if goal is to be remembered, won’t get there by donating. Founding agency or inventing something
If humanity survives, to the extent that they care about the past, we should expect future societies to be very smart about figuring out precisely who it was that made the large differences—consequentially. Making money and donating/evangelizing very intelligently could very well get you remembered.
some really important things don’t get remembered, e.g. eradicating Polio and Smallpox. Huge amounts of work, people don’t think about it because it’s no longer a problem.
Just because it is not remembered much now doesn’t mean it won’t be remembered in the future. Tesla died penniless in 1943 and was mostly forgotten after his death. It wasn’t until the 1990′s that there was a resurgence in interest in his work.
Or, as another example, consider Gregor Mendel. It took ~ 40 yr’s before society recognized his accomplishments.
On another note, I’m surprised people didn’t mention better, faster methods for making vaccines w/r/t reducing xrisk. E.g., see Bostrom here.
Thanks so much for writing up these notes.
If humanity survives, to the extent that they care about the past, we should expect future societies to be very smart about figuring out precisely who it was that made the large differences—consequentially. Making money and donating/evangelizing very intelligently could very well get you remembered.
Just because it is not remembered much now doesn’t mean it won’t be remembered in the future. Tesla died penniless in 1943 and was mostly forgotten after his death. It wasn’t until the 1990′s that there was a resurgence in interest in his work.
Or, as another example, consider Gregor Mendel. It took ~ 40 yr’s before society recognized his accomplishments.
On another note, I’m surprised people didn’t mention better, faster methods for making vaccines w/r/t reducing xrisk. E.g., see Bostrom here.