When you're weighing existential risks (or other things which steer human civilization on a large scale) against each other, effects are always going to be denominated in a very large number of lives. And this is what OP said they were doing: "a major consideration here is the use of AI to mitigate other x-risks". So I don't think the headline numbers are very useful here (especially because we could make them far far higher by counting future lives).

I think that AI Safety is probably neglected in the public consciousness, simply because most people still don't understand what AI even "is". This lack of obviously precludes people from caring about AI safety, because they don't appreciate that AI is a qualitatively different technology to any technology hitherto created. And if they're not interfacing with the current LLMs (I suspect most older people aren't) then they can't appreciate the exponential progress in sophistication. By now, people have some visceral understanding of the realities of progressive climate change.  But AI is still an abstract concept, and an exponential technology in its infancy, so it's hard to viscerally grok the idea of AI-x-risk. Let's say that proportion of adults in a developed country that know of, or have used an LLM, is 20%. From that 20%, perhaps half of them (10% of population) have a dim premonition of the profundity of AI. But, anecdotally, no-one I know is really thinking of AI's trajectory, except perhaps a sense of vague foreboding.  I am fairly new to the EA and rationality communities, but I sense that members of EA/rationality are on average cerebral, and perhaps introverted or have an unassuming demeanor. Moreover, the mindset is one of epistemic humility. EA rarely attracts the extroverted, disagreeable, outspoken "activist" types that other movements attract--for example, Israel-Palestine causes or Extinction Rebellion. Due to this, I'm predicting that we have a scarcity of EAs with the comparative advantage of organising and attending protests, and making noise in public. However, I think that protests are necessary to raise public awareness about AI safety and galvanise an educated mass response. The key considerations are: what demands do we set, based on what evidence/reasoning? And in broadcasting AI-safety, how do we balance the trade-off between: * Trying to be as comprehensive and rational as possible in explaining AI, AI-x-risk and the need for safety r

My sense from a very quick skim of the literature is: 1. There are barely any studies or RCTs on non-dual mindfulness, and certainly not enough to make a conclusion about it having a larger-than-normal effect size[1][2] 2. The most highly-cited meta-analyses that do split out types of meditation either directly find no significant difference between kinds, or claim they don't have enough evidence for a difference in their discussions[1:1][2:1] 3. The effect size is no better or worse than other psychotherapies It might be possible to do some special pleading around non-dual mindfulness in particular, but frankly, everyone who has their own flavour of mindfulness does a lot of special pleading around it, so I'm default skeptical despite non-dual being my personal preference. My sense as an experienced non-dual meditator (~10 years, and having experienced 'ego death' before without psychedelics): 1. I am skeptical that at-will or permanent ego death is possible. By 'at-will', I mean with an ease similar to meditating, with effects lasting longer than an acid trip. 2. I am skeptical that this state would even be desirable; most people that have tried psychedelics aren't on a constant low dose (despite that having few downsides for people not prone to psychosis). 3. Even if it is possible and desirable, I am skeptical that there is a path to this kind of enlightenment for every person, and it might only be possible for a very small percentage of people even with the motivation and infinite free time to practice I think teaching people mindfulness would be good, but probably no better than teaching them any other kind of therapy. Maybe it's generally more acceptable because it's less stigmatised than self-learning CBT. But I'd be really curious to understand what the people who voted yes were thinking, and in particular what they think 'enlightenment' is. ---------------------------------------- 1. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028168 ↩︎ ↩︎ 2. https://doi.org