Eliezer Yudkowsky works on artificial general intelligence or "friendly" AGI at the Singularity Institute. He has publicly stated that he thinks the particular problem he's working on is the most important in the world. In one post he noted his belief that, "[T]he ultimate test of a planet's existence probably comes down to Friendly AI, and Friendly AI may come down to nine people in a basement doing math. I keep my hopes up, and think of this as a "failing Earth" rather than a "failed Earth"."
On the other hand seemingly objective sources have indicated their disbelief that this problem is so important. In their recent diavlog, Scott Aaronson told Eliezer that he didn't think that computers would be able to match human intelligence for more than 1000 years. That doesn't bode well for the near-term prospects of an AI-driven singularity. And in their lively OB debate last December, Robin Hanson told Eliezer that he didn't think it was very likely AI's would "go foom" because that wouldn't fit what we know about previous growth rates. Again, not a very strong recommendation. Nonetheless, elsewhere Hanson told Eliezer that he did think that somebody might as well work on the friendly AI problem, and Eliezer is as good a person to do so as any (can't find the link, unfortunately). Aaranson has also said elsewhere that he sympathizes with Eliezer and that he is acting quite rationally in obsessing over the singularity, given his beliefs.
So the consensus view (also see here) on friendly AI research is that while it's not the most attention-worthy existential risk, it is worth of some modicum of attention, and Eliezer is a perfect candidate. My question is... Shouldn't somebody working on friendly AI personally consider it to be the most important question out there, consensus or no consensus? Even if this involves a little bit of self-delusion, wouldn't it be a worth it for stimulating that researcher's productivity?
More generally, is it generally a good thing if for any given researcher considers their topic to be the most important in the world? Even if it does involve some drawn-out logic? I would say, in most circumstances, yes. The only downside is that these researchers might be less likely to switch into something more important, or might be so good at convincing others that he/she draws away research funding from more objectively important sources. But I'd bet that those downsides are usually outweighed by the potential benefits of being monomaniacal. So I say, by all means, go try to save the world!
Monday, October 12, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
How Fast Do You Update Beliefs?
Sometimes when someone is being indecisive she will change her mind many times in a short period of time. When you ask, "What do you want to do?", she'll say, "Option A, no... option B, no, wait... yes, option C." How would you respond in such a scenario?
If you feel the need to ask, "well, which is it?", then you can't update fast enough. The correct answer is to simply go with option C. That is the option most recently proposed, and barring further clarification, it represents the current consensus. There is no need to act confused.
If you feel the need to ask, "well, which is it?", then you can't update fast enough. The correct answer is to simply go with option C. That is the option most recently proposed, and barring further clarification, it represents the current consensus. There is no need to act confused.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
The "What's On the Test" Game
Kevin is right when he says that the point of this game is to get the teacher to concede which topics will not be covered on the exam. But then he says that he despises the students who play it. Why?
Certainly the line of questioning is socially condemned. But it's beneficial to everyone in the review session when one student plays this game, because the other students also won't have to study that material. Thus "what's on the test?" is ultimately an altruistic question to ask. You help all of the students in the class equally but you yourself are looked down upon for it.
This generalizes to other situations quite well. For example, if you get angry at someone or call them out for doing something annoying your own status will drop for having a temper or being antagonistic. But if the annoying behavior stops then you've helped out everyone else that that person hangs out with, too. So getting angry for a good reason is also an altruistic act. This is why many parents (especially fathers?) are able to rationalize it to themselves when they lash out at their children.
I never play the "what's on the test" game in classroom-wide review sessions. But then again I am mostly selfish when it comes to classroom success. As is anyone else who studies hard! Remind me how you doing well on your professional exam is going to help anyone else?
Certainly the line of questioning is socially condemned. But it's beneficial to everyone in the review session when one student plays this game, because the other students also won't have to study that material. Thus "what's on the test?" is ultimately an altruistic question to ask. You help all of the students in the class equally but you yourself are looked down upon for it.
This generalizes to other situations quite well. For example, if you get angry at someone or call them out for doing something annoying your own status will drop for having a temper or being antagonistic. But if the annoying behavior stops then you've helped out everyone else that that person hangs out with, too. So getting angry for a good reason is also an altruistic act. This is why many parents (especially fathers?) are able to rationalize it to themselves when they lash out at their children.
