elteerkers

Karma: 283

elteerkers 6 Nov 2023 14:01 UTC
8 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: SebastianSchmidt’s comment on: Existential Hope and Existential Risk: Exploring the value of optimistic approaches to shaping the long-term future
Thanks for your comment!

Agree with your pros and cons.

“Existential security” seems like a great one within EA.

Have not seen the “procedural visions” one! Thanks for recommending it, will look.

On your course question: As we are currently working on something similar to this at Foresight right now I will answer similarly to what we are thinking of adding there. Which is to do ambitious worldbuilding in groups of 4-5 people with complementary skill sets. Will share more when our resources are online for that!

Thank you! :)

elteerkers 14 Apr 2023 8:27 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: C Tilli’s comment on: Preliminary investigations on if STEM and EA communities could benefit from more overlap
Thanks for the question!

I would say that it’s not that people aren’t aware of risks, my broad reflection is more in terms of how one relates to it. In the EA/X-risk community it is clear that one should take these things extremely seriously and do everything one can to prevent them. I often feel that even though researchers in general are very aware of potential risks with their technologies, they seem to get swept up in the daily business of just doing their work, and not reflecting very actively over the potential risks with it.

I don’t know exactly why that is, it could be that they don’t consider it their personal responsibility, or perhaps they feel powerless and that aiming to push progress forward is either the best or the only option? But that is a question that would be interesting to dig deeper into!

elteerkers 14 Apr 2023 8:17 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Linda Linsefors’s comment on: Preliminary investigations on if STEM and EA communities could benefit from more overlap
That’s a good point. I’m unsure of what the best way of facilitating these meetings would be, so that it doesn’t downplay the seriousness of the questions. But assuming good intentions, allowing for disagreements, and acknowledging the differences is enough and the best option.

elteerkers 14 Apr 2023 8:10 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: trevor1’s comment on: Preliminary investigations on if STEM and EA communities could benefit from more overlap
Thank you for the encouragement!

elteerkers 14 Apr 2023 8:10 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Jessica Wen’s comment on: Preliminary investigations on if STEM and EA communities could benefit from more overlap
Agree it doesn’t represent “the STEM community”. As in my reply to Jessica’s longer comment, I agree there isn’t really such a thing as “the STEM community”, and if I were to write the post now I would want to better reflect the fact that this was asked to the Foresight community, in which most participants are working in one of our technical fields: neurotech, space tech, nanotech, biotech or computation. In the survey I ask if people identify themselves as STEM professionals, a question to which most answered yes (85% of respondents in this v. small survey).

elteerkers 14 Apr 2023 8:09 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: DavidNash’s comment on: Preliminary investigations on if STEM and EA communities could benefit from more overlap
Thank you!

elteerkers 14 Apr 2023 8:06 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Jessica Wen’s comment on: Preliminary investigations on if STEM and EA communities could benefit from more overlap
Hi Jessica, thank you so much for your thorough read and response! I found it very useful.

I agree there isn’t really such a thing as “the STEM community”, and if I were to write the post now I would want to better reflect the fact that this was asked to the Foresight community, in which most participants are working in one of our technical fields: neurotech, space tech, nanotech, biotech or computation. In the survey I ask if people identify themselves as STEM professionals, a question to which most answered yes (85% of respondents in this v. small survey). So as you point out, most are not in the life sciences.

Regarding the demographics, our community is very male dominated. However, our team is all female, and we are actively trying to improve on this. I would be interested to hear if you at HI Engineers are doing anything on this, and have any learning that you can share? I did not collect any data on ethnicity or age in this survey.

As I stated in the post, and can only state again, this is very preliminary, so I agree one shouldn’t draw too much of a conclusion based on this. But I’m happy I put it out there as is so that I could get this useful feedback from you!

