Luke_A_Somers comments on Cult impressions of Less Wrong/Singularity Institute - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think it's not an ethical imperative unless you're unusually altruistic.
Also I feel the whole FAI thing is a little questionable from a client relations point of view. Rationality education should be about helping people achieve their own goals. When we meet someone who is confused about their goals, or just young and impressionable, the right thing for us is not to take the opportunity and rewrite their goals while we're educating them.
... or you estimate the risk to be significant and you want to live past the next N years.
I don't think this calculation works out, actually. If you're purely selfish (don't care about others at all), and the question is whether to devote your whole life to developing FAI, then it's not enough to believe that the risk is high (say, 10%). You also need to believe that you can make a large impact. Most people probably wouldn't agree to surrender all their welfare just to reduce the risk to themselves from 10% to 9.99%, and realistically their sacrifice won't have much more impact than that, because it's hard to influence the whole world.