Roman Hauksson
Actionable, specific, engaging, and not too drawn out. I think this is a must-read for anyone into personal knowledge management, but Tiago, like most self-help authors, exaggerates how much his system will transform the reader's life. I‘ll be implementing his suggestions over the coming weeks and will bump my rating up to five stars if it delivers on the promise.
Fascinating and greatly important book. Gave me a much clearer idea on the arguments behind longtermism and was enjoyable to read otherwise. Although, I wish the footnotes were differentiated between “more information” and “citations”, since I had to do a lot of flipping back and forth, and I only really cared about the “more information” footnotes.
This was a broad and concise overview of S-risks (risks of astronomical amounts of suffering) that gave me a better idea of the nature of these risks and what we can do to prevent them.
A couple example takeaways:
- While the author listed specific risks we should pay attention to (e.g. simulated minds that can suffer, larger-scale factory farms), this field of study is in its infancy, and we should actively keep on the lookout.
- Dark Triad traits were a recurring theme. We don't want powerful AI systems to exhibit these traits, and they could explain how some dictators rise to power.
While I appreciate the concision, I frequently found myself disappointed when the author didn't go into more detail; they deferred to the bibliography too often. For example, I would have liked to hear more about the philosophical arguments behind suffering-focused ethics, towards the beginning of the book. One of the reasons I'm enjoying The Precipice so much is because Toby Ord isn't afraid to add appendices and notes about anything from utilitarianism to the Cold War. Avoiding the Worst, however, left me unsatiated. I'll have to read some more articles from The Center for Reducing Suffering and reach out to the author to ask some questions :)
Clearly and deftly written. Helped me gain a lot of clarity about my dev tooling on a small scale. I'll definitely have to come back to this book when I start working on larger-scale projects.
This book is filled with many interesting tricks, with clear and easy-to-understand instructions and excellent photography.
