After the publication of the first edition of the Effective Altruism Handbook in April 2015, Will MacAskill's first book Doing Good Better (DGB) was published in July 2015. For a few years, DGB was the go-to introductory book for EA, though the EA Handbook had also originally been intended to fulfill that purpose. DGB was merely a comprehensive and broadly representative introduction to EA that took optimizing the message for a wider audience into account than the EA Handbook. Of course, as EA is a movement predicated on change to become more effective, and also as a relatively young and still growing movement, EA dramatically changed over the course of a few years.
So, in 2018, the Centre for Effective Altruism introduced the EA Handbook 2.0, meant to serve the role that both the first edition of the EA Handbook and DGB, but updated to better represent the EA movement. However, this provoked controversy about the proportionate representation the EA Handbook gave to different causes; in particular, over how much more space was dedicated to AI alignment, existential risk, and long-termism in EA compared to the community's other priorities. So, many effective altruists since then have still preferred to use DGB as an introductory handbook to EA. However, there is one problem with continually recommending DGB in its largely unedited form from 2015 that the EA Handbook 2.0 remains correct in addressing: it is out of date.
As EA Forum user bdixon recently pointed out in his article assessing if climate change deserves more attention within EA, the prioritization of climate change in DGB appears to underrate the degree of warming climate change may bring about in the next 100 years, and some of the potential negative consequences of climate change. As the EA movement's priorities and methods change over time, DGB remains stuck presenting EA as it was in 2015. So, something like the EA Handbook 2.0 should exist to replace DGB, but last year conversation stultified on how such content should be presented, or how often such introductory modules or handbooks to EA should be updated. Consider this post an attempt to reboot that conversation.
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?