I never play the "what's on the test" game in classroom-wide review sessions. But then again I am mostly selfish when it comes to classroom success. As is anyone else who studies hard! Remind me how you doing well on your professional exam is going to help anyone else?
Friday, October 9, 2009
Conscious Thinking Doesn't Help As Much
Although it is a fairly controversial field, lots of research has shown that individuals engaging in goal-directed but unconsciousness decision making make better decisions that individuals who deliberate consciously. Welcome to counterintuitive city! One major explanation of this paradox is that unconcious thought weighs information efficiently, while conscious thought is subject to biases that muck everything up. In a good demonstration (see here for the study), knowledgable basketball fans who were forced to list reasons for why they thought a particular team would win were less succesful (correct 65.2% of the time) than fans who were told to go on their gut instinct (correct 70.4% of the time).
Dijksterhuis et al recently looked at the predictions of students at the University of Amsterdam on upcoming soccer matches. They partitioned the students into either experts (n = 172) or nonexperts (n = 180), and told them to predict outcomes after 20 seconds, 140 seconds with deliberate thinking allowed, or 140 seconds with distraction for 120 of the seconds. Nonexperts actually did better when forced to pick immediately. But among the experts, immediate choosers predicted matches correctly ~47 +/- 3% of the time, conscious deliberators predicted matches correctly ~49 + / - 2% of the time, and unconscious (i.e., distracted) deliberators predicted matches correctly ~56 + / - 3% of the time.
So, conscious thinking is OK, but unconscious thinking is probably better. Trust your feelings. Let go of your conscious self and act on instinct. Listen to Obi Wan.
Dijksterhuis et al recently looked at the predictions of students at the University of Amsterdam on upcoming soccer matches. They partitioned the students into either experts (n = 172) or nonexperts (n = 180), and told them to predict outcomes after 20 seconds, 140 seconds with deliberate thinking allowed, or 140 seconds with distraction for 120 of the seconds. Nonexperts actually did better when forced to pick immediately. But among the experts, immediate choosers predicted matches correctly ~47 +/- 3% of the time, conscious deliberators predicted matches correctly ~49 + / - 2% of the time, and unconscious (i.e., distracted) deliberators predicted matches correctly ~56 + / - 3% of the time.
So, conscious thinking is OK, but unconscious thinking is probably better. Trust your feelings. Let go of your conscious self and act on instinct. Listen to Obi Wan.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
No Such Comparison
It's natural to implicitly compare one's expectations of a given situation to the actual situation. But hard as it may be to differentiate between the two, comparing one's a priori expectations to the current situation is not a good proxy for comparing the current situation to other possible situations.
This fallacy is committed all of the time. It happens in movie ratings, college social life (in my experience people's expectations of college are way inflated), travel, etc. Basically, it occurs in any situation in which people only have access to a limited number of data points and in which expectations are liable to deviate wildly from reality. Without access to other data points, it's hard for an opinionated person to avoid making this comparison. That is why one must be vigilant about it, and ultimately admit the possibility of bias.
When evaluating something, I try to be as much of a blank slate as possible. That's why, once I know that I plan on watching a movie, I don't watch the trailers, and I don't like hearing about it beyond a simple like / not like which, candidly, I make every effort to ignore. That is why watching the top 250 is so money--I don't have to even think about what movies to watch. The other day I was watching Rosemary's Baby (#221) and for the first 15 minutes I thought it was a romantic comedy. Nope!
This fallacy is committed all of the time. It happens in movie ratings, college social life (in my experience people's expectations of college are way inflated), travel, etc. Basically, it occurs in any situation in which people only have access to a limited number of data points and in which expectations are liable to deviate wildly from reality. Without access to other data points, it's hard for an opinionated person to avoid making this comparison. That is why one must be vigilant about it, and ultimately admit the possibility of bias.
When evaluating something, I try to be as much of a blank slate as possible. That's why, once I know that I plan on watching a movie, I don't watch the trailers, and I don't like hearing about it beyond a simple like / not like which, candidly, I make every effort to ignore. That is why watching the top 250 is so money--I don't have to even think about what movies to watch. The other day I was watching Rosemary's Baby (#221) and for the first 15 minutes I thought it was a romantic comedy. Nope!
