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<p><em>author: niplav, created: 2022-07-20, modified: 2024-04-07, language: english, status: in progress, importance: 3, confidence: other</em></p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>What I might do if I magically got hold of a large amount of
money, and couldn't spend it maximally altruistically.</strong></p>
</blockquote><div class="toc"><div class="toc-title">Contents</div><ul><li><a href="#Culture">Culture</a><ul><li><a href="#Snowball_Fights">Snowball Fights</a><ul></ul></li></ul></li><li><a href="#Politics">Politics</a><ul><li><a href="#Buy_a_Small_Island_Nation">Buy a Small Island Nation</a><ul></ul></li><li><a href="#Personal_Futarchy_on_Steroids">Personal Futarchy on Steroids</a><ul></ul></li></ul></li><li><a href="#Language">Language</a><ul><li><a href="#Save_Dying_Languages">Save Dying Languages</a><ul></ul></li><li><a href="#Raise_Native_Speakers_of_an_Engineered_Conlang">Raise Native Speakers of an Engineered Conlang</a><ul></ul></li><li><a href="#Philosophically_Solve_Language">Philosophically Solve Language</a><ul></ul></li></ul></li><li><a href="#Art">Art</a><ul><li><a href="#SCP_Series">SCP Series</a><ul></ul></li><li><a href="#Discontinuous__Fast_AI_Takeoff_Movie">Discontinuous & Fast AI Takeoff Movie</a><ul></ul></li><li><a href="#Double_Crux_Podcast">Double Crux Podcast</a><ul></ul></li><li><a href="#A_Fictional_Ethnography_and_Anthropology_of_Native_Antarcticans">A Fictional Ethnography and Anthropology of Native Antarcticans</a><ul></ul></li><li><a href="#Crime_in_Antarctica_Miniseries">Crime in Antarctica Miniseries</a><ul></ul></li><li><a href="#Prevent_House_of_Leaves_Movie">Prevent House of Leaves Movie</a><ul></ul></li></ul></li><li><a href="#Science">Science</a><ul><li><a href="#Studying_Foreveraloners">Studying Foreveraloners</a><ul></ul></li><li><a href="#Breeding_Very_Intelligent_Animals">Breeding Very Intelligent Animals</a><ul></ul></li></ul></li><li><a href="#Infrastructure">Infrastructure</a><ul></ul></li><li><a href="#Metascience">Metascience</a><ul></ul></li><li><a href="#Other">Other</a><ul><li><a href="#New_Modes_of_Being">New Modes of Being</a><ul></ul></li><li><a href="#Really_Out_There_Stuff_Institute_ROTSI">Really Out There Stuff Institute (ROTSI)</a><ul></ul></li></ul></li><li><a href="#Discussions">Discussions</a><ul></ul></li><li><a href="#Appendix_A_Markets_from_a_Personal_Futarchy_Experiment_by_Tetraspace">Appendix A: Markets from a Personal Futarchy Experiment by Tetraspace</a><ul></ul></li></ul></div>
<h1 id="If_I_Was_An_Eccentric_Trillionaire"><a class="hanchor" href="#If_I_Was_An_Eccentric_Trillionaire">If I Was An Eccentric Trillionaire</a></h1>
<p>I sometimes like to engage in idle speculation. One of those speculations
is: "If someone came up to me and told me that they would give me a lot
of money, but only under the condition that I would spend most of it on
unconventional and interesting projects, and I was forbidden to give it to
Effective Altruist organizations narrowly defined, what would I do? Not
disallowing the projects from having positive consequences accidentally,
of course."</p>
<p>The following is a result of this speculation. Many of the ideas might
be of questionable morality; I hope it's clear I would think a bit more
about them if I were to actually put them into practice (which I won't,
since I don't have that type of money, nor am I likely to get hold of
it myself anytime soon).</p>
<p>Lots of these ideas aren't mine, and I have tried to attribute them
wherever I could find the source. If guess that if they were implemented
(not sure whether that's possible: legality & all that) I'd likely become
unpopular in polite society. But the resulting discourse would absolutely
be worth it.</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: left">Intervention</th>
<th>Cost</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left">Snowball fights</td>
<td>?</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left">Buy a small island nation</td>
<td>\$5 bio.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left">Personal futarchy on steroids</td>
<td>\$100 mio.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left">Save dying languages</td>
<td>\$2 bio.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left">Raise native speakers of an engineered conlang</td>
<td>\$30.8 mio.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left">Philosophically solve language</td>
<td>\$10 mio.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left">SCP series</td>
<td>\$1 bio.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left">Antimemetics Division spinoff</td>
<td>\$200 mio.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left">Discontinuous & fast AI takeoff movie</td>
<td>\$500 mio.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left">Double Crux podcast</td>
<td>\$2 mio.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left">Fictional ethnography of native Antarcticans</td>
<td>\$100k</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left">Breeding very intelligent parrots</td>
<td>\$5m</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left">Studying foreveraloners</td>
<td>\$900 mio.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left">Really Out There Stuff Institute</td>
<td>\$60 mio.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left"></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left"><strong>Sum</strong></td>
<td>\$ 9.81 bio.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h2 id="Culture"><a class="hanchor" href="#Culture">Culture</a></h2>
<h3 id="Snowball_Fights"><a class="hanchor" href="#Snowball_Fights">Snowball Fights</a></h3>
<p>I remember having <em>a lot of</em> fun with snowball fights during breaks in
school, but I haven't seen them happen anywhere outside since leaving
school. People sign up for participating in (moderated) snowball fights,
and are notified on weekends with especially good snow. Large open
grassy fields (or perhaps even stadiums) are rented, and separated