Regarding what technology means in the text, I would say that it refers to both informations and “physical” technologies. I’d be very interested to hear more about your outreach work with HI Engineers. Overall, your work looks very interesting, and so I hope you don’t mind if I reach out “off forum”! :)

elteerkers 12 Apr 2023 11:55 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: DavidNash’s comment on: Preliminary investigations on if STEM and EA communities could benefit from more overlap
Good point! Are there any other X-risk communities you think we should look at, other than the ones already active within EA?

elteerkers 2 Nov 2022 14:15 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Caro’s comment on: Which are the best examples/resources of positive futures you can think of? E.g something like Max Tegmark’s utopias in Life 3.0
Thank you!

elteerkers 2 Nov 2022 14:14 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Devin Kalish’s comment on: Which are the best examples/resources of positive futures you can think of? E.g something like Max Tegmark’s utopias in Life 3.0
Excellent, thank you!

elteerkers 2 Nov 2022 14:14 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Michael Huang’s comment on: Which are the best examples/resources of positive futures you can think of? E.g something like Max Tegmark’s utopias in Life 3.0
Thaaank you!

elteerkers 25 Oct 2022 15:43 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Devin Kalish’s comment on: Which are the best conferences to attend that are not EAGs?
i’ve been considering it also actually! thank you for recommendation :)

elteerkers 25 Oct 2022 15:42 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: AndreFerretti’s comment on: Which are the best conferences to attend that are not EAGs?
thanks! will have a look!

elteerkers 28 May 2022 8:52 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Luke Freeman’s comment on: Is there a “Humans of EA” project? Meaning a project portraying different members within EA.
Aha thank you so much! I’ll have a look!

elteerkers 28 May 2022 8:52 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: MathiasKB’s comment on: Is there a “Humans of EA” project? Meaning a project portraying different members within EA.
Oh maybe that’s it! Thank you I’ll look it up

elteerkers 22 Feb 2022 13:35 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Sim’s comment on: Should we produce more EA-related documentaries?
Thank you for the recommendation! Will reach out.

elteerkers 22 Feb 2022 10:50 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Charlie_Guthmann’s comment on: Should we produce more EA-related documentaries?
Wow I appreciate this document! Especially the “Pressing problems” section. Thank you. I will look more closely at it later.

Agree that the range is very large, we tried to narrow it down to feature film documentaries, but probably ended up including a bit more in terms of format. For example the question of Youtube vs. Documentary movie on streaming platform is interesting to me. My initial thinking on it is that movie documentaries are better for reaching “top down”—it might be able to get you more mainstream media attention, etc. But Youtube is better for “bottom up”—reaching people directly. So the different formats are probably better for different topics.

elteerkers 22 Feb 2022 10:41 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Jackson Wagner’s comment on: Should we produce more EA-related documentaries?
FLI’s short clips on slaughterbots are interesting as a concept in relation to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rDo1QxI260

elteerkers 22 Feb 2022 10:38 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: jared_m’s comment on: Should we produce more EA-related documentaries?
Yes! Will actually also mentioned Participant media in his chat. He mentioned it in relation to them funding the movie “Contagion”.

elteerkers 22 Feb 2022 10:34 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Jackson Wagner’s comment on: Should we produce more EA-related documentaries?
Again, speaking only for myself and not my co-author in these comments!

I like your framing of trying out smaller (still ambitious enough though!) and potentially growing. I also think that if we were to produce this type of material on the EA movement that there is so much high quality work that has already been done that could be re-used (while still giving credit to the original creators) that could at least guarantee a relatively high quality to the production in terms of content.

In terms of how one could make a documentary impactful, I also think there are a lot of things one would need to do (in addition to just producing the movie) to increase the possibility of it being impactful (my co-author Vilhelm and I have been discussing writing a post just on this topic as well so hopefully we can post that in a few weeks). As we mentioned in this post, the effects of documentaries tend to be very short-lived, and if one wants the effects to be more long-term they need to supported by other strategies such as having a clear and achievable call to action and perhaps be coupled with some other behavior change techniques to increase their chances of impact.

In terms of gaining the attention necessary from mainstream media I definitely think we could get some relevant celebrities to agree to be interviewed (such as Bill or Elon that you mention). Less sure about how willing high-profile directors would be. It seems extremely relevant that the director is a good personal fit for the production.