Below is a very selective list of recommended readings on some topics of interest to me. Rather than trying to be comprehensive, I list a maximum of three sources per topic, prioritizing those with high value per page, and I hope to keep the list up to date as better and more up-to-date sources are published.
Effective altruism in general
- MacAskill, Effective Altruism [short intro] (2019, 10pp)
- MacAskill, Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference (2015, 272pp)
Existential risk in general
- Ord, The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity (2020, 480pp)
Risks from extreme-stakes AI systems
- Karnofsky, The Most Important Century (2021, 207pp)
- Cotra, Without specific countermeasures, the easiest path to transformative AI likely leads to AI takeover (2022, 60pp)
Prediction
- Tetlock & Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (2016, 352pp)
- Muehlhauser, Superforecasting in a nutshell (2021, 2pp)
Utilitarianism
- Karnofsky, Other-centered ethics and Harsanyi’s Aggregation Theorem (2022)
Animal consciousness and welfare
One of my favorite topics, but unfortunately I haven’t found anything I like as much per word as the sources highlighted above, including my own piece.
Human progress
One of my favorite topics, but unfortunately I haven’t found anything I like as much per word as the sources highlighted above, including my own piece and Enlightenment Now (perhaps the best so far, but with significant weaknesses).
Philosophical naturalism
One of my favorite topics, but unfortunately I haven’t found anything I like as much per word as the sources highlighted above.