You make a strong case that trying to convince people to work on existential risks for just their own sakes doesn’t make much sense. But promoting a cause area isn’t just about getting people to work on them but about getting the public and governments and institutions to take them seriously.
For instance, Will MacAskill talks about ideas like scanning the wastewater for new pathogens and using UVC to sterilize airborne pathogens. But he does this only after trying to sell the reader/listener on caring about the potential trillions of future people. I believe this is a very suboptimal approach: most people will support governments and institutions pursuing these, not for the benefits of future people, but because they’re afraid of pathogens and pandemics themselves.
And even when it comes to people who want to work on existential risks, people have a more natural drive to try to save humanity that doesn’t require them to buy the philosophical ideas of longtermism first. That is the drive we should leverage to get more people working on these cause areas. It seems to be working well for the fight against climate change after all.
You make a strong case that trying to convince people to work on existential risks for just their own sakes doesn’t make much sense. But promoting a cause area isn’t just about getting people to work on them but about getting the public and governments and institutions to take them seriously.
For instance, Will MacAskill talks about ideas like scanning the wastewater for new pathogens and using UVC to sterilize airborne pathogens. But he does this only after trying to sell the reader/listener on caring about the potential trillions of future people. I believe this is a very suboptimal approach: most people will support governments and institutions pursuing these, not for the benefits of future people, but because they’re afraid of pathogens and pandemics themselves.
And even when it comes to people who want to work on existential risks, people have a more natural drive to try to save humanity that doesn’t require them to buy the philosophical ideas of longtermism first. That is the drive we should leverage to get more people working on these cause areas. It seems to be working well for the fight against climate change after all.