into at least 2 parts, each parts gets a large pile of fresh snow (to
minimize the chance of stones in snowballs). People are encouraged to
bring protective gear to allow for rougher fighting. If one is to allow
for physical encounters, one'd need to group by fitness/size.</p>
<h2 id="Politics"><a class="hanchor" href="#Politics">Politics</a></h2>
<h3 id="Buy_a_Small_Island_Nation"><a class="hanchor" href="#Buy_a_Small_Island_Nation">Buy a Small Island Nation</a></h3>
<p>Since other billionaires are now
<a href="https://qz.com/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-nauru-court-case-money-laundering-1850662899">unable</a>
or unwilling to buy a small remote island for eccentric trillionaire
purposes, this duty now falls on us. Owning an island has several
advantages, such as being able to provide shelter during some catastrophic
events and be a base for organizing other eccentric activities. Plus
points if the island owned is a nation state, as one could pass ones own
laws (within the bounds of international agreements, of course).</p>
<p>Let's say we e.g. try to buy
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru">Nauru</a><sup id="fnref1"><a href="#fn1" rel="footnote">1</a></sup>. Nauru's GPD
is ~\$135 mio., which at a discount rate of ~5% has a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_present_value">net
present value</a>
of <code>$\frac{\$135 \text{ mio.}}{0.05}=\$2.7 \text{ bio.}$</code>,
which we can round up to \$3 bio. What if we instead
try to buy Nauru from each Nauruan individually? The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita#Table">average
GDP</a>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita#Table">per
capita</a>
of Nauru seems to be ~\$12k, but to be conservative we can round that
up to \$15k. Then the net present value (again at 5%) of each Nauruans
future income is <code>$\frac{\$15\text{k}}{0.05}=\$300\text{k}$</code>. There
are 11k Nauruans, which results in an expense of <code>$\frac{\$3 \cdot
10^5}{\text{person}} \cdot 1.1 \cdot 10^4 \text{ persons}=\$3.3 \cdot
10^9$</code>.</p>
<p>In both cases, the Nauruans would be giving up a significant
amount of their civil rights, and might want to find new citizenships,
to support them with this one could allocate more money so that the
sum nicely comes out to \$5bio. So it would be <em>financially</em> feasible
to do this, but would it be politically and legally feasible? I don't
know about that, and don't know of any precedent either. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_of_Belgium">Leopold
II</a> privately owned
the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_free_state">Congo Free State</a>,
but I don't think he <em>bought</em> it, and instead convinced the other European
states to be allowed to militarily seize it. (Our intentions are far more
benevolent (and probably weirder) than Leopold's).</p>
<p>Nation states have bought vast swathes of territory
from others (a prominent example being the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Purchase">Alaska
Purchase</a>
for $140 mio. 2021 dollars (peanuts!),
and there were attempts from the US side to also <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_the_United_States_to_purchase_Greenland">buy
Greenland</a>
from Denmark—<a href="https://www.gwern.net/Greenland">ultimately
unsuccessful</a>. More examples
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territory_purchased_by_a_sovereign_nation_from_another_sovereiign_nation">here</a>),
<em>but</em> to my best knowledge nobody has
ever acquired a country. (Yet. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindset#Fixed_and_growth_mindsets">Growth
mindset</a>.)</p>
<h3 id="Personal_Futarchy_on_Steroids"><a class="hanchor" href="#Personal_Futarchy_on_Steroids">Personal Futarchy on Steroids</a></h3>
<p>In <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qZXy8kGkNFyqCfHEJ/you-can-do-futarchy-yourself">You Can Do Futarchy
Yourself</a>,
<a href="https://thetetra.space">Tetraspace</a> outlines
a way of implementing a preliminary versions of
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futarchy">Futarchy</a> (using <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market">prediction
markets</a>
to determine policies whose outcomes are <a href="https://casparoesterheld.com/2017/12/18/futarchy-implements-evidential-decision-theory/">predicted to
be</a>
optimal alongside some pre-defined metric) by submitting
conditional questions to forecasting platforms like
<a href="https://www.metaculus.com">Metaculus</a> or <a href="https://manifold.markets/">Manifold
Markets</a>.</p>
<p><strong>As an example</strong>, say one only cared about GDP. Then one could submit the
questions "If a Democratic candidate wins the 2024 presidential election,
what will the US GDP be in 2026?" and "If a Republican candidate wins
the 2024 presidential election, what will the US GDP be in 2026?", and,
depending on the forecasts others make, decide to vote one way or the
other.<!--TODO: link real examples that Tetraspace put up on Metaculus?-->
Online forecasting platforms are fairly reliable<!--TODO: link track
records here-->, especially for short-term political questions<!--TODO:
actually investigate this-->, so the information would be quite valuable.</p>
<p><strong>More is possible</strong>: Another nice thing about this proposal is that
it is scalable: The minimum viable product can be made by a
motivated individual in one evening, but more sophisticated versions
are possible. One possible extension could look like a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_advice_application">voting advice
application</a>,
similar to the German
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Agency_for_Civic_Education#Voting_advice">Wahl-O-Mat</a>
or the international <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_Compass">Vote
Compass</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Create markets on elections</strong>: For a given national election, a team
