Where are the realistic (contagion-like) disaster films? Personally, I would love to see a well-made disaster movie about the real, modern conception of AI risk. I am also surprised and disappointed by the fact that (even after covid!!) there are not more good movies about pandemics in the works. (Especially when there are so many zombie and post-apocalyptic movies, which are like the less-realistic cousin of the would-be pandemic genre.)
I am also surprised and disappointed by the fact that there are not really any disaster movies about “modern warfare” or “world war 3″ -- maybe a Tom-Clancy-style movie about how a miscommunication between the USA and China leads them to the brink of war, or just a movie realistically portraying what a future large-scale war might look like, with attacks on satellites and drone-swarms and cyberattacks on infrastructure and the like. I think a realistic AI movie could be very helpful, but the effect on the world might be negative for some of these ideas. A realistic movie about biorisks might be subject to infohazard concerns, while a realistic movie about modern warfare might inflame international tensions if not done very carefully.
Conversely, I would also love to see a movie or TV series depicting a realistic attempt at an optimistic, utopian near-future—perhaps introducing the reader to promising new technologies and new types of social/governance institutions that could help solve major current problems.
Make a rationalist/EA modern-day version of “Cosmos”: 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. In a Cosmos-inspired TV show, each episode could tackle a different philosophical idea or global problem, perhaps roughly following the 80,000 Hours Podcast series “Effective Altruism: An Introduction” and “Effective Altruism: Ten Global Problems”, sprinkling in some key highlights of the LessWrong sequences. 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.
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.
Reposting & paraphrasing some of my comments on an earlier thread about movies & documentaries:
Where are the realistic (contagion-like) disaster films?
Personally, I would love to see a well-made disaster movie about the real, modern conception of AI risk. I am also surprised and disappointed by the fact that (even after covid!!) there are not more good movies about pandemics in the works. (Especially when there are so many zombie and post-apocalyptic movies, which are like the less-realistic cousin of the would-be pandemic genre.)
I am also surprised and disappointed by the fact that there are not really any disaster movies about “modern warfare” or “world war 3″ -- maybe a Tom-Clancy-style movie about how a miscommunication between the USA and China leads them to the brink of war, or just a movie realistically portraying what a future large-scale war might look like, with attacks on satellites and drone-swarms and cyberattacks on infrastructure and the like. I think a realistic AI movie could be very helpful, but the effect on the world might be negative for some of these ideas. A realistic movie about biorisks might be subject to infohazard concerns, while a realistic movie about modern warfare might inflame international tensions if not done very carefully.
Conversely, I would also love to see a movie or TV series depicting a realistic attempt at an optimistic, utopian near-future—perhaps introducing the reader to promising new technologies and new types of social/governance institutions that could help solve major current problems.
Make a rationalist/EA modern-day version of “Cosmos”:
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. In a Cosmos-inspired TV show, each episode could tackle a different philosophical idea or global problem, perhaps roughly following the 80,000 Hours Podcast series “Effective Altruism: An Introduction” and “Effective Altruism: Ten Global Problems”, sprinkling in some key highlights of the LessWrong sequences. 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 think this is in the works! Kurtzegat got a $2.8m grant from Open Phil.
See also A Happier World and Rational Animations.