Other types of causes I would like to see more groups working on and more people supporting are those that would help make human communities more robust against civilizational collapse (minus scenarios where we’re all turned into paperclips, of course). Right now, billions of humans are utterly dependent on global economic infrastructure to supply food, water, energy, shelter, etc. If some event breaks down this infrastructure, billions could die, since not only do most people lack survival skills, but the local resources in most areas of high population density are not sufficient to provide enough for (even a small fraction of) everyone. Ideally, every local community, from small villages to sprawling metropolises, could become locally self-sustaining to the point where getting cut off from the global economy would lead to the loss of luxury items and foods rather than to mass starvation.
Things that come to mind include the Global Village Construction Set, an open-source set of 50 blueprints for technologies explicitly designed to require minimal material and manufacturing resources to construct but that could be used to rebuild civilization in the event of collapse.
Food production is also a big issue, of course, and efforts to provide year-round local produce using geothermally-regulated greenhouses or vertical farming could help immensely to minimize costs of both production and distribution for communities that use them at sufficient scale. (One limitation to hydroponics/aeroponics that currently outweighs their resource-efficiency is the fact that they tend to focus on just salad greens, which are the easiest to grow. Are there any groups working on genetically engineering fruit trees to produce fruit without the trees?)
Mycelium is another group working on providing automation for community gardens, as well as more effective waste-handling and housing technologies.
I don’t know how effective these projects, specifically, would prove to be if given enough funding, but I feel like they are reaching in the right direction. Local, resource-efficient sustainability technology seems like one of the most impactful areas to focus on for ensuring humanity’s long-term survival, after things like AI alignment. An additional benefit of putting more effort into these sorts of projects is that they could also be applied to helping people who are struggling in “third world” countries today. And if you could get self-sufficiency technology good enough to work in deserts or on ice sheets, we could also apply it to supporting space colonies. Maybe Elon Musk could be convinced to invest more in this area.
In the same vein—Isn’t about time for the rationalist community to found a little city? A place maybe somewhere in Canada, nice and isolated from climate impacts, altitudinally disposed against obesity, enough LED wattage to offset the extra microSADs…
But in all honesty, we’d get to test better voting systems, bring smart minds together, pioneer new education plans, and obviously explore how to achieve autarky.
You could start it off small— as a mini hub for organizing retreats. Offer EA grants to come work there. Slowly expand outwards.
If we carry on the rest of the planning phase on paper and pencil, who knows, maybe we can even keep it secret from the AI overlord.
Other types of causes I would like to see more groups working on and more people supporting are those that would help make human communities more robust against civilizational collapse (minus scenarios where we’re all turned into paperclips, of course). Right now, billions of humans are utterly dependent on global economic infrastructure to supply food, water, energy, shelter, etc. If some event breaks down this infrastructure, billions could die, since not only do most people lack survival skills, but the local resources in most areas of high population density are not sufficient to provide enough for (even a small fraction of) everyone. Ideally, every local community, from small villages to sprawling metropolises, could become locally self-sustaining to the point where getting cut off from the global economy would lead to the loss of luxury items and foods rather than to mass starvation.
Things that come to mind include the Global Village Construction Set, an open-source set of 50 blueprints for technologies explicitly designed to require minimal material and manufacturing resources to construct but that could be used to rebuild civilization in the event of collapse.
Food production is also a big issue, of course, and efforts to provide year-round local produce using geothermally-regulated greenhouses or vertical farming could help immensely to minimize costs of both production and distribution for communities that use them at sufficient scale. (One limitation to hydroponics/aeroponics that currently outweighs their resource-efficiency is the fact that they tend to focus on just salad greens, which are the easiest to grow. Are there any groups working on genetically engineering fruit trees to produce fruit without the trees?)
Mycelium is another group working on providing automation for community gardens, as well as more effective waste-handling and housing technologies.
I don’t know how effective these projects, specifically, would prove to be if given enough funding, but I feel like they are reaching in the right direction. Local, resource-efficient sustainability technology seems like one of the most impactful areas to focus on for ensuring humanity’s long-term survival, after things like AI alignment. An additional benefit of putting more effort into these sorts of projects is that they could also be applied to helping people who are struggling in “third world” countries today. And if you could get self-sufficiency technology good enough to work in deserts or on ice sheets, we could also apply it to supporting space colonies. Maybe Elon Musk could be convinced to invest more in this area.
The Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED) is one of the recipients of donations for the Survival and Flourishing Fund.
In the same vein—Isn’t about time for the rationalist community to found a little city? A place maybe somewhere in Canada, nice and isolated from climate impacts, altitudinally disposed against obesity, enough LED wattage to offset the extra microSADs…
But in all honesty, we’d get to test better voting systems, bring smart minds together, pioneer new education plans, and obviously explore how to achieve autarky.
You could start it off small— as a mini hub for organizing retreats. Offer EA grants to come work there. Slowly expand outwards.
If we carry on the rest of the planning phase on paper and pencil, who knows, maybe we can even keep it secret from the AI overlord.