of political scientists would enumerate the lists of likely outcomes
of the election (either determining which coalitions are likely, or
(in single-winner elections) which parties could win). They would also
collect common & clearly measurable desired outcomes the voters might have
for the election, such as GPD, life expectancy, crime levels, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index">Human
Development Index</a>
and others. (It is possible to define more specific criteria, such as
whether certain laws would be passed, but this might slide into already
specifying beforehand which party would come out ahead). For a specific
election <code>$E$</code>, candidate <code>$c$</code> and indicator <code>$i$</code>, a question would
then be created on a prediction platform (or, even better, market):
"If <code>$c$</code> gets elected in <code>$E$</code>, what will the value of <code>$i$</code> be at
the end of the legislative period of <code>$c$</code>?" (There are <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/a4jRN9nbD79PAhWTB/prediction-markets-when-do-they-work">some problems
here</a>
with the many markets that don't resolve, which we will
ignore for the time being, perhaps combinatorial prediction
markets<!--TODO: read & link here--> or <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ufW5LvcwDuL6qjdBT/latent-variables-for-prediction-markets-motivation-technical">latent variable prediction
markets</a>
can help, but I don't know enough about them).</p>
<p><strong>Make a website</strong>: One would then create a website giving users
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slider_(computing)">sliders</a> choose
which indicators <code>$i$</code> they care more or less about, and about
the desired sign of those indicators<sup id="fnref2"><a href="#fn2" rel="footnote">2</a></sup>. Using the probability
distributions over indicators from the prediction platforms, the
website would then compute the expected value for each candidate and
report the list of candidates to the user, sorted by desirability
— giving them information about which candidates are most likely
to actually succeed at giving them the outcomes they desire, and
thereby influencing voting behavior. The whole website would be
accompanied with a short video explaining the concept, and perhaps
a longer explainer text going in detail. Voting platforms are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_advice_application#Effects_on_voting_behaviour">fairly
popular</a>,
sometimes drawing >10% of the population to use them.</p>
<p><strong>Cost</strong>: The underlying software should not be expensive (a
website, an app and a backend that could support tens to potentially
hundreds of thousands of visits a day), and could be re-used for each
election: An initial expense of ~\$5mio., with ~\$500k per year of
maintenance seems on the conservative side for an estimate. Assuming we
want to supply the elections of the 40 biggest (democratic) countries
with information, there'd be (assuming an electoral cycle of ~4 years)
~10 elections a year — something a team of 5 political scientists
(~\$100k a year each) should be able to handle. Assuming that for
each election, there are ~6 candidates/coalitions that cover most of
the election outcomes, and ~6 indicators we want to use to evaluate
election outcomes, subsidizing each market with \$10k comes out at
<code>$\frac{\$10k}{\text{market}} \cdot \frac{6 \text{ markets}}{\text{
candidate}} \cdot \frac{6 \text{ markets}}{\text{ indicator}} \cdot
\frac{10 \text{ elections}}{\text{year}} \cdot \frac{1 \text{ candidate
indicator}}{\text{ election market}}=\frac{\$360k}{\text{year}}$</code>. If the
whole thing runs for 20 years, we then pay <code>$\$5 \text{ mio.} + 20 \cdot
(\$500k + \$500k + \$360k)=\$32 \text{ mio}$</code>. This is <em>surprisingly</em>
cheap, so I'll fudge upwards to $100 mio, just in case. Still a steal,
if you ask me. Just not sure whether I'd have to fear angry politicians.</p>
<h2 id="Language"><a class="hanchor" href="#Language">Language</a></h2>
<h3 id="Save_Dying_Languages"><a class="hanchor" href="#Save_Dying_Languages">Save Dying Languages</a></h3>
<p>There are ~6900 living languages in the world, but the number of speakers
for languages is heavy-tailed: ~500 of those languages <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_endangered_languages#Discussion">are nearly
extinct</a>,
likely due to very few and elderly native speakers. Extinct languages
are a loss of the cultural heritage of humankind, so just as we want to
save endangered species or artworks from their destruction, it would
be cool to save nearly extinct languages from their demise. This
is not just hypothetical: From 2013 to 2023, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_time_of_extinction#21st_century">19 languages have
died</a><!--TODO:
has rate of language death sped up? Read around to figure this out-->. To
do this, we employ linguists to learn each of the the endangered
languages and practice it. 10 linguists per language should be enough,
so we employ 5000 of them at ~\$50k a year, for 4 years, to spend
learning the language full-time, which yields us expenses of ~\$1
bio. Then say that we continue employing them part-time for 20 years
to continue practicing until we've found a way to permanently store the
languages, for example by training large language models (text and audio)
on those languages; this would give us (at \$10k salary a year) another
\$1 bio. in expenses, plus whatever cost the preservation procedure
entails.<!--TODO: invest & pay speakers from revenue--></p>
<h3 id="Raise_Native_Speakers_of_an_Engineered_Conlang"><a class="hanchor" href="#Raise_Native_Speakers_of_an_Engineered_Conlang">Raise Native Speakers of an Engineered Conlang</a></h3>
<p>Spurred on by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity">Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis</a>,
people have created <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_constructed_languages#Engineered_languages">several engineered constructed
languages</a>.