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
The Wisdom of the Singularity Summit Crowd
When asked, which of the following scenarios are you most worried about?, this is how the crowd responded:
A. Singularity happens and robots kill us all, the Skynet scenario = 5 percent
B. Biotech terrorism using something more virulent than smallpox and Ebola combined = 30 percent
C. Nanotech grey goo escapes and eats up all organic matter = 5 percent
D. Israel and Iran engage thermonuclear war that goes global = 25 percent
E. A one-world totalitarian state arises = 10 percent
F. Runaway global warming = 5 percent
G. The singularity takes too long to happen = 30 percent
I suspect if this question were asked anywhere else that B, D, and F would get tons more votes. A might get some laughs and a few joke votes. C would get confused stares.
Anyone who voted E is likely looking for a cop-out answer to seem "normal" without seeming too plebian by choosing F. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense that anyone voted for it. Why would a totalitarian state necessarily even be that bad? Something like the regime in A Brave New World would have to qualify. And that would be nowhere near as bad as A, B, C, D, or F.
Update: My friend Tyson, who was also at the event, suggests that the numbers were closer to the following breakdown:
A. Singularity happens and robots kill us all, the Skynet scenario = 10 percent
B. Biotech terrorism using something more virulent than smallpox and Ebola combined = 40 percent
C. Nanotech grey goo escapes and eats up all organic matter = 5 percent
D. Israel and Iran engage thermonuclear war that goes global = 15 percent
E. A one-world totalitarian state arises = 5 percent
F. Runaway global warming = 10 percent
G. The singularity takes too long to happen = 15 percent
Apparently Thiel himself admitted that the biotech threat was the "clear winner."
A. Singularity happens and robots kill us all, the Skynet scenario = 5 percent
B. Biotech terrorism using something more virulent than smallpox and Ebola combined = 30 percent
C. Nanotech grey goo escapes and eats up all organic matter = 5 percent
D. Israel and Iran engage thermonuclear war that goes global = 25 percent
E. A one-world totalitarian state arises = 10 percent
F. Runaway global warming = 5 percent
G. The singularity takes too long to happen = 30 percent
I suspect if this question were asked anywhere else that B, D, and F would get tons more votes. A might get some laughs and a few joke votes. C would get confused stares.
Anyone who voted E is likely looking for a cop-out answer to seem "normal" without seeming too plebian by choosing F. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense that anyone voted for it. Why would a totalitarian state necessarily even be that bad? Something like the regime in A Brave New World would have to qualify. And that would be nowhere near as bad as A, B, C, D, or F.
Update: My friend Tyson, who was also at the event, suggests that the numbers were closer to the following breakdown:
A. Singularity happens and robots kill us all, the Skynet scenario = 10 percent
B. Biotech terrorism using something more virulent than smallpox and Ebola combined = 40 percent
C. Nanotech grey goo escapes and eats up all organic matter = 5 percent
D. Israel and Iran engage thermonuclear war that goes global = 15 percent
E. A one-world totalitarian state arises = 5 percent
F. Runaway global warming = 10 percent
G. The singularity takes too long to happen = 15 percent
Apparently Thiel himself admitted that the biotech threat was the "clear winner."
Monday, October 5, 2009
In Favor of the Monomath
Edward Carr's article in More Intelligent Life discusses how there are no longer any polymaths like those of yesteryear. It's interesting and makes some good points. Scientific fields can be bogged down by specialist terminology and it is harder to criticize someone's work when they have devoted their whole career to it.
But the discussion of how it's too hard for one scientist to make a big advance individually these days strikes me as misguided. First, it's not entirely true. Check out Karl Deisseroth's work, a guy who doesn't even have his own Wikipedia page but has already contributed to neuro research in a big way by working on optogenetics. Second, the tone strikes me as whining. Look, if science were easy, that wouldn't be a Nash equilibrium. Big research teams are necessary to publish within a reasonable time scale for a reason. Plus, Carr seems to double down a little bit recklessly on the myth of the great idea. Because as Robin Hanson once said, "most of the innovations that matter are the tiny changes we constantly make to the millions of procedures and methods we use."
Ultimately, the fact that individual scientists are less well known today than were individual scientists 150 years ago is a reflection is a sign that the system is getting more efficient, not less. This change should be celebrated, not derided.
