In all honesty, I haven’t put too much thought into a research agenda so forgive me if this response isn’t very thought provoking haha. This post was a sort of spur of the moment idea that I just had to get down on paper (as signified by my many typos), but in a sort of knee-jerk response to your comment on a rough research agenda for TI, I guess the first step would be spending resources (be it time or money) convincing people (particularly EAs at first) that TI should be taken seriously, especially considering WM’s SPC framework.
Honestly, conceding to the existence of the uncertainty gap is the first major obstacle that everybody faces and it needs to be addressed. I think separating EA for Christian’s out from EA itself was didactic felo de se because it ruined potential meaningful exposure to opposing viewpoints by presuming incompatibility or at least irreconcilable rationale bases, thus making it more difficult for ideas like TI to gain traction as priorities; so I’d address this first. This could be done by maybe creating a compilation of works meant to create uncertainty in either side (a page of a website for atheists and a page of a website for theists)… although this comes dangerously close to faith-bashing so I’m not entirely sure how to do this.
Secondly, I think prioritizing quantum physics research (specifically exploring quantum consciousness—QC—theory) would be a savvy move. It has multilateral applications. A breakthrough would not only likely bring us closer to concluding TI but would also be likely to further the human species (getting us into space travel, for example) and at the very least would improve quality of life. As far as I’m aware, encouragement towards research in these fields is nonexistent in not just EA, but in the world in general. Exploring things like the observer effect, collapse of wave functions as a result of observation, etc. are all very real research options with solid scientific foundations and yet are hardly talked about (certainly never talked about in EA). Encouraging donations to orgs similar to the Accelerating Research on Consciousness initiative (although I know this one is a bit big haha) could be a good move, promoting QC research within EA as a viable impactful career option would be another good move, etc.
A quick google search shows there is virtually no work being done on quantum consciousness, and the work being done on consciousness alone is certainly neglected compared to other higher priority cause areas like Nuclear Threats or AI research. so this fits pretty solidly in the ITN framework as well.
Nice, I don’t really have object level thoughts as I don’t know anything about QC. Yes I think there is an interesting general tension between having smaller groups with more shared assumption to facilitate easy collaboration and dialogue, versus larger groups where more assumptions are questioned and everything is slower and more laborious but perhaps more rigorous. I’m unsure what was best in that specific case.
In all honesty, I haven’t put too much thought into a research agenda so forgive me if this response isn’t very thought provoking haha. This post was a sort of spur of the moment idea that I just had to get down on paper (as signified by my many typos), but in a sort of knee-jerk response to your comment on a rough research agenda for TI, I guess the first step would be spending resources (be it time or money) convincing people (particularly EAs at first) that TI should be taken seriously, especially considering WM’s SPC framework.
Honestly, conceding to the existence of the uncertainty gap is the first major obstacle that everybody faces and it needs to be addressed. I think separating EA for Christian’s out from EA itself was didactic felo de se because it ruined potential meaningful exposure to opposing viewpoints by presuming incompatibility or at least irreconcilable rationale bases, thus making it more difficult for ideas like TI to gain traction as priorities; so I’d address this first. This could be done by maybe creating a compilation of works meant to create uncertainty in either side (a page of a website for atheists and a page of a website for theists)… although this comes dangerously close to faith-bashing so I’m not entirely sure how to do this.
Secondly, I think prioritizing quantum physics research (specifically exploring quantum consciousness—QC—theory) would be a savvy move. It has multilateral applications. A breakthrough would not only likely bring us closer to concluding TI but would also be likely to further the human species (getting us into space travel, for example) and at the very least would improve quality of life. As far as I’m aware, encouragement towards research in these fields is nonexistent in not just EA, but in the world in general. Exploring things like the observer effect, collapse of wave functions as a result of observation, etc. are all very real research options with solid scientific foundations and yet are hardly talked about (certainly never talked about in EA). Encouraging donations to orgs similar to the Accelerating Research on Consciousness initiative (although I know this one is a bit big haha) could be a good move, promoting QC research within EA as a viable impactful career option would be another good move, etc.
A quick google search shows there is virtually no work being done on quantum consciousness, and the work being done on consciousness alone is certainly neglected compared to other higher priority cause areas like Nuclear Threats or AI research. so this fits pretty solidly in the ITN framework as well.
Thoughts?
Nice, I don’t really have object level thoughts as I don’t know anything about QC. Yes I think there is an interesting general tension between having smaller groups with more shared assumption to facilitate easy collaboration and dialogue, versus larger groups where more assumptions are questioned and everything is slower and more laborious but perhaps more rigorous. I’m unsure what was best in that specific case.