The article is here.

The book is by William MacAskill, founder of 80000 Hours and Giving What We Can. Excerpt:

Effective altruism takes up the spirit of Singer’s argument but shields us from the full blast of its conclusion; moral indictment is transformed into an empowering investment opportunity...

Either effective altruism, like utilitarianism, demands that we do the most good possible, or it asks merely that we try to make things better. The first thought is genuinely radical, requiring us to overhaul our daily lives in ways unimaginable to most...The second thought – that we try to make things better – is shared by every plausible moral system and every decent person. If effective altruism is simply in the business of getting us to be more effective when we try to help others, then it’s hard to object to it. But in that case it’s also hard to see what it’s offering in the way of fresh moral insight, still less how it could be the last social movement we’ll ever need.

In the Muehlhauser-Hibbard Dialogue on AGI, Hibbard states it will be "impossible to decelerate AI capabilities" but Luke counters with "Persuade key AGI researchers of the importance of safety ... If we can change the minds of a few key AGI scientists, it may be that key insights into AGI are delayed by years or decades." and before I read that dialogue, I had come up with three additional ideas on Heading off a near-term AGI arms race. Bill Hibbard may be right that "any effort expended on that goal could be better applied to the political and technical problems of AI safety" but I doubt he's right that it's impossible.

How do you prove something is impossible?  You might prove that a specific METHOD of getting to the goal does not work, but that doesn't mean there's not another method.  You might prove that all the methods you know about do not work.  That doesn't prove there's not some other option you don't see.  "I don't see an option, therefore it's impossible." is only an appeal to ignorance.  It's a common one but it's incorrect reasoning regardless.  Think about it.  Can you think of a way to prove that a method that does work isn't out there waiting to be discovered without saying the equivalent of "I don't see any evidence for this." We can say "I don't see it, I don't see it, I don't see it!" all day long. 

I say: "Then Look!"

How often do we push past this feeling to keep thinking of ideas that might work?  For many, the answer is "never" or "only if it's needed".  The sense that something is impossible is subjective and fallible.  If we don't have a way of proving something is impossible, but yet believe it to be impossible anyway, this is a belief.  What distinguishes this from bias? 

I think it's a common fear that you may waste your entire life on doing something that is, in fact, impossible.  This is valid, but it's completely missing the obvious:  As soon as you think of a plan to do the impossible, you'll be able to guess whether it will work.  The hard part is THINKING of a plan to do the impossible.  I'm suggesting that if we put our heads together, we can think of a plan to make an impossible thing into a possible one.  Not only that, I think we're capable of doing this on a worthwhile topic.  An idea that's not only going to benefit humanity, but is a good enough idea that the amount of time and effort and risk required to accomplish the task is worth it.

Here's how I am going to proceed: 

Step 1: Come up with a bunch of impossible project ideas. 

Step 2: Figure out which one appeals to the most people. 

Step 3: Invent the methodology by which we are going to accomplish said project. 

Step 4: Improve the method as needed until we're convinced it's likely to work.

Step 5: Get the project done.

Impossible Project Ideas

• Decelerate AI Capabilities Research: If we develop AI before we've figured out the political and technical safety measures, we could have a disaster.  Luke's Ideas (Starts with "Persuade key AGI researchers of the importance of safety").  My ideas.
• Solve Violent Crime: Testosterone may be the root cause of the vast majority of violent crime, but there are obstacles in treating it. 
• Syntax/static Analysis Checker for Laws: Automatically look for conflicting/inconsistent definitions, logical conflicts, and other possible problems or ambiguities. 

• Understand the psychology of money

• Rational Agreement Software:  If rationalists should ideally always agree, why not make an organized information resource designed to get us all to agree?  This would track the arguments for and against ideas in such a way where each piece can be verified logically and challenged, make the entire collection of arguments available in an organized manner where none are repeated and no useless information is included, and it would need to be such that anybody can edit it like a wiki, resulting in the most rational outcome being displayed prominently at the top.  This is especially hard because it would be our responsibility to make something SO good, it convinces one another to agree, and it would have to be structured well enough that we actually manage to distinguish between opinions and facts. Also, Gwern mentions in a post about critical thinking that argument maps increase critical thinking skills.
• Discover unrecognized bias:  This is especially hard since we'll be using our biased brains to try and detect it.  We'd have to hack our own way of imagining around the corners, peeking behind our own minds.

