This isn't necessarily- if you have to think about using that link as charity while shopping, it could decrease your likelihood of doing other charitable things (which is why you should set up a redirect so you don't have to think about it, and you always use it every time!)
It might be useful to feature a page containing what we, you know, actually think about the basilisk idea. Although the rationalwiki page seems to be pretty solidly on top of google search, we might catch a couple people looking for the source.
If any XKCD readers are here: Welcome! I assume you've already googled what "Roko's Basilisk" is. For a better idea of what's going on with this idea, see Eliezer's comment on the xkcd thread (linked in Emile's comment), or his earlier response here.
You seem to be saying that people can't talk, think about, or discuss topics unless they're currently devoting their life towards that topic with maximum effectiveness. That seems... incredibly silly.
Your statements seem especially odd considering that there are people currently doing all of the things you mentioned (which is why you knew to mention them).
I'm currently unconvinced either way on this matter. However, enough arguments have been raised that I think this is worth the time of every reader to think a good deal about.
http://nothingismere.com/2014/11/12/inhuman-altruism-inferential-gap-or-motivational-gap/
Did the survey (a couple days ago).
I wasn't here for the last survey- are the results predominantly discussed here and on Yvain's blog?
I find it very useful to have posts like these as an emotional counter to the echo chamber effect. Obviously this has little or no effect on the average LW reader's factual standpoint, but reminds us both of the heuristical absurdity of our ideas, and how much we have left to accomplish.
True. I've always read things around that speed by default, though, so it's not related to speedreading techniques, and I don't know how to improve the average person's default speed.
This matches my experience. Speed reading software like Textcelerator is nice when I want to go through a fluff story at 1200 WPM, but anything remotely technical requires me to be at 400-600 at most, and speedreading does not fundamentally affect this limit.
HPMOR is an excellent choice.
What's your audience like? A book club (presumed interest in books, but not significantly higher maturity or interest in rationality than baseline), a group of potential LW readers, some average teenagers?
The Martian (Andy Weir) would be a good choice for a book-club-level group- very entertaining to read and promotes useful values. Definitely not of the "awareness raising" genre, though.
If you think a greater than average amount of them would be interested in rationality, I'd consider spending some time on Ted Chiang's work- only short stories at the moment, but very well received, great to read, and brings up some very good points that I'd bet most of your audience hasn't considered.
Edit: Oh, also think about Speaker for the Dead.
"active investment with an advisor is empirically superior to passive non-advised investment for most people." Can you source this?