Hello,
My name is Trent Fowler, and I'm an aspiring futurist. To date I have given talks on two continents on machine ethics, AI takeoff dynamics, secular spirituality, existential risk, the future of governance, and technical rationality. I have written on introspection, the interface between language and cognition, the evolution of intellectual frameworks, and myriad other topics. In 2016 I began 'The STEMpunk Project', an endeavor to learn as much about computing, electronics, mechanics, and AI as possible, which culminated in a book published earlier this year.
Elon Musk is my spirit animal.
I am planning to found a futurist institute in Boulder, CO. I actually left my cushy job in East Asia to help make the future a habitable place.
Is there someone I could talk to about how to do this? Should I incorporate as a 501C3 or an LLC? What are the best ways of monetizing such an endeavor? How can I build an audience (meetup attendance has been anemic at best, what can I do about that)? And so on.
Best,
-Trent
I have done that, on a number of different occasions. I have also tried for literally years to contribute to futurism in other ways; I attempted to organize a MIRIx workshop and was told no because I wasn't rigorous enough or something, despite the fact that on the MIRIx webpage it says:
"A MIRIx workshop can be as simple as gathering some of your friends to read MIRI papers together, talk about them, eat some snacks, scribble some ideas on whiteboards, and go out to dinner together."
Which is exactly what I was proposing.
I have tried for years to network with people in the futurist/rationalist movement, by offering to write for various websites and blogs (and being told no each and every single time), or by trying to discuss novel rationality techniques with people positioned to provide useful feedback (and being ignored each and every single time).
While I may not be Eliezer Yudkowsky the evidence indicates that I'm at least worth casually listening to, but I have had no luck getting even that far.
I left a cushy job in Asia because I wanted to work toward making the world a better place, and I'm not content simply giving money to other people to do so on my behalf. I have a lot of talent and energy which could be going towards that end; for whatever reason, the existing channels have proven to be dead ends for me.
But even if the above were not the case, there is an extraordinary amount of technical talent in the front range which could be going towards more future-conscious work. Most of these people probably haven't heard of LW or don't care much about it (as evinced by the moribund LW meetup in Boulder and the very, very small one in Denver), but they might take notice if there were a futurist institution within driving distance.
Approaching from the other side, I've advertised futurist-themed talks on LW numerous times and gotten, like, three people to attend.
I'll continue donating to CFAR/MIRI because they're doing valuable work, but I also want to work on this stuff directly, and I haven't been able to do that with existing structures.
So I'm going to build my own. If you have any useful advice for that endeavor, I'd be happy to hear it.
Do you know why?