• Logic checking AI: Build an AI that checks your logic for logical fallacies and other methods of poor reasoning.

Add your own ideas below (one idea per comment, so we can vote them up and down), make sure to describe your vision, then I'll list them here.

Figure out which one appeals to the most people.

Assuming each idea is put into a separate comment, we can vote them up or down.  If they begin with the word "Idea" I'll be able to find them and put them on the list.  If your idea is getting enough attention obviously, it will at some point make sense to create a new discussion for it.

My uncle works in insurance. I recently mentioned that I'm planning to sign up for cryonics.

"That's amazing," he said. "Convincing a young person to buy life insurance? That has to be the greatest scam ever."

I took the comment lightly, not caring to argue about it. But it got me thinking - couldn't cryonics be a great opportunity for insurance companies to make a bunch of money?

Consider:

1. Were there a much stronger demand for cryonics, cryonics organizations would flourish through competition, outside investment, and internal reinvestment. Costs would likely fall, and this would be good for cryonicists in general.
2. If cryonics organizations flourish, this increases the probability of cryonics working. I can think of a bunch of ways in which this could happen; perhaps, for example, it would encourage the creation of safety nets whereby the failure of individual companies doesn't result in anyone getting thawed. It would increase R&D on both perfusion and revivification, encourage entrepreneurs to explore new related business models, etcetera.
3. Increasing the demand for cryonics increases the demand for life insurance policies; thus insurance companies have a strong incentive to increase the demand for cryonics. Many large insurance companies would like nothing more than to usher in a generation of young people that want to buy life insurance.¹
   
4. The demand for cryonics could be increased by an insightful marketing campaign by an excellent marketing agency with an enormous budget... like those used by big insurance companies.² A quick Googling says that ad spending by insurance companies exceeded $4.15 billion in 2009.

Almost a year ago, Strange7 suggested that cryonics organizations could run this kind of marketing campaign. I think he's wrong - there's no way CI or Alcor have the money. But the biggest insurance companies do have the money, and I'd be shocked if these companies or their agencies aren't already dumping all kinds of money into market research.

What would doing this require? 

1. That an open-minded person in the insurance industry who is in the position to direct this kind of funding exists. I don't have a sense of how likely this is.
2. That we can locate/get an audience with the person from step 1. I think research and networking could get this done, especially if the higher-status among us are interested.
3. That we can find someone who is capable and willing to explain this clearly and convincingly to the person from step 1. I'm not sure it would be that difficult. In the startup world, strangers convince strangers to speculatively spend millions of dollars every week. Hell, I'll do it.

I want to live in a world where cryonics ads air on TV just as often as ads for everything else people spend money on. I really can see an insurance company owning this project - if they can a) successfully revamp the image of cryonics and b) become known as the household name for it when the market gets big, they will make lots of money.

What do you think? Where has my reasoning failed? Does anyone here know anyone powerful in insurance? 

Lastly, taking a cue from ciphergoth: this is not the place to rehash all the old arguments about cryonics. I'm asking about a very specific idea about marketing and life insurance, not requesting commentary on cryonics itself. Thanks!

¹ Perhaps modeling the potential size of the market would offer insight here. If it turns out that this idea is not insane, I'll find a way to make it happen. I could use your help.

² Consider what happened with diamonds in the 1900s:

... N. W. Ayer suggested that through a well-orchestrated advertising and public-relations campaign it could have a significant impact on the "social attitudes of the public at large and thereby channel American spending toward larger and more expensive diamonds instead of "competitive luxuries." Specifically, the Ayer study stressed the need to strengthen the association in the public's mind of diamonds with romance. Since "young men buy over 90% of all engagement rings" it would be crucial to inculcate in them the idea that diamonds were a gift of love: the larger and finer the diamond, the greater the expression of love. Similarly, young women had to be encouraged to view diamonds as an integral part of any romantic courtship.