Thanks for posting here for feedback. In general I think the video introduced too many ideas and didn’t explain them enough.
Some point by point feedback:
It seems inappropriate to include “And remember that one trillion is one thousand times a billion” much later after saying “humanity has a potentially vast future ahead in which we might inhabit countless star systems and create trillions upon trillions of worthwhile lives” in the first sentence. If people didn’t know what the word “trillion” meant later, then you already lost them at the first sentence.
Additionally, since I think that essentially all the viewers you care about do already know what “trillion” means, including “remember that one trillion is one thousand times a billion” will likely make some of them think that the video is created for a much less educated audience than them.
“I guess you might be skeptical that humanity has the potential to reach this level of expansion, but that’s a topic for another video.” Isn’t this super relevant to the topic of this video? The video is essentially saying that future civilization can be huge, but if you’re skeptical of that we’ll address that in another video. Shouldn’t you be making the case now? If not, then why not just start the video with “Civilization can be astronomically large in the future. We’ll address this claim in a future video, but in this video let’s talk about the implications of that claim if true. [Proceed to talk about the question of whether we can tractably affect the size.]
“But there is another ethical point of view taken into consideration, which is called the “person affecting view”.” I don’t think you should have included this, at least not without saying more about it. I don’t think someone who isn’t already familiar with person affecting views would gain anything from this, but it could very plausibly just be more noise to distract them from the core message of the video.
“If you don’t care about giving life to future humans who wouldn’t have existed otherwise, but you only care about present humans, and humans that will come to exist, then preventing existential risk and advancing technological progress have a similar impact.” I think I disagree with this and the reasoning you provide in support of it doesn’t at all seem to justify it. For example, you write “If we increase this chance, either by reducing existential risk or by hastening technological progress, our impact will be more or less the same” but don’t consider the tractability or neglectedness of advancing technological progress or reducing existential risk.
For the video animation, when large numbers are written out on the screen, include the commas after every three zeros so the viewers can actually tell at a glance what number is written. Rob narrates “ten to the twenty-three humans” and we see 100000000000000000000000 appear on the screen with 0′s continuously being added and it gives me the impression that the numbers are just made-up (even though I know they’re not).
“100 billion trillion lives” is a rather precise number. I’d like for you to use more careful language to communicate if things like this are upper or lower bounds (e.g. “at least” 100 billion trillion lives) or the outputs of specific numerical estimates (in which case, show us what numbers lead to that output.
Thanks for posting here for feedback. In general I think the video introduced too many ideas and didn’t explain them enough.
Some point by point feedback:
It seems inappropriate to include “And remember that one trillion is one thousand times a billion” much later after saying “humanity has a potentially vast future ahead in which we might inhabit countless star systems and create trillions upon trillions of worthwhile lives” in the first sentence. If people didn’t know what the word “trillion” meant later, then you already lost them at the first sentence.
Additionally, since I think that essentially all the viewers you care about do already know what “trillion” means, including “remember that one trillion is one thousand times a billion” will likely make some of them think that the video is created for a much less educated audience than them.
“I guess you might be skeptical that humanity has the potential to reach this level of expansion, but that’s a topic for another video.” Isn’t this super relevant to the topic of this video? The video is essentially saying that future civilization can be huge, but if you’re skeptical of that we’ll address that in another video. Shouldn’t you be making the case now? If not, then why not just start the video with “Civilization can be astronomically large in the future. We’ll address this claim in a future video, but in this video let’s talk about the implications of that claim if true. [Proceed to talk about the question of whether we can tractably affect the size.]
“But there is another ethical point of view taken into consideration, which is called the “person affecting view”.” I don’t think you should have included this, at least not without saying more about it. I don’t think someone who isn’t already familiar with person affecting views would gain anything from this, but it could very plausibly just be more noise to distract them from the core message of the video.
“If you don’t care about giving life to future humans who wouldn’t have existed otherwise, but you only care about present humans, and humans that will come to exist, then preventing existential risk and advancing technological progress have a similar impact.” I think I disagree with this and the reasoning you provide in support of it doesn’t at all seem to justify it. For example, you write “If we increase this chance, either by reducing existential risk or by hastening technological progress, our impact will be more or less the same” but don’t consider the tractability or neglectedness of advancing technological progress or reducing existential risk.
For the video animation, when large numbers are written out on the screen, include the commas after every three zeros so the viewers can actually tell at a glance what number is written. Rob narrates “ten to the twenty-three humans” and we see 100000000000000000000000 appear on the screen with 0′s continuously being added and it gives me the impression that the numbers are just made-up (even though I know they’re not).
“100 billion trillion lives” is a rather precise number. I’d like for you to use more careful language to communicate if things like this are upper or lower bounds (e.g. “at least” 100 billion trillion lives) or the outputs of specific numerical estimates (in which case, show us what numbers lead to that output.