I will try again although since you just went thru and downvoted every one of my posts I question your maturity level and your ability to understand what I'm saying. (That is considered bad form here at LW btw. )
When we look at an image we receive and process information immediately--or at least at a speed at which we are not consciously aware of. There is no particular order. It happens all at once. It is not linear. All sorts of assumptions will be formed. Reactions too. The stronger reactions will overwhelm the reasonable ones. I am trained to understand visual signals. I could have just written: "Professional standards were not important to the producer/s of the book which would lead the suspected reader to believe that the lack of professional standards applied to the research presented as well." but that would have only been a fraction of what I "read" from that cover. I was personally offended. The most offensive reaction coming first as that was the strongest. Then I was able to calm down and offer something reasonable. Try reading my comment backwards. I could have eliminated the offensive speculation in my interpretation. I took a risk at including it as it makes me look silly. But I did because without it there didn't seem a point in commenting at all.
I will just point out here that: You still haven't explained what caused this completely insane over-reaction that led you to judge not a book by its cover but the personality of the author based on a thumbnail of the cover, despite claiming you 'want to help'.
You have made a further, equally unwarranted assumption here. I didn't go through and downvote every one of your posts. Multiple people have downvoted your posts in this thread, and any one of them could have done so. Or it could just be that a lot of people find your posts downvote-worthy. Or you c...
Related to: People who want to save the world
I have recently been diagnosed with cancer, for which I am currently being treated with good prognosis. I've been reevaluating my life plans and priorities in response. To be clear, I estimate that the cancer is responsible for much less than half the total danger to my life. The universals - X-risks, diseases I don't have yet, traffic accidents, etc. - are worse.
I would like to affirm my desire to Save Myself (and Save The World For Myself). Saving the world is a prerequisite simply because the world is in danger. I believe my values are well aligned with those of the LW community; wanting to Save The World is a good applause light but I believe most people want to do so for selfish reasons.
I would also like to ask LW members: why do you prefer to contribute (in part) towards humankind-wide X-risk problems rather than more narrow but personally important issues? How do you determine the time- and risk- tradeoffs between things like saving money for healthcare, and investing money in preventing an unfriendly AI FOOM?
It is common advice here to focus on earning money and donating it to research, rather than donating in kind. How do you decide what portion of income to donate to SIAI, which to SENS, and which to keep as money for purely personal problems that others won't invest in? There's no conceptual difficulty here, but I have no idea how to quantify the risks involved.