All of Anton Rodenhauser's Comments + Replies
Maybe some of Richard Ngo's fiction writing? I like "Succession" best: (1) Succession - by Richard Ngo - Narrative Ark
Or some of his non-fiction. E.g. (1) Techno-humanism is techno-optimism for the 21st century (mindthefuture.info)
Simce you asked for more resources: Scott Alexander: "Why NOT slow AI progress" https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/why-not-slow-ai-progress
I highly second the "longer meditation sessions" thing since I had a similar experience. I feel like many people are giving up on meditation too early, saying "it doesn't do much for me", without ever really having tried it. I spent one year meditating for 20 minutes each day. It probably did make me happier, but not in a dramatic way. Then I went on a 10-day silent meditation retreat and started meditating 1+ hours a day for a while and got dramatic benefits to the point that I feel like picking up meditation is by far the most impactful thing I've ever done to improve my well-being.
Well, but of course not everyone is in a position to meditate that much.
fightaging.org on "Towards the Use of Fecal Microbiota Transplantation to Rejuvenate the Gut Microbiome": https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2022/07/towards-the-use-of-fecal-microbiota-transplantation-to-rejuvenate-the-gut-microbiome/
I'm a (conditional) optimist. On an intuitive gut level, I can't wait for AGI and maybe even something like the singularity to happen!
I regurlarly think about this to me extremely inspiring fact that "It's totally possible, plausible, maybe even likely, that one special day in the next 10-60 years I will wake up and almost all of humanity's problems will have been solved with the help of AI".
When I sit in a busy park and watch the people around me, I think to myself: "On that special day... all the people I see here, all the people I know... if they are st...
I would say that FMTs are very safe to do at home. After all, you are just swallowing some pills or do an enema. The tricky part is donor screening for anything infectious. But it is easy to find out what to screen for and order the tests online or get a doctor to do them for you.
But yeah, doing these tests for the donor is absolutely necessary, and it can be dangerous if the donor isn't thoroughly screened!
>Is it helpful for other chronic diseases? If so, how much and is it cost-effective?
I totally agree that the science isn't settled yet at all! But please see the “Why aren’t scientists more excited…” section.
Also keep in mind that for many chronic diseases alternative effective treatments simply don’t exist yet, e.g. chronic fatigue syndrome, IBS, etc. Sure, the evidence on FMTs may not be conclusive. But it is at least suggestive. And that’s much better than nothing for many chronically ill. You don't need "definite proof" to make it worth a try, given that it is fairly easy, safe, and cheap (if you know the donor and he just gives his stool to you) to do FMTs yourself!
Could it be that "working at kurzgesagt" is an effective thing to do? One of the legitimate "communication paths"?
EAs working at Kurzgesagt could:
- steer them to create even more EA-aligned content
- gain valuable "communication knowledge", to be used to create EA content later/elsewhere. Kurzgesagt does such a great job promoting ideas like longtermism in an uncontroversial not weird way that gets people to obviously agree with it - something EA often struggles with within media. We need to learn from them! And we want all the great EA content from 80k a
It will be hard/impossible to find a design that suits everyone. One solution might be:
- offer multiple design versions (let others submit them)
- allow people to pre-commit to buying the designs of their choice
- if enough people for it to be worth it for you pre-commit to the same design, it will be printed and sold. Otherwise, nothing happens.
But yeah, much more effort!
"The universe is vast, dark, and cold, but we are not.
The laws of physics are indifferent to desperation, hope, or love. But we are not.
There is no destiny written for us in the stars, so we write our own.
The stars and the mountains do not care, but we do! There is light in this world and it is us!"
———--
from a secular solstice. I'd pre-commit to buying a t-shirt with any of those paragraphs with some cool cosmic futuristic design.
Scott Alexander wrote a nice article on what the Republican's program could/should be: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/a-modest-proposal-for-republicans?s=r
This is already one of FFF's Project Ideas. https://ftxfuturefund.org/projects/#:~:text=on%20this%20list.-,AI%20alignment%20prizes,-Artificial%20Intelligence Basically someone just needs to step forward and implement it!
I think the OP is advocating a prize for solving the whole problem, not specific subproblems, which is a novel and interesting idea. Kind of like the $1M Millennium Prize Problems (presumably we should offer far more).
If you offer a prize for the final thing instead of an intermediate one people may also take more efficient paths to the goal than the one we're looking at. I see no downside to doing it, I mean you don't lose any money unless someone actually presents a real solution.
While not directly EA, I think fiction isalso great to promote some ideas from the Progress Movement, namely humanism, agency, and the idea that "problems are hard, but solvable".
I also feel that the idea that "actually, humans are good, and humanity is worth protecting" needs some promotion. We are not just some greedy, aggressive, nature-destroying species that the earth would probably be better off without!
Why am I not discouraged by poor outcomes in FMT studies.
FMTs look very promising, but there is by no means a clear scientific consensus on their efficacy. It’s an active area of research with many studies currently under way.
And while many scientists are very excited about FMTs, many studies actually yield very mixed results - with poor or no results being common. Anecdotal evidence on FMTs is also often not very convincing - with many recipients reporting no benefits.
However, I'm personally not discouraged by this, and indeed still excited about FM... (read more)