But the discussion of how it's too hard for one scientist to make a big advance individually these days strikes me as misguided. First, it's not entirely true. Check out Karl Deisseroth's work, a guy who doesn't even have his own Wikipedia page but has already contributed to neuro research in a big way by working on optogenetics. Second, the tone strikes me as whining. Look, if science were easy, that wouldn't be a Nash equilibrium. Big research teams are necessary to publish within a reasonable time scale for a reason. Plus, Carr seems to double down a little bit recklessly on the myth of the great idea. Because as Robin Hanson once said, "most of the innovations that matter are the tiny changes we constantly make to the millions of procedures and methods we use."
Ultimately, the fact that individual scientists are less well known today than were individual scientists 150 years ago is a reflection is a sign that the system is getting more efficient, not less. This change should be celebrated, not derided.
Friday, October 2, 2009
The Age of Anxiety
In her interesting NYT article about anxiety, Robin Henig reports that 40 million adults are affected by some form of anxiety disorder. In 2008 there were 228,000 adults in the US, and according to the NIMH this checks out to 18.1% of US adults having an anxiety disorder in any given year. With such a high prevalence, it's easy to argue that there should be a re-frame in our cultural conception of anxiety. Like Tyler Cowen argues in Create Your Own Economy about autism spectrum disorders, anxiety is a cognitive style that can be highly adaptive. As (Psyc Prof) Jerome Kagan notes, inner-directed people are the ones who make society hum. I would bet that bloggers are disproportionately anxious people, given that journal writing has stress-reducing benefits. This 2005 article claims that half of bloggers consider their writing a form of therapy, but I can't find a link to the original study.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Surprising Top Wikipedia Articles
Here's a list of the top 100 most visited Wikipedia pages from the first 8 months of 2009. These were the ones that surprised me:
- Favicon.ico (#4) = This is the little icon to the left of the url in your web browser. Maybe a lot of people wanted to learn how to put one into their own website?
- Deaths in 2009 (#8) = This shows that Wikipedia is often the go to for current events. The other day I was watching Monday Night Football and checked out the page for the Wildcat formation, and the stats for the game I was watching were already updated. Weird.
- India (#18) and Australia (#33) = These were the first two countries. What makes them stand out--up and coming regions perhaps?
- Scrubs (TV series) (#20) = This is the first TV series! It's surprising because the show isn't necessarily plot heavy nor is it necessarily even that good. Shows you how random things can be big on the internet for no good reason.
- Naruto (#32) = Surprising because I had never heard of it. But the idea is actually pretty sweet -- "the story of Naruto Uzumaki, an adolescent ninja who constantly searches for recognition and aspires to become a Hokage, the ninja in his village that is acknowledged as the leader and the strongest of all."
- Henry VIII of England (#67) = I guess he has a pretty cool story with all of those wives, but I don't see what makes him cooler than say, Attila the Hun or Otto von Bismark.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Evolutionary Psyc and the Internet
Using the internet further your relationship via dating or even social network "stalking" is big and getting bigger. According to Socialnomics, 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met through social media websites, and as of 2008 social media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the web.
Although the medium has changed, there are more similarities between our interactions online and in the real world than you might assume. For example, male college students edit their communications more (i.e., have more insertions, deletions, and backspaces) when they think they are typing a message online to females of the same age (49.50 +/- 24.72) rather than other males (24.00 +/- 16.15). Likewise females edit their communications more when talking to males of the same age (70.00 +/- 42.12) rather than other females (16.80 +/- 31.5, see Walter 2007, doi:10.1016/j.chb.2006.05.002 for the study). Plus, online daters value physical attractiveness in a partner just as much as offline ones.
Besides dating, evolutionary psyc might help to explain the online disinhibition effect. In the tribes of 150 close-knit people that humans have spent most of their evolutionary history, guarding your reputation was huge because everyone knew one another and gossip was commonplace. Piazza and Bering (2009, see doi:10.1016/j.chb.2009.07.002) argue that without human eyes, voice, and faces, the urge to behave altruistically and conceal secrets that developed due to our evolutionary history will be lost.
