Hello everyone,
I’m thinking about giving an “Introduction to EA” talk on a sci-fi/fantasy convention as a part of community-building effort. It seems that the audience there could be receptive to EA ideas, given how fantasy and science fiction often incorporates morally and technologically different worlds, extinction scenarios, distant pasts/futures etc. I’d like to ask for ideas and suggestions for fantasy and sci-fi works (regardless of medium—games, books, movies etc.) that could be used to illustrate major points of EA, as well as cause areas, maybe some fictional characters could serve as role models and so on. I’d like to see which and how many works are there, and if it’s enough to build a talk around them while still keeping the message high-fidelity, as to not warp the EA ideas.
So far, useful resources I’ve found are:
- https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/b4YW4GJR2RasS4YEw/a-ranked-list-of-all-ea-relevant-documentaries-movies-and-tv
- https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wAbYKBzEJBJpHMrDh/book-rec-the-war-with-the-newts-as-ea-fiction
- https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nbrX6fQPHBdYXpg4B/nickmatt-s-shortform#wFtTQEHa3vydmaocm—
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DhTkDDaGLsmCxy5Qx/why-i-think-the-ea-community-should-write-more-fiction
In addition the to broader and more mature genre of “rationalist fiction” overall, definitely check out some of the specific EA-themed creative writing contests that have happened:
The short story contest that took place last year on this very Forum: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gySGqztQvaEScokwL/creative-writing-contest-the-winning-entries
The Future of Life Institute’s AI-themed sci-fi worldbuilding contest which just concluded: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HEszzR4Am7PxN3hBG/here-are-the-finalists-from-fli-s-usd100k-worldbuilding
r/rational put together a spreadsheet of a bunch of rationalist fiction. You should find much EA related material here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OEoxYzFeF0UpJmHY5pqHP_Yam-cw9kXDyXZbH6ANJiM/htmlview
Do you know why fan fiction appears to be the go-to medium for rationalists? This seems odd.
It’s probably largely for historical reasons: the first real piece of “rational fiction” was Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky, and many other authors followed in that general vein.
Also, it can be fun to take an existing work with a world that wasn’t very thoroughly examined and “rationalize” it by explaining plot holes and letting characters exploit the rules.
It’s far easier to see the irrationalities and possible exploits of other people’s work than your own, rationalizing a world possibly takes different skills than creating an interesting one, its easier to write & build an audience, and you don’t have to spend so much time explaining the setting/magic system/other important info.
I wrote this novel as a way to explore how a Xianxia society would combat the existential risk of a threat that could not be defeated in combat. I also wrote an after action review of how it was to write an entire novel explicitly from an EA lens (see my post). The MC is an EA-Rationalist, and… it did a lot better than anything else I have ever written...
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/49962/sect-leader-cold-hard-truth-isekai-cultivation
Alexanderwales appears on a few of those lists and posts but he fairly recently did a much more directly EA-focused take on Superman which I highly recommend:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/30351690
I wrote a couple short posts along these lines recently, if it helps:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fvqRCuLm4GkdwDgFd/art-recommendation-childlike-faith-in-childhood-s-end
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/y8MT2WfdD6oK8MwBz/art-recommendation-dr-stone