Such languages attempt to introduce new paradigms to spoken languages
and aim for extreme properties along one or more axes: emotional
expressivity (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1adan">Láadan</a>),
complete grammar and lack of syntactic ambiguity
(<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban">Lojban</a>), simplicity (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona">Toki
Pona</a>), expressivity and semantic
richness (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil">Ithkuil</a>)…</p>
<p>We know that people can use a constructed language as
their native tongue, as there are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Esperanto_speakers">>1k native Esperanto
speakers</a> in the
world. But I do not know of any examples of raising a child primarily on a
language engineered to exceed the bounds of natural language, the closest
being <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rewmVNsmz0s">this video</a>.</p>
<p>So it would interesting to pay some new parents (ideally already
both speakers of the engineered language) to raise a child with
that language. The difficulty of achieving this depends on how
difficult the target language is to learn, and <a href="https://esperanto.stackexchange.com/questions/1082/how-many-people-speak-esperanto-compared-to-other-planned-languages">how many speakers there
are</a>:
Toki Pona should be easiest (allegedly has ~100 speakers),
followed by Lojban (hard to learn, has ~15 speakers) and Láadan
(perhaps easier to learn, but less developed and there are
negligibly many speakers (and therefore likely none willing to
raise a child)), <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%93len">Kēlen</a>
would be quite difficult (since there are probably no fluent
speakers, and speakers would need to be trained) and Ithkuil
is probably impossible, as <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/24/utopian-for-beginners">even the creator can't speak it
fluently</a>.</p>
<p>I don't know what price parents would put on raising one of their
children in primarily the constructed language, which might be in
the highest case several hundreds of thousands of dollars per year:
If we have two children in different families per language, and pick
Toki Pona, Láadan, Lojban and Kēlen, at $200k per parent and year,
until the child is 18 years old, we pay <code>$\$200000 \cdot 2 \cdot 4 \cdot
18=\$28.8 \text{ mio}$</code>. We know that children can be bilingual, so the
danger of inability to communicate can basically be excluded—and since
money is not a huge issue, one could offer a ~$10 mio. insurance against
worst-case outcomes. If we assume that worst-case outcomes are possible
but unlikely<sub>5%</sub>, we pay (in expectation) <code>$4 \cdot 0.05 \cdot \$
10 \text{ mio.}=\$2\text{ mio.}$</code>, for a total of $30.8 mio.</p>
<h3 id="Philosophically_Solve_Language"><a class="hanchor" href="#Philosophically_Solve_Language">Philosophically Solve Language</a></h3>
<p>Related to raising native speakers of engineered conlangs,
I am not very impressed by the degree of effort that has
gone into trying to philosophically solve language—all
work has been done by hobbyists, without a neat <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rQKstXH8ZMAdN5iqD/concentration-of-force">concentration of
force</a>.
We have <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilkins">John
Wilkin's</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Essay_Towards_a_Real_Character,_and_a_Philosophical_Language">unnamed
language</a>
& Lojban &
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/aUI_(Constructed_language)">aUI</a>
& Láadan & Ithkuil, but there's never been a
<em><a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rQKstXH8ZMAdN5iqD/concentration-of-force">concerted</a></em>
effort at exploring the space—we e.g. haven't yet tried to create
a language for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lullism">Lullism</a>,
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze">deleuzian</a>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-structuralism">post-structuralism</a>
or the insights from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LessWrong">rationality
community</a>. There are
<a href="https://gwern.net/language">reasons to be skeptical</a> about the allure
of philosophically powerful languages, and it's not quite clear what
<em>exactly</em> would be looked for here, but that's all part of the problem
statement! If we employ 5 philosophers and 5 linguists at $100k/year for
10 years, we spend \$10 mio, and at worst we get some interesting
speculation.</p>
<h2 id="Art"><a class="hanchor" href="#Art">Art</a></h2>
<h3 id="SCP_Series"><a class="hanchor" href="#SCP_Series">SCP Series</a></h3>
<p>The <a href="http://www.scp-wiki.net/">SCP Foundation Wiki</a> is probably the
most successful collaborative fiction writing project of the internet
age (though probably not the most successful collaborative fiction
project ever; any medium-large scale religious mythology has higher
longevity, more detail & more consistency than SCP). It has inspired
<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9872610/">an animated series</a><sup id="fnref3"><a href="#fn3" rel="footnote">3</a></sup>
<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13484102/">and</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEOZkf4imaM">some</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MFurJmxNCs">short</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoCGiSzWIa4">films</a>, as
well as <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/54870256">several</a>
<a href="https://boingboing.net/2021/06/12/graphic-novel-about-one-of-the-most-epic-scp-foundation-entires.html">books</a>.
