SIAI's Fellows Program is looking for rationalists with skills.  More specifically, we're looking for rationalists with skills outside our usual cluster who are interested in donating their time by teaching those skills and communicating the mindsets that lead to their development.  If possible, we'd like to learn from specialists who "speak our language," or at least are practiced in resolving confusion and disagreement using reason and evidence.  Broadly, we're interested in developing practical intuitions, doing practical things, and developing awareness and culture around detail-intensive technical subskills of emotional self-awareness and social fluency.  More specifically:    

Now is the very last minute to apply for a Summer 2010 Visiting Fellowship.  If you’ve been interested in SIAI for a while, but haven’t quite managed to make contact -- or if you’re just looking for a good way to spend a week or more of your summer -- drop us a line.  See what an SIAI summer might do for you and the world. 

(SIAI’s Visiting Fellow program brings volunteers to SIAI for anywhere from a week to three months, to learn, teach, and collaborate.  Flights and room and board are covered.  We’ve been rolling since June of 2009, with good success.)

Apply because:

• SIAI is tackling the world’s most important task -- the task of shaping the Singularity.  The task of averting human extinction. We aren’t the only people tackling this, but the total set is frighteningly small.
• When numbers are this small, it’s actually plausible that you can tip the balance. 
• SIAI has some amazing people to learn from -- many report learning and growing more here than in any other period of their lives.
• SIAI also has major gaps, and much that desperately needs doing but that we haven’t noticed yet, or have noticed but haven’t managed to fix -- gaps where your own skills, talents, and energy can come into play.

In case you missed the notice at the SIAI Blog, the Singularity Institute's next Challenge Grant is now running - $100,000 of matching funds for all donations until February 28th, 2010.  If you want your donation to be tax-deductible in the U.S. for 2009, donations postmarked by December 31st will be counted for this tax year.

Last summer, 15 Less Wrongers, under the auspices of SIAI, gathered in a big house in Santa Clara (in the SF bay area), with whiteboards, existential risk-reducing projects, and the ambition to learn and do.

Now, the new and better version has arrived.  We’re taking folks on a rolling basis to come join in our projects, learn and strategize with us, and consider long term life paths.  Working with this crowd transformed my world; it felt like I was learning to think.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it can transform yours.