30 second action you could take

I felt uncomfortable about just taking 30 seconds to choose Will, and did end up spending more time reading some of the other bios, but in the end this seems like a rather silly popularity contest, especially given that it basically doesn't even describe how you should vote (e.g., "who do you think is the most beneficial 'thinker'?"). Of course, the fact that it is silly and ought to not be given attention by the public does not mean the public will ignore it, so yeah, I think Will is probably a good choice, and I don't really have any substantive qualms with voting for him without having read many other profiles.

It was a tough decision, but it turns out I do care more about helping sentient beings in the long term than I do about Wordle and Derry Girls

Voted, it was surprisingly painless. Fingers crossed for Will, although he was buried in the middle of the pack of names due to unfortunate lack of alphabetical prominence. New cause area: renaming our thought leaders Aaron Aaronson. 

Misleading title, took only a single digit number of seconds :)

Results are out: Will came in a respectable 6th out of 50, beating Elon Musk (8th). Philosopher Kathleen Stock won overall. Here is the one-sentence summary Will got:

Looking to the future, philosopher William MacAskill argues in an upcoming work that we have a moral obligation to look to the future if we are to save ourselves from environmental disaster. (A review is upcoming.)

Done, took less than 20 seconds - thanks for posting :) 

I discovered Stefan Mancuso through the list of thinkers, who among other things claims that plants have rights.

This seemed like a good idea on its face, so I voted pretty quickly, but I’m beginning to worry a little bit more in retrospect. Will is unlikely to win because he’s on balance the most popular of these figures, but due to this post it is possible that he could win because of vote splitting and plurality dynamics rather than on the merits. In particular I worry that with a lot of these online polls, plurality dynamics sometimes lead to a winner who:

1. Pretty obviously did not win in a way that was actually reflective of their relative belovedness, and

2. Because of this, their win winds up leading many people to have more negative feelings towards the subject or at least its fanbase

Off the top of my head I believe something like this happened both with the video game Undertale and the prog rock band Dream Theater. Both are still quite popular but in their relevant spaces face a sort of vague scorn from what people see as an illegitimate listicle victory. Organizing votes in a public space like this may seem like something innocent everyone can do so it’s fair game, but I think you’d be surprised how much it can distort the results, and how much no one benefits when this distortion happens. Now I want to emphasize that I think this is only one consideration, and the vote may be worth it for other reasons anyway, but I’m more concerned now on reflection.

Y'all should vote for Will, or else David Chalmers or Demis Hassabis (DeepMind CEO). I like Joy Buolamwini too. Just don't vote for Kathleen Stock because she's a TERF.