BookTalk.org

So many books, so little time...and money. Life is all about prioritizing. We have to figure out how to optimally divide our limited time and money among unlimited books.

In order to make the most informed reading decisions... we need information... lots of it. One source of information is the bestsellers' list. But just because something is very popular doesn't necessarily mean that it will be very valuable.

A while back I ran across the idea of using donations to rank things. What if donations to this website were used to rank books? Helping to rank the books would be a perk of donating.

Personally I've read plenty of books. Out of all the books that I've read, by far the most valuable has been the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. Obviously I can tell you that this is my very favorite book in the world. I can tell you that I really really really really LOVE this book. But me simply telling you this really isn't the same thing as making a $10 dollar donation to this website for this book.

The list of books ranked by donations would be a living breathing thing. It would be constantly evolving and improving. The list would improve our preferences, which would in turn improve the list. It would be a virtuous cycle.

One natural concern is that bigger donors would have far more influence on this list than smaller donors. This is true, but if you think that the book priorities of bigger donors might be wrong, then the first step to improving them is to actually see them.

In a sense it's kinda like an exam. The teacher grades the exams and adjusts her lessons accordingly. The assumption being that she has all the right answers. But in reality, nobody has all the right answers. We all have different pieces of the puzzle. This is why it's so great for everybody to put their heads together. From my perspective, the most efficient way for us to put all our heads together is to use donations to collectively prioritize our favorite books.

Does this make sense? What do you think?

Donations to whom? How would the money be used?

Chris OConnor wrote:Donations to whom? How would the money be used?

Donations to you! You would use the money however you wanted. Despite being interested in this idea for quite a while I only just recently learned of some relevant terms for this... donation voting, voting with donations, donate-to-vote. It's perhaps most commonly associated with people using donations to decide who will kiss a pig, or get a pie in the face, or get dunked into a tank of water. Sometimes zoos will use it to decide what to name an animal.

However, whenever somebody makes a donation, each dollar they donate is essentially a vote. This means that donation voting is used to rank/sort/order/prioritize all non-profits. The Red Cross, for example, receives many donation votes, which allows it to use many of society's limited resources. The Epiphyte Society, on the other hand, uses far fewer resources because it receives far fewer donation votes.

Just like non-profits, books aren't equally important/useful/necessary/beneficial/helpful. Books aren't equally deserving of our attention. Ideally we want to allocate our attention to the very best books. The challenge is that there are so many books. Therefore, ranking books should be a group endeavor. We would use our donations (to this website) in order to help allocate each other's attention to the very best books.