What a cop-out! Politics is a mind-killer if you're incapable of observing your mind.

Ten months ago I met Australia's Assistant Defence Minister about AI Safety because I sent him one email asking for a meeting. I wrote about that here. In total I sent 21 emails to Politicians and had 4 meetings. AFAICT there is still no organisation with significant funding that does this as their primary activity. AI Safety advocacy is IMO still extremely low hanging fruit. My best theory is EAs don't want to do it / fund it because EAs are drawn to spreadsheets and google docs (it isn't their comparative advantage). Hammers like nails etc.

Hi Ben! You might be interested to know I literally had a meeting with the Assistant Defence Minister in Australia about 10 months ago off the back of one email. I wrote about it here. AI Safety advocacy is IMO still low extremely hanging fruit. My best theory is EAs don't want to do it because EAs are drawn to spreadsheets etc (it isn't their comparative advantage).

I missed a meeting

Hey mate! I use the light for about 4 hours a day. Which means I'll get 6.84 years from it.

In case I wasn't clear, I was suggesting that tech will have progressed far enough in ~ 6.84 years that worrying about a light in a ceiling fan doesn't make sense.

I went to buy a ceiling fan recently. The salesperson said I might not want a particular model because it had a light with only 10,000 hours in it, and they've decommissioned replacements. I told him I wasn't worried 😭

Flaming hot take: I wonder if some EAs suffer from Scope Oversensitivity - essentially the inverse of the identifiable victim effect. Take the animal welfare vs global health debate: are we sometimes biased by the sheer magnitude of animal suffering numbers, rather than other relevant factors? Just as the identifiable victim effect leads people to overweight individual stories, maybe we're overweighting astronomical numbers.

EAs pride themselves on scope sensitivity to combat emotional biases, but taken to an extreme, could this create its own bias? Are we sometimes too seduced by bigger numbers = bigger problem? The meta-principle might be that any framework, even one designed to correct cognitive biases, needs wisdom and balance to avoid becoming its own kind of distortion.

I'm pretty confident that Marketing is in the top 1-3 skill bases for aspiring Community / Movement Builders.

When I say Marketing, I mean it in the broad sense it used to mean. In recent years "Marketing" = "Advertising", but I use the classic Four P's of Marketing to describe it.

The best places to get such a skill base is at FMCG / mass marketing organisations such as the below. Second best would be consulting firms (McKinsey & Company):

• Procter & Gamble (P&G)
• Unilever
• Coca-Cola
• Amazon
  
  

1. Product
- What you're selling (goods or services)
- Features and benefits
- Quality, design, packaging
- Brand name and reputation
- Customer service and support

2. Price
- Retail/wholesale pricing
- Discounts and promotions
- Payment terms
- Pricing strategy (premium, economy, etc.)
- Price comparison with competitors

3. Place (Distribution)
- Sales channels
- Physical/online locations
- Market coverage
- Inventory management
- Transportation and logistics
- Accessibility to customers

4. Promotion
- Advertising
- Public relations
- Sales promotions
- Direct marketing
- Digital marketing
- Personal selling

Flaming hot take: if you think Digital Sentience should be taken seriously but not Human Awakening / Enlightenment, then EA culture might have its hooks in a bit deep.

TLDR you can experience Awakening now, or, you can wait 3 years and an LLM will do it for you.