Robin Hanson thinks that what makes our era unique is that talking to other people who can talk is as easy as it will ever be. This implies that if humans will ever be able to destroy the in group / out group mentality, it will be now. Let the great social experiment begin.
Although the medium has changed, there are more similarities between our interactions online and in the real world than you might assume. For example, male college students edit their communications more (i.e., have more insertions, deletions, and backspaces) when they think they are typing a message online to females of the same age (49.50 +/- 24.72) rather than other males (24.00 +/- 16.15). Likewise females edit their communications more when talking to males of the same age (70.00 +/- 42.12) rather than other females (16.80 +/- 31.5, see Walter 2007, doi:10.1016/j.chb.2006.05.002 for the study). Plus, online daters value physical attractiveness in a partner just as much as offline ones.
Besides dating, evolutionary psyc might help to explain the online disinhibition effect. In the tribes of 150 close-knit people that humans have spent most of their evolutionary history, guarding your reputation was huge because everyone knew one another and gossip was commonplace. Piazza and Bering (2009, see doi:10.1016/j.chb.2009.07.002) argue that without human eyes, voice, and faces, the urge to behave altruistically and conceal secrets that developed due to our evolutionary history will be lost.
Robin Hanson thinks that what makes our era unique is that talking to other people who can talk is as easy as it will ever be. This implies that if humans will ever be able to destroy the in group / out group mentality, it will be now. Let the great social experiment begin.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Chemo Not Therapy
My friend Jon has a blog up called Chemo 
Therapy about his fight against cancer. You can find it here. It's pretty powerful stuff. Check it out if you have a chance.
Therapy about his fight against cancer. You can find it here. It's pretty powerful stuff. Check it out if you have a chance.
Friday, September 18, 2009
What Humans Need to Learn
John Langford wants to create a machine learning algorithm to solve problems at least as complicated as anything that a human can do. Today he explained the six characteristics of such a system that would be essential:
- Access to large data sets. This is clearly necessary because when you deprive a human (or a cat!) of sensory inputs he won't develop properly.
- Prediction making and immediate feedback on the efficacy of these predictions. Also known as "online" learning.
- An exchange between the learner and the verifier, also known as interactive learning. For humans, the verifier is reality and it is always trusted.
- A system that can be broken down into components and can be integrated back into the whole. One might imagine a learning system based on the evolutionary approach, but one basic research goal is a faster and more efficient design than randomness.
- A large input context that includes tons of information bits and allows for multiple ways to reach the same conclusion.
- Non-linear input representations can and often must be used.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Refreshing Plausibility
One popular snowclone is to say that "If I had an X for every time that I've heard Y, I'd have enough X's to be/do Z." Usually these are ridiculous exaggerations once broken down. For example, "If I had a penny for every time you said you'd clean the dishes later, I'd be a billionaire." Totally untrue and impossible.
In one of my classes today someone said, "If I had a dollar for every time I heard X, I could buy us all beer tonight. But I don't, so you will all have to buy your own." This managed to be actually funny. On closer inspection I think it's because what he described is a legitimately plausible scenario, especially coming from a snowclone in which we are habituated to hyperbole. There were about twenty people in the class. It is reasonable for him to have heard this particular argument thirty or so times, and that probably adds up to enough cash to get us all tipsy on tall cans of PBR.
This plausability humor runs directly contra to the explanation of humor as exaggeration, which claims 400k+ Google hits. The website My Life is Average also is contra to the exaggeration hypothesis, humorously parodying the excesses of FML. It seems that the balance of what is funny at a given moment really does wax and wane like a sine wave.
In one of my classes today someone said, "If I had a dollar for every time I heard X, I could buy us all beer tonight. But I don't, so you will all have to buy your own." This managed to be actually funny. On closer inspection I think it's because what he described is a legitimately plausible scenario, especially coming from a snowclone in which we are habituated to hyperbole. There were about twenty people in the class. It is reasonable for him to have heard this particular argument thirty or so times, and that probably adds up to enough cash to get us all tipsy on tall cans of PBR.
