From Hacker News.
- We're going to build the next Facebook!
- We're going to found the next Apple!
- Our product will create sweeping political change! This will produce a major economic revolution in at least one country! (Seasteading would be change on this level if it worked; creating a new country successfully is around the same level of change as this.)
- Our product is the next nuclear weapon. You wouldn't want that in the wrong hands, would you?
- This is going to be the equivalent of the invention of electricity if it works out.
- We're going to make an IQ-enhancing drug and produce basic change in the human condition.
- We're going to build serious Drexler-class molecular nanotechnology.
- We're going to upload a human brain into a computer.
- We're going to build a recursively self-improving Artificial Intelligence.
- We think we've figured out how to hack into the computer our universe is running on.
This made me laugh, but from the look of it, I'd say there is little work to do to make it serious. Personally, I'd try to shorten it so it is punchier and more memorable.
I can't find the comment of Eliezer that inspired this but:
The "If-you-found-out-that-God-existed scale of ambition".
1) "Well obviously if I found out God exists I'd become religious, go to church on Sundays etc."
2) "Actually, most religious people don't seem to really believe what their religion says. If I found out that God existed I'd have to become a fundamentalist, preaching to save as many people from hell as I could."
3) "Just because God exists, doesn't mean that I should worship him. In fact, if Hell exists then God is really evil, and I should put all my effort into killing God and rescuing everyone from hell. Sure it sounds impossible, but I wouldn't give up until I'd thought about the problem and tried all possible courses of action."
4) "God is massively powerful. Sure I'd kill him if I had to, but that would be a catastrophic waste. My true aim would be to harness God's power and use it to do good."
But if you succeed in pulling everyone from hell, what would give their existences meaning and purpose? I mean, you just can't thwart god's sovereign will for his creatures without consequences. God created them for damnation as their telos from the very beginning, just as he created others to receive totally undeserved salvation.