It is a tricky proposition. The world has existed for billions of years, and doesn't look as though it is at much risk. There are billions of humans on the planet. Our species is doing spectacularly well.
On the whole our species is doing well, but if you look at history there's quite a bit of precedent for societies collapsing (Mayans, Mohenjo Daro, Sumerians), being wiped out by disease (Native Americans), and being destroyed by natural catastropes (Crete). We just don't find them that pressing because our society is still going.
I'm putting this through discussion because I’ve never written a main section post before… If you have helpful criticism please comment with it, and if it does well I’ll post it in the main section when I get back from school tomorrow.
Things between the bars are intended to be in the final post, the rest are comments
There’s lots of things which can end the world. There’s even more things which can help improve or save the world. Having more people working more effectively on these things will make the world progress and improve faster, or better fight existential risks, respectively.
And yet for all of my intention to help do those things, I haven’t gotten a single other person to do it as well. Convincing someone else to work towards something is like devoting another lifetime to it, or doubling your efforts. And you only need to convince them once.
So there’s two things I want to learn how to do:
I think that the rationalist community as a whole isn’t particularly good at doing these. Small efforts are made by individuals, but I think that most of the people who do try to do these run into the same problems.
I propose that we do more to centralize and document the solutions to these problems in order for our individual efforts to be more effective. This thread is for people who encounter problems and solutions for convincing other people.