This plausability humor runs directly contra to the explanation of humor as exaggeration, which claims 400k+ Google hits. The website My Life is Average also is contra to the exaggeration hypothesis, humorously parodying the excesses of FML. It seems that the balance of what is funny at a given moment really does wax and wane like a sine wave.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Searching for the Imdb of Books
Here are the contenders:
Amazon Reviews: Upside: Tons of traffic. Rating the raters in terms of helpfulness and having a top 1000 reviewer list both give incentives for people to take their ratings seriously. Plus, most serious internet users already have Amazon accounts with demographic info, so they don't have to pressure people into joining. Thus all rating requires is one click. Downside: Amazon's team has all the tools, but they just don't seem to want it. They're like the Carmelo Anthony of online book rating. They don't really take their rater's reviews seriously, they refuse to expand to a much more informative 10 star system and they don't give out actual numbers. According to their system, The Shawshank Redemption VHS Tape is the #6 best book of all time. Listen, I'm willing to accept Amazon has much bigger fish to fry. They're trying to take over the world, after all, and they don't have the energy to create a silly top books of all time list. But what that means is that although Amazon may be the best right now, the true Holy Land will have to be found elsewhere.
The Internet Book List: Upside: Pretty solid system in place with cool ratings breakdown on a book by book basis, and a large emphasis on the actual ratings, which is basically the only point of the site. Downside: Scale! The most rated book on the site is Tolkein's The Fellowship of the Ring, with 541 votes. Compare that to the 5,100 who rated HPGOF on Amazon, or the 440,000 who have voted on Shawshank on imdb. Some of this is inherent to the medium, as it takes more time and effort to read a book than it does to watch a movie. But there are more book readers out there than 500, and in order to get them to the site there's going to have to be some other kind of attraction aside from the ability to rate. Of course, the internet wouldn't be in a Nash equilibrium if building online communities were easy. I recognize that achieving scale is tough.
ISBNdb.com: Upside: Tons of web crawlers on various library web sites have created a massive database that categorizes books by subject and offers a link to the lowest possible price. It's a very cool tool, and tries to explicitly model itself after imdb. Downside: No actual rating system. Included in the list anyways because that isn't the hardest problem in the world to fix.
Metacritic Books: Upside: Standard metacritic methodology applied to books yields a solid if unspectacular rating system. The opinions of critics may be slightly better in some ways but never enough to outweigh the benefits of pure bias-defeating scale. Attractive interface, easy to browse web-site, and a best of all-time list, in theory. Downside: Stopped aggregating ratings for books in 2007, presumably because it wasn't profitable. This raises some troublesome questions. Most importantly, why do people seem to care less about the ratings of books than of movies? One has to put such a big time investment into reading a book that from a time-optimization perspective research into its quality would be of huge value. Anyway, metacritic's book rating section is done. Put a fork in 'em.
Complete Review: Upside: Breaks down the top books into tiers by categories. Editorial board is willing to take a stand and submit their independent opinion. Downside: No user input and the lack of a quantifiable system means that it will never scale. At best, it's another data point in a more encompassing effort.
Reviews of Books: Upside: Aggregates reviews by various important book reviewers and gives details regarding nominations for major prizes, like the Booker or the National Book Award. Downside: Nothing quantifiable. No overall list of the best books.
Internet Book Database: Upside: Rank authors, books, and series's, according to both number of votes and average rating. Has some good ideas for how a website ultimately could be done, despite technical issues. Downside: For some reason they've bought into the stupid Amazon model of 5 star rankings. Just like Amazon they don't give the actual numerical average rating. But they go further and don't even show the total number of raters. This makes me uneasy about their methodology--does the site even weigh the top rated authors by the number of votes in a Bayesian fashion? Moreover the lack of transparency is troubling--it's hard to tell where exactly their data comes from. The fact that Lara Leigh is apparently the #2 author of all time yet doesn't even have her own Wikipedia page lends legitimacy to these worries.
LibraryThing: Upside: Lots to like here. Tons of statistics on books and authors, including the most highly rated, the most reviewed, and the most number of times a book appears in a user's library. They actually show the numerical rating that a book gets and the pages for individual books are useful. Since they allow half stars and allow us to see the actual numerical rating, I can't even really complain about their use of a five star system. Downside: A little bit too hipster in that they refuse to actually number their lists and seem to be going for the minimalist look. But hey, if it gets raters, that's all that matters, right?
All of these sites may one day blossom into something useful. If it's legal, there would be value in some site aggregating all of these ratings plus a few others to become a meta-rater. But for now, I'm still searching...
