I am currently engaging more with the content produced by Daniel Schmachtenberger and the Consilience Project and slightly wondering why the EA community is not really engaging with this kind of work focused on the metacrisis, which is a term that alludes to the overlapping and interconnected nature of the multiple global crises that our nascent planetary culture faces. The core proposition is that we cannot get to a resilient civilization if we do not understand and address the underlying drivers that lead to global crises emerging in the first place. This work is overtly focused on addressing existential risk and Daniel Schmachtenberger has become quite a popular figure in the youtube and podcast sphere (e.g., see him speak at Norrsken). Thus, I am sure people should have come across this work. Still, I find basically no or only marginally related discussion of this work in this forum (see results of some searches below), which surprises me.
What is your best explanation of why this is the case? Are the arguments so flawed that it is not worth engaging with this content? Do we expect "them" to come to "us" before we engage with the content openly? Does the content not resonate well enough with the "techno utopian approach" that some say is the EA mainstream way of thinking and, thus, other perspectives are simply neglected? Or am I simply the first to notice, be confused, and care enough about this to start investigate this?
Bonus Question: Do you think that we should engage more with the ongoing work around the metacrisis?
Related content in the EA forum
- Systemic Cascading Risks: Relevance in Longtermism & Value Lock-In
- Interrelatedness of x-risks and systemic fragilities
- Defining Meta Existential Risk
- An entire category of risks is undervalued by EA
- Corporate Global Catastrophic Risks (C-GCRs)
- Effective Altruism Risks Perpetuating a Harmful Worldview
1️⃣ Timing
You've asked this question 29th Jan.
This video dropped 31th Jan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv_xBK_XZjw
I joined the Metacrisis working group in March... It takes a while for meme / term / awareness to spread.
Today is 16th Sep and I see massive uptick in awareness.
2️⃣ Metrics
EA and OpenPhilanthropy and GiveWell seem to be operating using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability-adjusted_life_year
A lot of metacrisis-related activities do not have clearly defined metrics.
Example of a project I'm personally involved: https://tellthetruth.media/ - I want media to tell the truth. Information, not entertainment. But I genuinely do not know how to measure it.
Same with: https://planetarycouncil.org
I think that I've figured out a recipe, "great reset but on our terms", an agreeable plan how to change the world, absolutely no controversy in any of these points. It starts on top: "education, sensemaking, unifying narrative and media telling the truth". Again, no clearly defined metrics.
If I may - honest, authentic, genuine opinion - UNIFYING NARRATIVE is absolutely essential, that's why EDUCATION and SENSEMAKING. You can see these as "trifecta", one cannot exist without another, education without sensemaking is propaganda. Unifying narrative because we need to solve "Moloch" and coordination failure.