I accepted your idea about replacing the word “robust" and will award the prize for it.
The main idea of this roadmap is to escape availability bias by listing all known ideas for x-risk prevention. This map will be accompanied by the map of all known x-risks which is ready and will be published soon. More than 100 x-risks have been identified and evaluated.
The idea that some of plans create their own risks is represented in this map with red boxes below plan A1.
But it may be possible to create completely different future risks and prevention map using system approach, or something like a scenarios tree.
Yes, each plan is better to contain specific risks. A1 is better to contain biotech and nanotech risks, A2 is better for UFAI, A3 for nuclear war and biotech an so on. So another map may be useful to correspond risks and prevention methods.
Timeline was already partly replaced with "steps", as was already suggested by "elo" and he was awarded for it.
Phil Torres shows that Bostroms classification of x-risks is not as good as it seems to be, in: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/torres20150121 So I prefer the notion of "human extinction risks" as more clear.
I still don't know how we could fix all the world system problems which are listed in your link without having control of most of the world which returns us to plan A1.
In plans: 1. Is not "voluntary or forced devolution" the same as "ludism" and "relinquishment of dangerous science" which is already in the plan?
The idea of uploding was already suggested here in the form of "migrating into simulation" and was awarded.
I think that "some movement or event that will cause a paradigmatic change so that humanity becomes more existentially-risk aware" is basically the same idea as "smaller catastrophe could help unite humanity (pandemic, small asteroid, local nuclear war)", but your wording is excellent.
I think I should accept "dramatic social changes”, as it could include many interesting but different topics: demise of capitalism, hipster revolution, internet connectivity, global village, dissolving of national states. I got many suggestions in this line and I could unite them under this topic.
Do you mean METI - messaging to stars? Yes, it dangerous, and we should do it only if everything else fails. That is why I put in into plan C. But by the way SETI is even more dangerous as we could download decryption of alien AI. I have an article about it here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/gzv/risks_of_downloading_alien_ai_via_seti_search/
Thank for your suggestions which were the first ones which imply creation of the map on completely different principles.
So in total for now I suggest you 2 award and one from Romashka, total 150 usd. Your username suggests me that you would prefer to keep anonymity, so I could send money to a charity of your choice.
In plans: 1. Is not "voluntary or forced devolution" the same as "ludism" and "relinquishment of dangerous science" which is already in the plan?
I was thinking more along the lines of restricting the chance for divergence in the human species. I guess I am not really sure what is it that you are trying to preserve. What do you take to be humanness? Technological advances may allow us to alter ourselves so substantially that we become post-human or no longer human. This could be for example from cybernetics or genetic engin...
Let’s do an experiment in "reverse crowdfunding”. I will pay 50 USD to anyone who can suggest a new way of X-risk prevention that is not already mentioned in this roadmap. Post your ideas as a comment to this post.
Should more than one person have the same idea, the award will be made to the person who posted it first.
The idea must be endorsed by me and included in the roadmap in order to qualify, and it must be new, rational and consistent with modern scientific data.
I may include you as a co-author in the roadmap (if you agree).
The roadmap is distributed under an open license GNU.
Payment will be made by PayPal. The total amount of the prize fund is 500 USD (total 10 prizes).
The competition is open until the end of 2015.
The roadmap can be downloaded as a pdf from:
UPDATE: I uploaded new version of the map with changes marked in blue.
http://immortality-roadmap.com/globriskeng.pdf
Email: alexei.turchin@gmail.com