[extropy-chat] SIAI: Donate Today and Tomorrow

[Damien Broderick]

At 04:59 AM 10/21/2004 -0400, Eliezer wrote:

>If you ask people how much they're willing to pay for the entire human 
>species to survive, most of them name the amount of money in their 
>pockets, minus whatever they need to pay for their accustomed lunch.  If 
>it was *only* their own life at stake, not them plus the rest of the human 
>species, they'd drop everything to handle it.

Aw, come on. It's the plausibility of the threat.

>Here's a thought experiment:  If I offered people, for ten dollars, a pill 
>that let them instantly lose five pounds of fat or gain five pounds of 
>muscle, they'd buy it, right?  They'd buy it today, and not sometime in 
>the indefinite future when their student loans were paid off.  Now, why do 
>so few people get around to sending even ten dollars to the Singularity 
>Institute?  Do people care more about losing five pounds than the survival 
>of the human species?

Here's another thought experiment:  If I offered people, for ten dollars, a 
pill that let them instantly go to heaven when they die, they'd buy it, 
right?  They'd buy it today, and not sometime in the indefinite future when 
their student loans were paid off.

(If they were sufficiently gullible. If they were sufficiently desperate. 
If I could absolutely prove to their satisfaction the truth of my 
hard-to-credit claim.)

Now, why do so few people get around to sending even ten dollars to the 
Heaven for Everyone Institute?  Do people care more about individual 
salvation than the salvation of the human species?

(Gullible idiots would probably fall for both options *in my thought 
experiment*. In Eliezer's, there are two unknowns, each with an apriori 
likelihood, to the average human bean, of heygedouddahere. To the inner 
circle of FAI cognoscenti... well, maybe the probabilities are more in 
Eli's favor, but it's palpably easier to test the fat pill claim than the 
Horrid Existential AI Universal Doom Is Coming and Only I Am Left to Save 
You if You Can Spare a Dime claim.)

Damien Broderick