I like this pitch outline; it’s straightforward, intuitive, and does a good job of explaining the core ideas. If this were to actually be delivered as a pitch I would suggest putting more focus on cognitive biases that lead to inaction (e.g. the human tendency to disbelieve that interesting/unusual/terrible things will happen in one’s ownlifetime, or the implicit self-concept of not being the “sort of person” who does important/impactful things in the world). These are the sorts of things that people don’t bring up because they’re unconscious beliefs, but they’re pretty influential assumptions and I think it’s good to address them.
For instance, it took me some doing to acquire the self-awareness to move past those assumptions and decide to go into x-risk even though I had known for quite a while on an intellectual level that x-risk existed. It required the same sort of introspection that it did for me to, when I was offered a PETA brochure, notice my instinctive negative reaction (“ew, PETA, what a bunch of obnoxious and sanctimonious assholes”), realize that that was a poor basis for rejecting all of their ideas, and then sit down and actually consider their arguments. I think that it is uncommon even for bright and motivated people to naturally develop that capacity, but perhaps with some prompting they can be helped along.
If this were to actually be delivered as a pitch I would suggest putting more focus on cognitive biases that lead to inaction
Thanks for the thoughts! Definitely agreed that this could be compelling for some people. IMO this works best on people whose crux is “if this was actually such a big deal, why isn’t it common knowledge? Given that it’s not common knowledge, this is too weird for me and I am probably missing something”.
I mostly make this argument in practice by talking about COVID—IMO COVID clearly demonstrates basically all of these biases with different ways that we under-prepared and bungled the response.
I like this pitch outline; it’s straightforward, intuitive, and does a good job of explaining the core ideas. If this were to actually be delivered as a pitch I would suggest putting more focus on cognitive biases that lead to inaction (e.g. the human tendency to disbelieve that interesting/unusual/terrible things will happen in one’s own lifetime, or the implicit self-concept of not being the “sort of person” who does important/impactful things in the world). These are the sorts of things that people don’t bring up because they’re unconscious beliefs, but they’re pretty influential assumptions and I think it’s good to address them.
For instance, it took me some doing to acquire the self-awareness to move past those assumptions and decide to go into x-risk even though I had known for quite a while on an intellectual level that x-risk existed. It required the same sort of introspection that it did for me to, when I was offered a PETA brochure, notice my instinctive negative reaction (“ew, PETA, what a bunch of obnoxious and sanctimonious assholes”), realize that that was a poor basis for rejecting all of their ideas, and then sit down and actually consider their arguments. I think that it is uncommon even for bright and motivated people to naturally develop that capacity, but perhaps with some prompting they can be helped along.
Thanks for the thoughts! Definitely agreed that this could be compelling for some people. IMO this works best on people whose crux is “if this was actually such a big deal, why isn’t it common knowledge? Given that it’s not common knowledge, this is too weird for me and I am probably missing something”.
I mostly make this argument in practice by talking about COVID—IMO COVID clearly demonstrates basically all of these biases with different ways that we under-prepared and bungled the response.