However, despite the
<a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/SCP/comments/14fiss1/what_do_you_think_is_the_best_way_to_adapt_scp/">clamorings</a>
<a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/SCP/comments/157mw35/scp_foundation_the_series/">of
the</a>
<a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/SCP/comments/157mw35/scp_foundation_the_series/">community</a>,
the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license">creative commons
license</a> used
for the SCP wiki content (CC-BY-SA-3.0) has hindered the development of
a professional adaption—technically using the material for commercial
purposes is possible, but the share-alike property demands that the
produced works be freely copyable and under a license no more restrictive
than the original license. So the production of such a professional
series would be, after all, a public good.</p>
<p>But that doesn't concern us, the eccentric trillionaire: We
just want some cool SCP content to watch. The SCP universe
lends itself to an anthology series like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love,_Death_&_Robots">Love, Death &
Robots</a> or
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Animatrix">The Animatrix</a>;
e.g. following <a href="http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-076-2">MTF Omega-7 ("Pandora's Box") with
Able</a> (showing the uneasy situation
the Foundation finds itself in, caught between the Scylla of using
SCPs but with potentially disastrous outcomes, and the charybdis of
being crushed and consumed by the anomalous world around it), or <a href="http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-507">the
Reluctant Dimension Hopper</a>
on some of his unfortunate travels, a
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slice_of_life">slice-of-life</a>-with-a-twist
episode with a member of one of the <a href="https://www.scp-wiki.net/gamers-against-weed-dossier">Gamers Against
Weed</a>,
a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python">Pythonesque</a>
sketch on someone (unsuccessfully) trying to explain <a href="https://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-426">SCP
426</a> to someone else, a short episode
with the content of <a href="https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/revenants">Revenants</a>,
a little exploration of the <a href="https://www.scp-wiki.net/log-of-anomalous-items">log of anomalous
items</a> in form
of an introduction to a new foundation researcher… What budget
one would need to be is not quite as clear, on the high end <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_Thrones">Game of
Thrones</a> commanded a budget
of >\$600 mio. for 73 episodes, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_The_Rings_of_Power">The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of
Power</a>
has a committed budget of at least \$1 bio. for 5 seasons. I haven't
been able to find information on the budget of Love, Death & Robots or
The Animatrix. Spending \$1 bio. on an SCP series is not unthinkable
in this case.</p>
<p><strong>Spinoff with Antimemetics Division</strong>: Of course I can't
neglect my favorite work of fiction: The novel <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/54870256">There Is No
Antimemetics Division</a>
would lend itself well to a one-season spinoff.</p>
<h3 id="Discontinuous__Fast_AI_Takeoff_Movie"><a class="hanchor" href="#Discontinuous__Fast_AI_Takeoff_Movie">Discontinuous & Fast AI Takeoff Movie</a></h3>
<p>Most movies with artificial intelligence feel pretty provincial to me:
Most of the AI systems in those movies are simply <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/rationality/humans-in-funny-suits">humans in funny
suits</a>, at
best they are <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/">not bipedal</a>
or perhaps <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6292852/">distributed over some amount of bipedal
bodies</a>,
or perhaps wholly <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/">without a body but human in
behavior</a>. I do enjoy
movies with <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164/">very</a>
<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2798920/">non-human</a> aliens—can
we have the same for AIs?</p>
<p>One way to achieve this would to have a movie about an AI system
that crosses a threshold of capabilities extremely quickly
and suddenly. Humans die in the first ~2 minutes of the movie
(less than a couple of days in-movie time), followed by the
AI systems constructing megastructures in space by <a href="./doc/big_picture/fermi/eternity_in_6_hours_sandberg_armstrong_2013.pdf">deconstructing
planets</a>,
sending probes to all reachable galaxies &c. Interactions with
other highly advanced alien civilizations could be shown, including
trade (though hard to convey <em>that</em> trade is taking place) and
warfare (much easier to convey: nicer visual effects from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_bomb">black
hole bombs</a>, induced
supernovae and near-<em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light">c</a></em>
projectiles; but perhaps not as likely to happen in reality because
warfare is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game">negative-sum</a>,
and we should expect advanced agents to avoid negative sum
behavior).</p>
<p>Processes within the AI could also be fascinating to visualize:
the creation, pursuit and extermination of <a href="https://arbital.com/p/daemons/">optimization
daemons</a> and the difficulties of
