Creative Writing Contest: The Winning Entries

If the eventual human-read versions of this creative stuff and/or the MIRI conversations are high quality in my view (see below), I'm willing to personally guarantee (say) at least $500 for a mic (if the person doesn't have one already and it costs that much) and $20/hr for up to 5 times as many hours as the cumulative total run time across all the episodes produced, with the guarantee being capped at $1500 total. 

Fine print:

• It's also plausible I'd personally provide a larger amount, and I'd guess that a funder like EAIF would provide a grant for this and would do so up to a larger amount (that'd be my preferred starting point, with me as a backup, unless the total amount requested is <$1k in which case I might just provide it right away myself). This is just what I'm willing to personally guarantee right now, without thinking about it further.
  • Note that EAIF has recently made larger grants for projects that are in some sense smaller, e.g. ~$5k for one relatively short and simple video.
• I haven't checked or thought about how much mics cost; what's a reasonable ratio of hours spent preparing, recording, editing, and publishing to hours of content produced; or what's a reasonable hourly rate. That's among the reasons it's plausible I'd provide a larger amount of compensation, and especially why it's plausible a funder like EAIF would.
• It's probably best if you contact me before you make these things, and maybe do one quick reading with whatever mic you already have so I can confirm that it seems your final version will be high-quality-as-deemed-by-me.
  • If you haven't done that, it's possible I'll later deem the thing you make insufficiently high quality, which is bad for its impact and also means I probably wouldn't pay up, and that'd also be uncomfortable and awkward.
  • In contrast, if you have done that, I might also provide part of the money in advance or something, if necessary.
• I'd definitely count as "high-quality" readings as high-quality as Rob Miles' readings of the Alignment Newsletter and the human-read versions of HPMOR and Rationality: A to Z. I'd probably also count somewhat lower-quality readings as high-quality. I wouldn't count something that's only as high-fidelity and engaging as the Nonlinear Library's machine reading as high-quality, since then there's not much point having humans read it.
• This only applies as a guarantee if the people involved don't already get funding elsewhere and if it doesn't seem more logical for them to get funding elsewhere.
  • Though it's also plausible I'd top up someone's compensation even if they get some funding elsewhere.
• Although I'm a guest manager on EAIF, I'm writing this in my personal capacity.
• This doesn't mean I'm confident that a given reader of this comment should spend their time on this.
  • There are many other things I'd also personally guarantee funding for if I thought that would increase the chance that they'd happen and if the topic came up.
  • (E.g., I'd probably prefer if Fin doesn't do this himself unless he'd find it engaging enough to not trade off against "regular work hours", since I think the opportunity cost of Fin's time is quite high)

I'd quite like to help read some of these. I strongly agree that a table read of the MIRI conversations would be good: given their conversational nature I think a lot of people would find them easier to approach as a recording than as a text log.

Also, my impression is that the Fable of the Dragon Tyrant got a lot out of having a nice video version. If the recordings go well it might be worth considering commissioning an accompanying video for the top prize winner at least.