timtyler comments on Existential Risk and Public Relations - Less Wrong

36 Post author: multifoliaterose 15 August 2010 07:16AM

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Comment author: timtyler 16 August 2010 06:09:37AM *  1 point [-]

It doesn't seem likely. The paranoid can usually find something scary to worry about. If something turns out to be not really-frightening, fear mongers can just go on to the next-most frightening thing in line. People have been concerned about losing their jobs to machines for over a century now. Machines are a big and scary enough domain to keep generating fear for a long time.

Comment author: ciphergoth 16 August 2010 08:59:27AM 2 points [-]

I think that what SIAI works on is real and urgent, but if I'm wrong and what you describe here does come to pass, the world gets yet another organisation campaigning about something no-one sane should care about. It doesn't seem like a disastrous outcome.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 16 August 2010 08:06:36AM 1 point [-]

From a less cynical angle, building organizations is hard. If an organization has fulfilled its purpose, or that purpose turns out to be a mistake, it isn't awful to look for something useful for the organization to do rather than dissolving it.

Comment author: Perplexed 17 August 2010 03:19:13AM 2 points [-]

The American charity organization, The March of Dimes was originally created to combat polio. Now they are involved with birth defects and other infant health issues.

Since they are the one case I know of (other than ad hoc disaster relief efforts) in which an organized charity accomplished its mission, I don't begrudge them a few additional decades of corporate existence.