trying to align future versions (perhaps put on screen as blurry
simulations of successor behavior) should be <a href="https://kajsotala.fi/2011/12/ai-thought-process-visualization/">interesting to look
at</a>. If
we're willing to get <em>really</em> weird, one could try to depict
<a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/acausal-trade">acausal trade</a>,
<a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7MdLurJGhGmqRv25c/multiverse-wide-cooperation-in-a-nutshell">multiverse-wide evidential
cooperation</a>
and later ontokinetics shenanigans—but then one'd need to launch a
research project on how these things could play out.</p>
<p>One difficulty of making this movie: The strategies of such a
system would probably be extremely alien by human standards, and the
resulting movie would be quite conceptual as a result—and by <a href="https://arbital.com/p/Vinge_law/">Vinge's
law</a> the scriptwriters wouldn't be able
to make it even remotely realistic. But it might be pretty—similar
to <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085809/">Koyaanisqatsi</a>,
maybe using the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_Concertos">Brandenburg
Concertos</a>
as music. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_films">Really expensive
movies</a>
cost at most ~\$400 mio., we could easily top that by spending half a
billion on a frivolous nerd project.</p>
<h3 id="Double_Crux_Podcast"><a class="hanchor" href="#Double_Crux_Podcast">Double Crux Podcast</a></h3>
<p><a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/double-crux">Double crux</a> is a
technique for resolving disagreements developed by the <a href="https://rationality.org">Center for
Applied Rationality</a>. In it, (usually) two
interlocutors <code>$A, B$</code> with differing opinions on a subject <code>$S$</code> have
a conversation in which they try to understand each others' beliefs
and models of the world, with the goal of finding a single statement
<code>$Q$</code> (ideally factually checkable or at least eventually resolvable)
for which it holds that <code>$A$</code> believes <code>$Q$</code> and <code>$B$</code> believes <code>$\lnot
Q$</code>, <em>and</em> if it turned out that <code>$Q$</code> then <code>$B$</code> would change their
mind on <code>$S$</code> (adopting <code>$A$</code>s position), and vice versa for <code>$A$</code>
and <code>$\lnot Q$</code>. With motivated participants, this tends to produce
debates which are more oriented towards finding the truth.</p>
<p>Debates on podcasts are often unsatisfactory because participants
usually have an adversarial stance towards each other and
the time is limited<!--TODO: link examples here? Maybe
that objectivist guy on Lex Fridman-->. So a step towards a
solution could be to start a new podcast using the double crux
framework. The discussions might become exceedingly long (≫10h seem
plausible, although that alone needn't retract <a href="https://medium.com/@robertwiblin/our-data-suggests-people-keep-listening-to-podcasts-even-if-theyre-very-long-483dcfc77c02">as much from viewership as
expected</a>),
and ideally <a href="https://tsvibt.blogspot.com/2023/05/better-debates.html">spiced
up</a>
with moderation, fact checking, intermittent summarizing
of positions after a while &c.</p>
<p>Initial attempts at this format
<a href="https://thefilancabinet.com/episodes/2023/04/28/11-divia-eden-ronny-fernandez.html">seem</a>
<a href="https://mutualunderstanding.substack.com/p/ronny-fernandez-and-quintin-pope#details">promising</a>.
This is a long shot, as it is unclear how much conversations <a href="https://tsvibt.blogspot.com/2023/07/views-on-when-agi-comes-and-on-strategy.html#things-that-might-actually-work">can be
improved</a>,
how good debate is at truth-finding<!--TODO: links for AI
safety via debate?-->, and how entertaining or interesting
this would be to listeners. Examples such as the <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/s/n945eovrA3oDueqtq">2021 MIRI
conversations</a>
have left some participants with a
<a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4Gcz3fGcYmmzhozxr/hashing-out-long-standing-disagreements-seems-low-value-to">lower opinion of trying to hash out long-standing
disagreements</a>.
Cost: Probably two full-time equivalents for producer/interviewer
and audio engineering, each at ~\$50k per year, and maybe another
moderator and a fact checker as a part-time (10h per week on average
perhaps?) position, at a total cost of ~\$150k per year, fudging upwards
to \$200k per year.</p>
<h3 id="A_Fictional_Ethnography_and_Anthropology_of_Native_Antarcticans"><a class="hanchor" href="#A_Fictional_Ethnography_and_Anthropology_of_Native_Antarcticans">A Fictional Ethnography and Anthropology of Native Antarcticans</a></h3>
<p>Antarctica wasn't settled by humans before <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Gottlieb_von_Bellingshausen">Fabian Gottlieb von
Bellingshausen</a>
and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Lazarev">Mikhail Lazarev</a>
sighted the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fimbul_ice_shelf">Fimbul ice
shelf</a>. But what if
it had?</p>
<p><strong>Finding Antarctica</strong>: Humans managed to find and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_and_settlement_of_Hawaii">settle Hawaii in ~1250
C.E</a>
from the Marquesas islands (distance: 3530km) and the Society islands
(distance: 3990km). Similarly, the polynesians that settled Hawaii
(<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-M%C4%81ori_settlement_of_New_Zealand_theories">probably</a>)
<em>also</em> settled New Zealand. The southernmost point
