And if I’m right, then this isn’t a particularly important question to devote energy to.
You’re forgetting the most important aspect of the issue. If there is a problem with technology-related existential risk, then it’s important to get high-status people to understand it and take it seriously. However, if the issue is automatically associated in the public mind with low-status people and presumed crackpots, this will become far more difficult. It doesn’t matter how good a case you have that the problem is serious, if its very mention will trigger people’s crackpot heuristics and make them want to distance themselves from you for fear of low-status contamination.
Though it seems like the easiest way to engage with that aspect is from the other direction: figure out what the high-status “paint” is and start engaging in discussions of the issue using that paint.
Though if “the Singularity” is already tarred with low status, then presumably this isn’t the right location to do that.
You’re forgetting the most important aspect of the issue. If there is a problem with technology-related existential risk, then it’s important to get high-status people to understand it and take it seriously. However, if the issue is automatically associated in the public mind with low-status people and presumed crackpots, this will become far more difficult. It doesn’t matter how good a case you have that the problem is serious, if its very mention will trigger people’s crackpot heuristics and make them want to distance themselves from you for fear of low-status contamination.
I suppose.
Though it seems like the easiest way to engage with that aspect is from the other direction: figure out what the high-status “paint” is and start engaging in discussions of the issue using that paint.
Though if “the Singularity” is already tarred with low status, then presumably this isn’t the right location to do that.