It's not just about what status you have, but what you actually are. You can view it as analogous to the Newcomb problem, where the predictor/Omega is able to model you accurately enough to predict if you're going to take one or two boxes, and there's no way to fool him into believing you'll take one and then take both. Similarly, your behavior in one situation makes it possible to predict your behavior in other situations, at least with high statistical accuracy, and humans actually have some Omega-like abilities in this regard. If you kill the fat man, this predicts with high probability that you will be non-cooperative and threatening in other situations. This is maybe not necessarily true in the space of all possible minds, but it is true in the space of human minds -- and it's this constraint that gives humans these limited Omega-like abilities for predicting each others' behavior.

(Of course, in real life this is further complicated by all sorts of higher-order strategies that humans employ to outsmart each other, both consciously and unconsciously. But when it comes to the fundamental issues like the conditions under which deadly violence is expected, things are usually simple and clear.)

And while these constraints may seem like evolutionary baggage that we'd best get rid of somehow, it must be recognized that they are essential for human cooperation. When dealing with a typical person, you can be confident that they'll be cooperative and non-threatening only because you know that their mind is somewhere within the human mind-space, which means that as long as there are no red flags, cooperative and non-threatening behavior according to the usual folk-ethics is highly probable. All human social organization rests on this ability, and if humans are to self-modify into something very different, like utility-maximizers of some sort, this is a fundamental problem that must be addressed first.

Good point. How would you resolve this contradiction, then?

Here is a presentation that was used in a similar setting before.

I recommend trying to cover less than you currently plan. Just one or two big ideas should be more than enough.

I agree with the second paragraph of steven0461's comment.

The present posting ignores the impact of signing up for cryonics / donating to VillageReach on existential risk which should outweigh all other considerations in utilitarian expected value.

I presently believe that for most people who are interested x-risk reduction, the expected x-risk reduction of signing up for cryonics is lower than that of the expected x-risk reduction of donating to VillageReach. My thinking here is that donating to VillageReach signals philanthropic intention and affords networking opportunities with other people who care about global welfare who might be persuaded to work against x-risk whereas signing up for cryonics signals weirdness to everyone outside of a very narrow set of people.

However, as Carl Shulman has remarked:

"widespread cryonics would have beneficial effects in encouraging long-term thinking."

And lsparrish has written:

As to most people not being capable of being convinced of cryonics, I strongly doubt that this is the case. It's a huge uphill battle no doubt but given enough dollars towards PR (or enough intelligently done promotion by unpaid advocates on the web) it can be done.

The beneficial impact of signing up for cryonics on x-risk reduction seems to me to be predicated on the possibility of spreading cryonics to a population positioned to decrease x-risk who would not work to decrease x-risk if they were not signed up for cryonics.

I told my PhD advisor that I had inserted the sentence "The whale is the largest living mammal." somewhere in my thesis about superconducting devices. I then did NOT insert the sentence. My theory was if I had put the sentence in then he would have realized he could stop reading so carefully once he found it.

I don't think that typical jobs from 50 years ago were better in any of these regards. On the contrary, the well-paid blue collar manufacturing jobs that are associated with bygone better times in folk memory were quite bad by these measures. Just imagine working on an assembly line.

Focusing specifically on North America, where these trends appear to be the most pronounced, the key issue, in my opinion, is the distribution of status. Fifty years ago, it was possible for a person of average or even below-average abilities to have a job, lifestyle, and social status that was seen as nothing spectacular, but also respectable and nothing to scoff at. Nowadays, however, the class system has become far harsher and the distribution of status much more skewed. The better-off classes view those beneath them with frightful scorn and contempt, and the underclass has been dehumanized to a degree barely precedented in human history. Of course, these are not hereditary castes, and meritocracy and upward mobility are still very strong, but the point is that the great masses of people who are left behind in the status race are no longer looking towards a mundane but respectable existence, but towards the low status of despised losers.

Why and how the situation has developed in this direction is a complex question that touches on all sorts of ideologically charged issues. Also, some would perhaps disagree whether the trends really are as severe as I present them. But the general trend of the status distribution becoming more skewed seems to me pretty evident.

There are very few people whose work is worth between zero and minimum wage; most people's labor is either worth more than minimum wage, or has negative value because of the non-wage costs and risks associated with hiring someone.

carry around thumbs up/down stickers and apply them to the speaker?

Explicit protocols help a lot. See for instance Software For Your Head.

Based on personal experience, I strongly recommend experimenting with face-to-face conversation where participants agree to follow some explicit rules governing content or form, and experimenting with different rules over time. Some ideas that I have tested:

• requiring speakers to end their turn explicitly (e.g. "That is all."); one may not interrupt a speaker until they have signaled ending their turn
• speaking in turns, going around the table; participants must speak or declare "I pass"
• hand signals indicating the nature of the contribution: question, new information, call for decision
• thematic constraints, such as the six hats or Satir temperature reading
• agreed-on verbal shorthands that perform the equivalent of upvotes (the PLoP community's workshops use "gush" for that purpose)

Such explicit protocols have several useful effects. First, they impose some structure on the conversation, and if that structure is appropriate for the goals of the conversations, it becomes more likely to reach these goals. Second, they promote participation, even from participants who are less socially fluent than others. Third, they encourage everyone to pay more attention to what is being said but also to how it's being said.

Cognitive overload is always a risk, though, so introduce such ideas one at a time until everyone is familiar with it and is ready to absorb a new one.

The general idea sounds a lot like pair programming.