If you understand German and these books are still on your reading list, here’s a convenient way to get familiar with their contents.
On Buchdialoge.de, I publish 15-minute podcasts on non-fiction books. Instead of a dry monologue, we use a casual dialogue format to summarize the contents, accompanied by a short article presenting the key points.
Our episodes with an EA / LessWrong background include:
- Benjamin Todd – 80,000 Hours
- Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares – If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies
- Jobst Landgrebe & Barry Smith – Why Machines Will Never Rule the World (providing a counter-perspective to Yudkowsky's thesis)
- Toby Ord – The Precipice
- Julia Galef – The Scout Mindset
We also cover "EA-adjacent" books from authors who have written on similar topics or attended EAGs:
- Rutger Bregman – Humankind (Im Grunde gut)
- Sam Harris – Waking Up
- Michael Shellenberger – Apocalypse Never
- Dambisa Moyo – Dead Aid
- Steven Pinker – The Better Angels of Our Nature (Gewalt)
How it's made: The podcasts are generated using Google's NotebookLM with a customized prompt designed to steelman the author’s position and identify the core logical cruxes. Every episode is then proof-listened and edited by a human to ensure accuracy and quality.
What for: I think the podcast can be a helpful resource for a German-speaking audience to learn about EA-related issues. Especially the contrast between AI risk arguments (Yudkowsky vs. Landgrebe) helps to get a quick overview of the different positions in the field.
When exploring our archive, you'll find dozens of additional non-fiction titles, from current bestsellers to established classics. Broadly speaking, our mission is to raise the sanity waterline by presenting an author's ideas in their most honest and charitable form, providing you with the clarity needed to reach your own independent conclusions. We aim to make this level of insight a low-hanging fruit by condensing the core logic of each work into a digestible 15-minute dialogue.
Some episodes are part of our paid archive, but I’m happy to grant full access to readers from this forum. If you’re interested, just sign up for a free subscription on the site and then let me know here in the comments.
On your website you say that your goal with this project is to enable people to have their own informed opinion about a book so that they don't just repeat headlines. This is obviously a good thing, but I was skimming through the list of books and I must admit that for some my first reaction was "ok, you'll need to duraniumman that author's position to make me update my uninformed opinion on that book!" Of course, it is important to have a strong foundation on which to base a strong disagreement with a view. I am just not sure if I can force myself through it.
What is your view on this: If I rate the chance that my more informed view will be different to my less informed view very low and the chance that the experience will make me angry and sad very high, is it then worth doing?
I want to be able to engage with opinions that I disagree with but for some opinions I find this very challenging. I am often wondering about how hard I should push myself here. Any thoughts on that?
Hi, thanks for your elaborate thoughts! My first reaction/question: Did you start listening to the summaries of some of those books? If so, how was it?
I think it’s definitely worth trying, because you might encounter some of those opinions "in the wild" – perhaps while in conversation with someone else.
On my website, you have full control over how much and how long you immerse yourself in this, which might be harder when you're in a convo with someone.
Not yet. To give the podcast the best chance, I'll start with a book summary that I think I'll enjoy. Once I've finished it, I'll decide how to proceed.
I am not sure what your point is regarding encountering those opinions in the wild. After listening to the book summary, it doesn't get easier to control how long I immerse myself in this in a conversation. But I don't think that is what you mean.
I mean: When you listen to a summary with new and uncomfortable ideas, you can simply click stop. Or jump forward.
When you talk with someone and they present to you new and uncomfortable ideas, you to communicate to them that you don't want to listen more.
Ok, so your point is that ideas are more uncomfortable when they are new and when I already heard them, I'll find them less uncomfortable?
I did not think they are not uncomfortable because they are new. I just tried to make sense of your
Since you wrote "force", I assumed you'd be uncomfortable.
I guess it's most effective now when you just start listening to a likely enjoyable episode, to check if you like the format at all.
Sorry, I meant to write "ideas are more uncomfortable when they are new". Not because.
Yes, that is what I meant.