What is the main idea this video is trying to convey? Based on the title and description, I assumed the goal would be to introduce key ideas of longtermism/x-risks and promote WWOTF. It did the latter, but I don’t think the video presents longtermist ideas in a very clear way.
Earlier today, I watched the video with a couple of friends who have never heard about longtermism and x-risks before. It did not do a good job at sparking discussion. When talking about the video, the main takeaways were something like:
civilizations have collapsed before
if it happens again, we will most likely recover
to make sure that we actually recover, we should stop burning coal. However, everyone was already convinced that we should stop burning coal because of climate change arguments.
my friends were mostly confused about what longtermism is and why it is related to EA
Afterwards, I suggested reading Will’s guest essay in the NYT. From my impression, that article got my friends a lot more excited about reading WWOTF and seemed to resolve the confusion about longtermism and EA. In the future, I will definitely send the NYT article to people as an introduction to longtermism or this WWOTF book review by Ali Abdaal for people who just really prefer watching videos.
What is the main idea this video is trying to convey? Based on the title and description, I assumed the goal would be to introduce key ideas of longtermism/x-risks and promote WWOTF. It did the latter, but I don’t think the video presents longtermist ideas in a very clear way.
Earlier today, I watched the video with a couple of friends who have never heard about longtermism and x-risks before. It did not do a good job at sparking discussion. When talking about the video, the main takeaways were something like:
civilizations have collapsed before
if it happens again, we will most likely recover
to make sure that we actually recover, we should stop burning coal. However, everyone was already convinced that we should stop burning coal because of climate change arguments.
my friends were mostly confused about what longtermism is and why it is related to EA
Afterwards, I suggested reading Will’s guest essay in the NYT. From my impression, that article got my friends a lot more excited about reading WWOTF and seemed to resolve the confusion about longtermism and EA. In the future, I will definitely send the NYT article to people as an introduction to longtermism or this WWOTF book review by Ali Abdaal for people who just really prefer watching videos.