All of NickBostrom's Comments + Replies

I've moved the site to http://www.existential-risk.org/, changed the visuals, and made some other improvements in response to the suggestions that were made here.

There is also a revised version of the new paper (now titled "Existential RIsk Prevention as the Most Important Task for Humanity"): http://www.existential-risk.org/concept.pdf.

A high fraction. "A dollar's worth of research" is not a well-defined quantity - that is, the worth of the research produced by a dollar varies a lot depending on whom the dollar is given to. I like to think FHI is good at converting dollars into research. The kind of research I'd prefer to do with unrestricted funds at the moment probably coincides pretty well with what a person with SIAI-typical estimates would prefer, though what can be researched also depends on the capabilities and interests of the research staff one can recruit. (There ... (read more)

4steven0461
Thanks. When I said "a dollar's worth of research", I had in mind the estimate Carl mentioned of $200k per 2-year postdoc. I guess that doesn't affect the fraction question.

Much of the dispersion is caused by the lack of unrestricted funds (and lack of future funding guarantees). Since we don't have enough funding from private philanthropists, we have to chase academic funding pots, and that then forces us to do some work that is less relevant to the important problems we would rather be working on. It would be unfortunate if potential private funders then looked at the fact that we've done some less-relevant work as a reason not to give.

8steven0461
Thank you for weighing in! Your point sounds valid. After taking it into account, if you considered marginal dollars donated to FHI without explicit earmarking, what is your estimate for the fraction of such dollars that end up causing a dollar's worth of research into topics that would be seen as highly relevant by someone with roughly SIAI-typical estimates for the future?

The site is meant to be improved over time, so any comments that could help do that - nitpicky or not - are very welcome. I especially agree that all unnecessary crankiness should be eliminated.

Reg. .com or .org - If there is a clear sense that the .org would be more appropriate, I could look into obtaining that domain name and moving the site there. This should ideally be done soon, while the site is still young. So far, it seems nobody thinks .com is better all things considered, and some people think .org would be a slightly better; but I'd like a litt... (read more)