of New Zealand is 2466km from the nearest point at the
Antarctic coast (the closest Antarctic point from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_island">Stewart
Island</a>)
but if you're willing to make some hops over the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snares_Islands_/_Tini_Heke">Snares
Islands</a>,
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland_Island">Auckland Island</a><sup id="fnref4"><a href="#fn4" rel="footnote">4</a></sup>,
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macquarie_Island">Macquarie Island</a>
and <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/@-66.801999,161.2642981,7z?entry=ttu">this unnamed icy spot in the
Pacific</a>
the distance increases to 2770km, but with no hop being greater than
<a href="https://www.calcmaps.com/map-distance/ryxrc5/">1295km</a> (the one from
Macquarie Island to the small island before Antarctica). So it is
not <em>inconceivable</em> that a Māori society with more durable ships and
warmer clothes could have sailed southwards repeatedly and finally put
foot on those icy shores. (Indeed I find it pretty likely<sub>25%</sub>
that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ui-te-Rangoira">some crazy guys</a>
might've done this, given the number of islands out in the Pacific that
were just discovered (?) by Polynesians sailing around.)<sup id="fnref5"><a href="#fn5" rel="footnote">5</a></sup><sup id="fnref6"><a href="#fn6" rel="footnote">6</a></sup></p>
<p><strong>Settling Antarctica</strong>: Actually <em>settling</em> Antarctica is a whole
other can of worms: The continent is by far the coldest and (as a
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_desert">polar desert</a>) driest, it
harbors nearly no vegetation (except lichen & moss), and away from the
coasts there are ~no large organisms. So we'd like to know, assuming it
is possible for there to be native antarctican populations descended
from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ori_people">Māori people</a>,
<em>how</em> such a population might manage to endure, and what their
culture and daily life might look like. Ideas: instead of using
wood (since there isn't any), maybe the native Antarcticans
could create a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/pykrete">pykrete</a>
variant with lichen ("likrete") or moss ("mokrete");
perhaps (with much effort?) it is possible to domesticate
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fur_seal">fur seals</a>
(<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_seal">leopard seals</a> seem
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_seal#Negative_interactions_with_humans">harder</a>),
and whaling might still be an option. Antarcticans would probably
need to be hunter-gatherers, but the absence of wood makes it quite
hard to hunt where the (mostly marine) animals are, similar with
spears and bows—is it conceivable to use tools made from ice
and stone instead? Heating is a big problem, as well as surviving
through the winter, but Antarctica has some accessible coal (<a href="./doc/geology/gis_representation_of_coal_bearing_areas_in_antarctical_merrill_2016.pdf" title="GIS Representation of Coal-Bearing Areas in Antarctica">Merrill
2016</a>), some
of it fairly close to the coast where Māori might land. Maybe
our native population would need to overwinter in shelters
(made from ice, stone or likrete?), surviving on seal meat and
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blubber">blubber</a>. It would also
be interesting to have a description of Antarctican culture: What
kind of mythology would develop in such a ruthless place? (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_religion">Inuit
mythology</a> is already
fascinating, and the very different cultural lineage from polynesian
societies would add an interesting twist).</p>
<p><strong>Cost</strong>: With AI tools it might be surprisingly cheap to produce such a
fictional ethnography, paying an anthropologist and a designer \$50k/year
each, for a year. Output format: An illustrated book in the style
of early 20th century ethnographies, with descriptions of daily life,
technology, culture, language &c, similar to <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68126748-the-native-tribes-of-central-australiar">The Native Tribes of Central
Australia</a>
or <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43843069">Report on the Work of the Horn Scientific
Expedition</a>.</p>
<p><strong>See Also</strong>:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.quora.com/If-Antarctica-were-to-have-a-native-indigenous-population-what-would-they-be-like">Quora</a></li>
</ul>
<h3 id="Crime_in_Antarctica_Miniseries"><a class="hanchor" href="#Crime_in_Antarctica_Miniseries">Crime in Antarctica Miniseries</a></h3>
<p>Keeping with the Antarctica theme, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Antarctica">five
crimes</a> that
have occurred there would make well in a miniseries (starting and
ending Russian themed, perhaps treating the ban on chess with an
absurdist lens, but also incorporating horror with the death of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Marks_(Astrophysist)">Rodney
Marks</a>).
Could be quite picturesque, with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-ice_area">blue ice
areas</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryoseism">ice
quakes</a> in the barren
landscapes of the continent. Maybe already done better by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encounters_at_the_End_of_the_World">Werner
Herzog</a>?
