Monday, July 13, 2020

Book from Blog

I've decided to see if I can make one or more books out of material from this blog. I don't have an exact calculation, but my rough estimate is that I have made more than a thousand posts, so probably upwards of half a million words. I am currently going through the blog, making a list of categories to sort posts into, with each category to end up as a chapter or section in a book. Obviously not all of the posts will be suitable to use but, looking through them, I think many will, so I should be able to get at least one book, possibly two or three, out of them.

Two question for readers, especially ones who have read the blog for a long time:

1. What categories do you think I should use?

2. Out of my list of categories below, which do you think most suitable for a book? The ones with a question mark are ones I am less sure of.

Climate + other environmental issues

Home Schooling (and education more generally)

Economics

            Law and econ

Gun control?

Cryptocurrencies and encryption?

Law and law enforcement

Medical?

Politics

Trump

Republicans less nutty than they are represented as

Technological

Technology

My wish list

Science, inference, information sources and the like

            Statistics

Eugenic and genetic issues. Contraception. Polygamy.

History

            Adam Smith

IP

Libertarianism and anarchy

Internet stuff and evaluating stuff

SCA stuff?

My writing? Novels?

My travels?

Philosophy?

Books

            Kipling?

Orwell

WoW+

How to lie with statistics while telling the truth?

The FLDS Case

Religion?

Controversies:

 Loaded Dice.

Robert Frank

Virtual Reality

Macro??

Hierarchy

Words

9 comments:

Ahmed Fares said...

When I think of David Friedman, two ideas come to mind:

"The Iowa Car Crop" - a beautiful way of thinking about trade (I don't know if it was mentioned in the blog).

"Peak Oil?" - How Harold Hotelling's analysis of resource production breaks down when you consider "insecure property rights", whether it's leaders in the Persian Gulf States, or politicians who want to stay in power. The link is below:

http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2006/03/peak-oil.html

Thomas L. Knapp said...

Anything you choose will presumably work, but education/homeschooling/unschooling would be the topic I'd personally find most interesting.

Max Lybbert said...

I second Thomas Knapp’s comment. I follow the blog because I find almost all of it interesting. But I especially enjoyed the unschooling posts when they were published several years ago.

Anna said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anna said...

What does category Words mean?

From this list, I broke these subcategories into approximate categories, each of which may be compiled into a book:
1. Medical, Science, Eugenic, Technology, statistics, Virtual Reality, and maybe Cryptocurrencies (but the last one can also migrate into the second category).
2. Economics, IP, Libertarianism, Philosophy, Hierarchy, Religion, History, Politics, The FLDS Case, Law, Gun control, and maybe Controversies and Macro.
3. Home Schooling and Internet stuff, Books, Travels. SCA stuff and WoW+ can be fit nicely into this category if you choose to.
Now, Climate + other environmental issues can probably be rightfully put into a separate book, but if not, this category would go into category #1.

Hanklin12473 said...

Climate change. I’ve seen a few of your posts and YouTube videos about this, and your argument is almost completely missing from media coverage. The talk you gave in England, I believe, would be a wonderful start. Also, the blog post on why the consensus doesn’t exist is wonderful.

Moreover, I’d love to see you interviewed on a few “intellectual dark web” outlets such as Dave Rubin and Sam Harris. You’d reach quite a few open minded people on that scene. I’ll try suggesting it and see how far I can get.

Anonymous said...

Another vote for Unschooling/Education from me.

David Friedman said...

@Anna:

Here is an example of a post on words.

http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2010/08/what-does-most-mean.html

Anonymous said...

Before answering your question: I recall from an old podcast you claimed to have given a talk somewhere on why you think money laundering should be legal. I've never been able to track it down. Could you post what you have on that?

Topics near to my heart: Cryptocurrencies, IP, climate, gun control.