Why do an EA-themed nature documentary when we haven’t even gotten around to making any documentaries about EA?? If Carl Sagan was still alive, I’d say we should pay him to make an EA-themed sequel to “Cosmos”—each episode could tackle a different philosophical idea or global problem, roughly following the 80,000 Hours Podcast series “Effective Altruism: An Introduction” and “Effective Altruism: Ten Global Problems”. Interviews with experts would alternate with experimental demonstrations, historical anecdotes, and CGI visualizations meant to make the abstract ideas of effective altruism vivid and memorable, just like Cosmos did so well.
I’m confident that Carl Sagan (given his curiosity and strong anti-nuclear-weapons activism) would’ve been very amenable to this idea, but unfortunately he is no longer with us, and I don’t think Neil Degrasse Tyson would be an acceptable replacement. Maybe somebody like Bill Gates or Al Gore (of “An Inconvenient Truth”) would be interested? James Burke, of the beloved British documentary series “Connections”, is still around.
Actually, rather than focusing on star power, it would probably be a better idea to just hire a really good documentary team with a track record of producing good television. Ken Burns and more recently Peter Jackson are big names in the documentary world, although they’ve mostly worked with archival footage, which is very different than producing a “Cosmos”-inspired science show. Maybe some team of folks at National Geographic or the BBC would be a good fit?
Taking this idea more seriously: If I was an EA grantmaker, I’d want to start small by maybe hiring an educational-youtube-video personality (like John Green’s “Crash Course”) to make an Effective Altruism series. If that seemed to show good results, then I would escalate to funding a decent Netflix-style documentary movie, which I imagine could be had for something like $2-5 million—“An Inconvenient Truth” had a budget of around $1.5 million. Then, if everything was still going peachy, we could set our sights higher and consider a big Cosmos-style TV series with a big marketing push to really try and get the word out.
“Free to Choose” by Milton Friedman is another interesting precedent—it inspired many, including a certain Arnold Schwarzenegger to get into politics. You could also think of famous lecture series’, like Feynman’s in physics.
Al Gore is too political, and definitely not someone you would want to present something like this.
Rather, it’s the sort of thing that might be in the wheelhouse of Max Tegmark, and some of the famous presenters on FLI’s scientific boards. People like Toby Ord and Will Macaskill also.
Anton Korinek is apparently doing a Coursera type course, by the way.
I think plenty of these things will happen in time.
Why do an EA-themed nature documentary when we haven’t even gotten around to making any documentaries about EA?? If Carl Sagan was still alive, I’d say we should pay him to make an EA-themed sequel to “Cosmos”—each episode could tackle a different philosophical idea or global problem, roughly following the 80,000 Hours Podcast series “Effective Altruism: An Introduction” and “Effective Altruism: Ten Global Problems”. Interviews with experts would alternate with experimental demonstrations, historical anecdotes, and CGI visualizations meant to make the abstract ideas of effective altruism vivid and memorable, just like Cosmos did so well.
I’m confident that Carl Sagan (given his curiosity and strong anti-nuclear-weapons activism) would’ve been very amenable to this idea, but unfortunately he is no longer with us, and I don’t think Neil Degrasse Tyson would be an acceptable replacement. Maybe somebody like Bill Gates or Al Gore (of “An Inconvenient Truth”) would be interested? James Burke, of the beloved British documentary series “Connections”, is still around.
Actually, rather than focusing on star power, it would probably be a better idea to just hire a really good documentary team with a track record of producing good television. Ken Burns and more recently Peter Jackson are big names in the documentary world, although they’ve mostly worked with archival footage, which is very different than producing a “Cosmos”-inspired science show. Maybe some team of folks at National Geographic or the BBC would be a good fit?
Taking this idea more seriously: If I was an EA grantmaker, I’d want to start small by maybe hiring an educational-youtube-video personality (like John Green’s “Crash Course”) to make an Effective Altruism series. If that seemed to show good results, then I would escalate to funding a decent Netflix-style documentary movie, which I imagine could be had for something like $2-5 million—“An Inconvenient Truth” had a budget of around $1.5 million. Then, if everything was still going peachy, we could set our sights higher and consider a big Cosmos-style TV series with a big marketing push to really try and get the word out.
“Free to Choose” by Milton Friedman is another interesting precedent—it inspired many, including a certain Arnold Schwarzenegger to get into politics. You could also think of famous lecture series’, like Feynman’s in physics.
Al Gore is too political, and definitely not someone you would want to present something like this.
Rather, it’s the sort of thing that might be in the wheelhouse of Max Tegmark, and some of the famous presenters on FLI’s scientific boards. People like Toby Ord and Will Macaskill also.
Anton Korinek is apparently doing a Coursera type course, by the way.
I think plenty of these things will happen in time.