off-putting to consider such a large change. I actually don't talk about the pledge at all with them unless they already seem keen for fear of sounding too 'hardco... (read more)

1
Linch
8y
Congratulations on having friends who're receptive to you! And thank you so much for sharing, we definitely need more data points as the movement grows. :) I wrote on Facebook before that I think while being normal and relatable is a good hook to get people interested in EA, I don't think it will actually make it more likely to make your friends interested than if you're very dedicated. In particular, I think there is a confusion between "emulatable" and "marketable" efforts: https://www.facebook.com/groups/effective.altruists/permalink/933455813377443/?comment_id=934292356627122&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R1%22%7D Put another way, if Person A, who is truly obsessed with making the world a better place is just as good (or, it sometimes implied, worse) at persuading other people to make the world a better place than Person B, who is only moderately interested in doing so, then this should come across as a huge surprise. It should not be tacitly assumed. Rather, Person A is doing something Very Wrong, and figuring out ways to correct this mistake should become a huge priority in EA.