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Shortly after I started this market, Manifold tried to move to real-money betting and made it impossible for markets to resolve N/A. This completely torpedoed my intended treatment of this market, and actually caused me to mostly drop out of Manifold. Apparently they restored N/A since then; but by now, I'm ending up too busy to try a lot of reading, this year, on account of other book-related absorptions of energy.

I'm sorry for not getting around to N/Aing this market before this, and for how this whole thing ended, and I've sent all traders a bonus of 50% of their total bets by way of apology.

Record of suggestions already tried, from the suggestions here, that would have resolved N/A on account of my having already tried them, rather than because the whole market flopped:

Unsong -- enjoyed this, though it called on endurance at times.
Blindsight -- enjoyed at the time, might not if I tried reading nowadays.
Jhereg -- one of my Dad's favorite books when I was young, I liked it too
Death note -- cotton candy but fun
Fleep -- worth its brief investment
Permutation City -- one of my all-time faves at the time
The Phoenix Guards -- yes, decent
Dungeon Crawler Carl -- tried the first few chapters of this, didn't get into it
Godel, Escher, Bach -- all-time fave
Blood Music -- excellent
A Practical Guide to Evil -- left off somewhere in the middle, didn't pick it up again
Super Supportive -- catch up on this occasionally, would have been a positive hit
A Fire Upon the Deep -- all-time fave
The Martian -- movie was ok, wouldn't try book
The Stainless Steel Rat -- fun
The Expanse -- saw first few episodes of TV, wouldn't be enthusiastic about trying book
Silent Partner, Unfinished Business -- didn't get past first couple of chapters
Creatures of Light and Darkness -- fun, Zelazny often is
Monstergirlcity: Ace Detective -- fun
Player of Games -- fave
Guards! Guards! -- fave
Vampire Flower Language -- tried it based on this rec, petered out after a few chapters
Midworld -- sure
Uprooted -- not my favorite Novik but worth the read
Kushiel's Dart -- good, the sequels were great
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- sucker for this book just like everyone else in my home culture's generation
The Two Year Emperor -- think I dropped this one midway
The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect -- finished reading it, a long time ago, but not a fave
Aristoi -- enjoyed
Cordyceps -- enjoyed
Metropolitan -- enjoyed
Illuminatus Trilogy -- skimmed it for the sex scenes as a little lad, but too much on drugs for me
A Song of Ice and Fire -- think I tried reading opening chapters and then dropped it, have of course read a lot of fanfiction
The Three-Body Problem -- read opening chapters, was not hooked
Luminosity -- hell of a gateway drug
Mistborn -- eh decent, probably wouldn't finish it if I tried to start reading it today

@EliezerYudkowsky I would like to say that my scheme worked perfectly. I'm the author of Vampire Flower Language, and it's relatively unknown apart from the modest response from posting it to /r/rational. I saw this market and while I am the furthest thing from a manifold power user, I realised that for the paltry sum of 460 mana I could get my story high up on the predictions and keep it there. I am the only "yes" holder (full disclosure: my husband bought 12 mana into it too).

I didn't actually expect you'd enjoy it - vampire yaoi romance is a hard sell for many - but I was hoping its position high up in a market by a known person in the rationalist community would get some eyeballs on it. Unsure if that worked, but I'm pleased it got you to give it a shot.

I believe this is one of the things that prediction markets are meant to be used for, though I'm not sure how you feel that your attention was bought for a sum of mana with a market value less than $5.

@EliezerYudkowsky As a thanks for the grace you have shown with how the market went, a suggestion based on what you liked might be to try Paul Preuss. His Human Error in particular is a similar subject matter but different take to Blood Music.

@Mad pretty cool use of manifold, well done! I was the biggest NO holder on Vampire flower language, I only tried it because it was on this market, so your scheme got at least four eyeballs on it. However I think you were also a bit lucky that the market devolved pretty rapidly. If it had been a more active market it might have been more expensive to keep it high (but still might be worth it).
Best of luck to you!

