I would say that FMTs are very safe to do at home. After all, you are just swallowing some pills or do an enema. The tricky part is donor screening for anything infectious. But it is easy to find out what to screen for and order the tests online or get a doctor to do them for you.
But yeah, doing these tests for the donor is absolutely necessary, and it can be dangerous if the donor isn’t thoroughly screened!
>Is it helpful for other chronic diseases? If so, how much and is it cost-effective?
I totally agree that the science isn’t settled yet at all! But please see the “Why aren’t scientists more excited…” section.
Also keep in mind that for many chronic diseases alternative effective treatments simply don’t exist yet, e.g. chronic fatigue syndrome, IBS, etc. Sure, the evidence on FMTs may not be conclusive. But it is at least suggestive. And that’s much better than nothing for many chronically ill. You don’t need “definite proof” to make it worth a try, given that it is fairly easy, safe, and cheap (if you know the donor and he just gives his stool to you) to do FMTs yourself!
Could it be that “working at kurzgesagt” is an effective thing to do? One of the legitimate “communication paths”?
EAs working at Kurzgesagt could:
steer them to create even more EA-aligned content
gain valuable “communication knowledge”, to be used to create EA content later/elsewhere. Kurzgesagt does such a great job promoting ideas like longtermism in an uncontroversial not weird way that gets people to obviously agree with it—something EA often struggles with within media. We need to learn from them! And we want all the great EA content from 80k and elsewhere in a Kurzgesagt-style video format as well, and need people learning how to do that! AI alignment Youtube channels like Rob Miles’ are great, but with someone with expertise from Kurzgesagt it could be so much better?!
Help Kurzgesagt to scale up massivly. They are already big but could be much bigger still. I’m thinking documentaries, educational books, apps, videogames, movies in cinemas, whole TV series, various subchannels for different topics and audiences, etc. Let’s help them become a giant media empire with a huge movement around it!
It will be hard/impossible to find a design that suits everyone. One solution might be:
offer multiple design versions (let others submit them)
allow people to pre-commit to buying the designs of their choice
if enough people for it to be worth it for you pre-commit to the same design, it will be printed and sold. Otherwise, nothing happens.
But yeah, much more effort!
Fantastic to see this happening!
Is the design already fixed in stone?
I’d suggest:
Making the words straight, not curved
Increase their font size
and make them two lines (maybe with the image between them?)
Wow, that was quick!
“The universe is vast, dark, and cold, but we are not.
The laws of physics are indifferent to desperation, hope, or love. But we are not.
There is no destiny written for us in the stars, so we write our own.
The stars and the mountains do not care, but we do! There is light in this world and it is us!”
———--
from a secular solstice. I’d pre-commit to buying a t-shirt with any of those paragraphs with some cool cosmic futuristic design.
I love it! A newsletter notifying you about new products would be great (assuming there is more to come). I’d love “existential hope” themed motives!
Scott Alexander wrote a nice article on what the Republican’s program could/should be: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/a-modest-proposal-for-republicans?s=r
This is already one of FFF’s Project Ideas. https://ftxfuturefund.org/projects/#:~:text=on%20this%20list.-,AI%20alignment%20prizes,-Artificial%20Intelligence Basically someone just needs to step forward and implement it!
While not directly EA, I think fiction isalso great to promote some ideas from the Progress Movement, namely humanism, agency, and the idea that “problems are hard, but solvable”.
I also feel that the idea that “actually, humans are good, and humanity is worth protecting” needs some promotion. We are not just some greedy, aggressive, nature-destroying species that the earth would probably be better off without!
How about Qualia Research Institute?
That’s a great point! In fact, my next step was contacting them. Anyone knows them and might be able to introduce me?