Sherincall comments on Open Thread, Jun. 29 - Jul. 5, 2015 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Gondolinian 29 June 2015 12:14AM

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Comment author: Arbitrary 30 June 2015 10:02:21PM *  4 points [-]

Has anyone tried advertising existential risk?

Bostroms "End of Humanity" talk for instance.

It costs about 0.2 $ per view for a video ad on YouTube, so if 0.2% of viewers give an average of 100 $ it would break even. Hopefully people would give more than that.

You can target ads to groups likely to give much by the way, like the highly educated

Comment author: Sherincall 01 July 2015 01:02:20PM *  3 points [-]

Not sure if it has been tried before, but I don't think your calculations are complete. For example:

  • There is a significant investment to actually make the ad. It needs to be done professionally, if you are hoping to attract large donations.
  • Assuming 1/500 viewers will donate $100 seems very optimistic. Maybe if it is targeted properly, but then you will have a really small number of viewers, not enough to justify the investment cost.
  • Willingness to donate is likely correlated with the use of an Ad Blocker (conclusion extrapolated from a small sample)
  • There may a be PR hit when you are associated with youtube ads

I'd think the better approach is to get more public figures to endorse the goal. Not necessarily the likes Musk and Gates, but lower profile youtube folk. Few examples off the top of my head: Wil Wheaton, Tim Minchin, ViHart, LinusTechTips, etc.

Comment author: Arbitrary 01 July 2015 02:59:55PM 1 point [-]

I was thinking using Bostroms Ted talk, if that is succesful you can consider making an ad. The adblocker point is interesting, could be polled.

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