Amazon Reviews: Upside: Tons of traffic. Rating the raters in terms of helpfulness and having a top 1000 reviewer list both give incentives for people to take their ratings seriously. Plus, most serious internet users already have Amazon accounts with demographic info, so they don't have to pressure people into joining. Thus all rating requires is one click. Downside: Amazon's team has all the tools, but they just don't seem to want it. They're like the Carmelo Anthony of online book rating. They don't really take their rater's reviews seriously, they refuse to expand to a much more informative 10 star system and they don't give out actual numbers. According to their system, The Shawshank Redemption VHS Tape is the #6 best book of all time. Listen, I'm willing to accept Amazon has much bigger fish to fry. They're trying to take over the world, after all, and they don't have the energy to create a silly top books of all time list. But what that means is that although Amazon may be the best right now, the true Holy Land will have to be found elsewhere.
The Internet Book List: Upside: Pretty solid system in place with cool ratings breakdown on a book by book basis, and a large emphasis on the actual ratings, which is basically the only point of the site. Downside: Scale! The most rated book on the site is Tolkein's The Fellowship of the Ring, with 541 votes. Compare that to the 5,100 who rated HPGOF on Amazon, or the 440,000 who have voted on Shawshank on imdb. Some of this is inherent to the medium, as it takes more time and effort to read a book than it does to watch a movie. But there are more book readers out there than 500, and in order to get them to the site there's going to have to be some other kind of attraction aside from the ability to rate. Of course, the internet wouldn't be in a Nash equilibrium if building online communities were easy. I recognize that achieving scale is tough.
ISBNdb.com: Upside: Tons of web crawlers on various library web sites have created a massive database that categorizes books by subject and offers a link to the lowest possible price. It's a very cool tool, and tries to explicitly model itself after imdb. Downside: No actual rating system. Included in the list anyways because that isn't the hardest problem in the world to fix.
Metacritic Books: Upside: Standard metacritic methodology applied to books yields a solid if unspectacular rating system. The opinions of critics may be slightly better in some ways but never enough to outweigh the benefits of pure bias-defeating scale. Attractive interface, easy to browse web-site, and a best of all-time list, in theory. Downside: Stopped aggregating ratings for books in 2007, presumably because it wasn't profitable. This raises some troublesome questions. Most importantly, why do people seem to care less about the ratings of books than of movies? One has to put such a big time investment into reading a book that from a time-optimization perspective research into its quality would be of huge value. Anyway, metacritic's book rating section is done. Put a fork in 'em.
Complete Review: Upside: Breaks down the top books into tiers by categories. Editorial board is willing to take a stand and submit their independent opinion. Downside: No user input and the lack of a quantifiable system means that it will never scale. At best, it's another data point in a more encompassing effort.
Reviews of Books: Upside: Aggregates reviews by various important book reviewers and gives details regarding nominations for major prizes, like the Booker or the National Book Award. Downside: Nothing quantifiable. No overall list of the best books.
Internet Book Database: Upside: Rank authors, books, and series's, according to both number of votes and average rating. Has some good ideas for how a website ultimately could be done, despite technical issues. Downside: For some reason they've bought into the stupid Amazon model of 5 star rankings. Just like Amazon they don't give the actual numerical average rating. But they go further and don't even show the total number of raters. This makes me uneasy about their methodology--does the site even weigh the top rated authors by the number of votes in a Bayesian fashion? Moreover the lack of transparency is troubling--it's hard to tell where exactly their data comes from. The fact that Lara Leigh is apparently the #2 author of all time yet doesn't even have her own Wikipedia page lends legitimacy to these worries.
LibraryThing: Upside: Lots to like here. Tons of statistics on books and authors, including the most highly rated, the most reviewed, and the most number of times a book appears in a user's library. They actually show the numerical rating that a book gets and the pages for individual books are useful. Since they allow half stars and allow us to see the actual numerical rating, I can't even really complain about their use of a five star system. Downside: A little bit too hipster in that they refuse to actually number their lists and seem to be going for the minimalist look. But hey, if it gets raters, that's all that matters, right?
All of these sites may one day blossom into something useful. If it's legal, there would be value in some site aggregating all of these ratings plus a few others to become a meta-rater. But for now, I'm still searching...
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