@Odoacre I mean I have 48k liquid and basically nothing else selfish I would want to do with it, so bring it on in that alternative universe 😂. But yeah, I didn't actually expect him to enjoy it - it's more a young adult / new adult thing for girls, which I think was heretofore lacking in the ratfic community.

Plus, if it had been a more popular market, I would have gotten more eyeballs from people checking it out, though maybe someone else would have noticed only one YES holder and drawn attention to it, resulting in more NO buyers.

In any case, I am glad to have demonstrated one of the features of predictions markets. One of the ways that I think ACX said they could be used would be basically this situation, only EY betting "no" on my novel before resolving NO, and thus getting the ~$5 as "payment" for reading it.

@EliezerYudkowsky I'd love to know what you think of @Mad's bet to have you read her book!

@EliezerYudkowsky resolve?

Suggestions (since adding options is likely to cost more than we would get back in bonuses):

• A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith

• The Mind of a Bee by Lars Chittka

• Schrödinger's Killer App by Johnathon Dowling

Unsong is better than hpmor, you'll definitely enjoy it!!

@TobiasWegener I think the overall "A Practical Guide to Sorcery" series is fantastic. This is the first book of the series.
It is dark, gritty, smart and has hard rules.
I loved HPMOR, Plancrash, Mother of Learning and in the search for more, I found this one.
Hope you will enjoy it. Love your work.

big recommend to Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. It's the OG virtual reality fiction, predecessor to Ready Player One and similar

I no longer seem to be able to resolve N/A, which seems unfortunate as I was about to go through these before Manifest. Admin?

@mods

@EliezerYudkowsky yeah, it's limited to mods and up now. if you list the N/A ones out we can N/A them

@EliezerYudkowsky Yeah N/A isn't something the admins let generic users do anymore. Name options in a comment (and probably ping mods) and moderator will resolve them N/A, sorry

@jacksonpolack @Bayesian Thanks boys! 🫡

He's definitely already read this one.

@EliTyre homeboy oughta resolve it n/a then

Isn't this referenced in the sequences? I assume he's already read it.

It’s pretty helpful to skip roughly the first 45 pages then go back when you’re halfway or more through, to flesh out context.

@SusanneinFrance I tried it on an audiobook and also found it starts slow, any chance you could translate "45 pages" to something like "first 3 chapters" for me? (I don't have pages in the audiobook)

These are the first chapters:

> Prologue. A Silence of Three Parts

Chapter 1. A Place for Demons

Chapter 2. A Beautiful Day

Chapter 3. Wood and Word

Chapter 4. Halfway to Newarre

Chapter 5. Notes

Chapter 6. The Price of Remembering

Chapter 7. Of Beginnings and the Names of Things

Chapter 8. Thieves, Heretics, and Whores

Chapter 9. Riding in the Wagon with Ben

Chapter 10. Alar and the Several Stones

Chapter 11. The Binding of Iron

Chapter 12. Puzzle Pieces Fitting

Chapter 13. Interlude–Flesh with Blood Beneath

Also, I'll try pushing on, didn't know it starts slowly, so thanks for that anyway

@YonatanCale I would begin with Chapter 8 Thieves, Heretics and Whores. This is where our hero himself starts telling his story “from the beginning”

I can imagine the audio book might be delightful

Enjoy!

You haven't read it???

(I dunno how much you would enjoy it now, but I'm extremely surprised someone like you didn't read it in your teens or twenties.)

@ArmandodiMatteo he has read multiple stuff that isn't na'd yet.

@ArmandodiMatteo Source

Of Hofstadter's GEB, Eliezer once wrote:

This is simply the best and most beautiful book ever written by the human species...

I'm not alone in this opinion, by the way. For one thing, Gödel, Escher, Bach won a Pulitzer Prize. Or just pick a random scientist and ask ver what vis favorite book is, and 1 out of 5 will say: "Gödel, Escher, Bach". No other book even comes close.

It is saddening to contemplate that every day, 150,000 humans die without reading what is indisputably one of the greatest achievements of our species. Don't let it happen to you.

Sure, if you're just an average person, you might not understand everything in this book - but when you're done reading, you won't be an average person any more.