Thanks, Luke. This is an informative reply, and it's great to hear you have a standard talk! Is it publicly available, and where can I see it if so? Maybe MIRI should ask FOAFs to publicise it?

It's also great to hear that MIRI has tried one pamphlet. I would agree that "This one pamphlet we tried didn't work" points us in the direction that "No pamphlet MIRI can produce will accomplish much", but that proposition is far from certain. I'd still be interested in the general case of "Can MIRI reduce the chance of UFAI x-risk through pamphlets?"

Pamphlets...don't work for MIRI's mission. The inferential distance is too great, the ideas are too Far, the impact is too far away.

You may be right. But, it is possible to convince intelligent non-rationalists to take UFAI x-risk seriously in less than an hour (I've tested this), and anything that can do that process in a manner that scales well would have a huge impact. What's the Value of Information on trying to do that? You mention the Sequences and HPMOR (which I've sent to a number of people with the instruction "set aside what you're doing and read this"). I definitely agree that they filter nicely for "able to think". But they also require a huge time commitment on the part of the reader, whereas a pamphlet or blog post would not.