# How to Find Sources in an Unreliable World

I spent a long time stalling on this post because I was framing the problem as “how to choose a book (or paper. Whatever)?”. The point of my project is to be able to get to correct models even from bad starting places, and part of the reason for that goal is that assessing a work often requires the same skills/knowledge you were hoping to get from said work. You can’t identify a good book in a field until you’ve read several. But improving your starting place does save time, so I should talk about how to choose a starting place.

One difficulty is that this process is heavily adversarial. A lot of people want you to believe a particular thing, and a larger set don’t care what you believe as long as you find your truth via their amazon affiliate link (full disclosure: I use amazon affiliate links on this blog). The latter group fills me with anger and sadness; at least the people trying to convert you believe in something (maybe even the thing they’re trying to convince you of). The link farmers are just polluting the commons.

With those difficulties in mind, here are some heuristics for finding good starting places.

*   Search “best book TOPIC” on google
    *   Most of what you find will be useless listicles. If you want to save time, ignore everything on a dedicated recommendation site that isn’t five books.
    *   If you want to evaluate a list, look for a list author with deep models on both the problem they are trying to address, and why each book in particular helps educate on that problem.  Examples:
        *   Fivebooks’ [Best Books on Learning from the Great Depression](https://fivebooks.com/best-books/learning-from-the-great-depression/)
        *   Fivebooks’ [Best Books on Evolution](https://fivebooks.com/best-books/evolution-jerry-coyne/)
    *   A bad list will typically have a topic rather than a question they are trying to answer, and will talk about why books they recommend are generically good, rather than how they address a particular issue. Quoting consumer reviews is an extremely bad sign and I’ve never seen it done without being content farming.
        *   Jerry Jenkin’s [The 12 Best Books on Writing I’ve Ever Read](https://jerryjenkins.com/best-books-on-writing/)
        *   Culture Trip’s [7 Must-Read Books Based on India’s History](https://theculturetrip.com/asia/india/articles/7-must-read-books-based-on-indias-history/)
*   Search for your topic on Google Scholar
    *   Look at highly cited papers. Even if they’re wrong, they’re probably important for understanding what else you read.
    *   Look at what they cite or are cited by
    *   Especially keep an eye out for review articles
*   Search for web forums on your topic (easy mode: just check reddit). Sometimes these will have intro guides with recommendations, sometimes they will have where-to-start posts, and sometimes you can ask them directly for recommendations. Examples:
    *   r/AskHistorians’ [Best books on the rise and fall of the Roman empire for a layperson?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gjpw53/best_books_on_the_rise_and_fall_of_the_roman/)
    *   Quora’s [What is the best book to read up on the 1929 Great Depression?](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-book-to-read-up-on-the-1929-Great-Depression)
*   Search Amazon for books on your topic. Check related books as well.
*   Ask your followers on social media. Better, announce what you are going to read and wait for people to tell you why you are wrong (appreciate it, Ian). Admittedly there’s a lot of prep work that goes into having friends/a following that makes this work, but it has a lot of other benefits so if it sounds fun to you I do recommend it. Example:
    *   Dan Luu [pointed me](https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1272705953167638528) to [Chicago undergraduate mathematics bibliography](https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicmath.htm) when I stated that I’d never seen a list with >5 recommendations that was any good.
*   Ask an expert. If you already know an expert, great. If you don’t, this won’t necessarily save you any time, because you have to search for and assess the quality of the expert.
*   Follow interesting people on social media and squirrel away their recommendations as they make them, whether they’re relevant to your current projects or not.