— I haven't watched it.</p>
<h3 id="Prevent_House_of_Leaves_Movie"><a class="hanchor" href="#Prevent_House_of_Leaves_Movie">Prevent House of Leaves Movie</a></h3>
<p>House of Leaves is one of my favorite works of fiction. I'm also
completely convinced that if anyone ever tried to make a movie out
of it, they would completely butcher it and soil the book by sheer
association. This scenario must be avoided. So I would buy the rights
to the movie for House of Leaves and simply hold them, squatting on the
ground others might poison, and in the meantime thinking about what to do
when the books copyright runs out (perhaps intervening by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_term">subsidizing
longevity treatments</a> for
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Z._Danielewski">Mark Danielewski</a> as
soon as they are available). Cost: Unclear. I guess that Danielewski would
either be willing to sell the rights to me for ~\$50mio., or unwilling
to sell the rights to anyone, which would be just as good.<!--TODO:
email him & ask!--></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Languishing drafts podcast</strong></li>
</ul>
<h2 id="Science"><a class="hanchor" href="#Science">Science</a></h2>
<h3 id="Studying_Foreveraloners"><a class="hanchor" href="#Studying_Foreveraloners">Studying Foreveraloners</a></h3>
<p>Some people<!--TODO how many? Percentage?--> are unable to find a partner
for their entire life and perhaps never lose their virginity. They
give themselves various names: "LoveShy"<!--TODO: link-->, <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/ForeverAlone/">"Forever
alone"</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel">"involuntary
celibate"</a>. A common point of
disagreement in those communities is whether lack sexual activity by
itself (independently from relationships) has negative effects on people:
The incels wiki <a href="https://incels.wiki/w/Scientific_Blackpill#Health">lists</a>
a (likely selective) collection of studies, however nearly all of them
are correlational & the ones who aren't don't test sexual activity <em>per
se</em> (merely physical contact). This offers a nice opportunity for a
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitudinal_study">longitudinal</a>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomized_experiment">randomized
experiment</a>: Find
300 men<sup id="fnref7"><a href="#fn7" rel="footnote">7</a></sup> above the age of 25 who have never had a partner of sexual
intercourse (<a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/ForeverAlone/">/r/ForeverAlone</a>
has ~180k subscribers, so the subjects would be 1/600th of the number
of subscribers: seems doable), and randomize them into two groups:
For a ten-year period, men in the treatment group see a (paid for)
prostitute once a week for ~2 hours, men in the control group don't
(they are, however, <em>not</em> prevented from finding partners for intercourse
themselves, and are perhaps rewarded a cash price after ten years that
is large enough that they're still willing to participate in data
collection without misreporting). Nobody is <em>forced</em> (by contract
or otherwise) to neglect finding a partner, or to sleep with the
prostitute, however participants in both groups will receive the
cash price in the end if and only if they participate in the data
collection. Data collected might be income, educational attainment,
relationship status, other sexual activity, mood (via <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_sampling_method">experience
sampling</a>),
blood pressure and other various health indicators.</p>
<p><strong>Cost</strong>: \$1k per prostitute visit at two visits per week for
150 men for 52 weeks a year for 10 years, which comes out at \$156
mio., \$200k cash price for participants in the treatment group &
\$1mio. cash price for members of the control group at (in total)
\$180mio.<sup id="fnref8"><a href="#fn8" rel="footnote">8</a></sup>, ~\$100mio. for the data collection (I don't have a
clear idea how much more or less this would need to be), which comes
out at ~\$436mio. Should one be able to find a similarly sized set of
female participants, this doubles the cost to ~\$872mio. Setting the
experiment up to find participants who are actually celibate and not
simply interested in the money or prostitution might pose some difficulty,
but not be insurmountable.</p>
<h3 id="Breeding_Very_Intelligent_Animals"><a class="hanchor" href="#Breeding_Very_Intelligent_Animals">Breeding Very Intelligent Animals</a></h3>
<p>There's been two proposals for breeding
superintelligent animals, namely <strong><a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DaFG3GKsBrsAnAERR/save-humanity-breed-sapient-octopuses">superintelligent
octopuses</a>
or
<a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4zzd9euAykKATTpkh/could-we-breed-engineer-intelligent-parrots">parrots</a></strong>.</p>
<p>One can do a small <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_calculation">Fermi calculation</a> to estimate the cost of such a breeding program.</p>
<p><strong>For parrots</strong>: An <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Grey_Parrot">African grey
parrot</a>
<a href="https://a-z-animals.com/blog/parrot-prices-purchase-cost-supplies-food-and-more/">costs</a>
~\$2k/parrot. For a small breeding
population might be ~150 individuals (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_Silver_Fox">fox
domestication</a>
started out "with 30 male foxes and 100 vixens"). Let's assume cages cost
<a href="https://a-z-animals.com/blog/parrot-prices-purchase-cost-supplies-food-and-more/">\$1k/parrot</a>,
including perches, feeding- and water-bowls. The estimated price for
an avian vet is \$400/parrot-year.</p>
<p><a href="https://a-z-animals.com/blog/parrot-prices-purchase-cost-supplies-food-and-more/">This
page</a>
also says that African greys produce feather dust,
and one therefore needs airfilters (which are advisable
<a href="https://dynomight.net/air/">anyway</a>). Let's say we need one for every
10 parrots, costing \$500 each.</p>
<p>Let's say the whole experiment takes 50 years, which is ~7
generations. I'll assume that the number of parrots is not fluctuating
due to breeding them at a constant rate.</p>
<p>Let's say it takes \$500/parrot for feed and water (just a guess,
I haven't looked this up)<!--TODO: look up prices for parrot feed-->.</p>
<p>We also have to buy a building to house the parrots in. 2m²/parrot
at \$100/m² in rural areas, plus \$200k for a building housing 50
parrots each (I've guessed those numbers). Four staff perhaps (working
8 hours/day), expense at \$60/staff-hour, 360 days a year.</p>
<p>The total cost is then
150*\$2k+15*\$500+150*\$1k+150*50*(\$400+\$500)+3*\$200k+2*150*\$100+50*360*8*4*\$60=\$3.632 mio.</p>
<p>Because I'd have a lot of money, let's round this up to $5m. The whole
enterprise might become profitable at some point: The parrots not selected
for breeding because of (lower) intelligence could be sold as a curiosity
or simply as pets.</p>
<p>I assume the number is going to be similar for
other (potentially more intelligent) birds <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4zzd9euAykKATTpkh/could-we-breed-engineer-intelligent-parrots?commentId=pzEbmSCxkGHP4iTHF">like
keas</a>.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Cloning Extinct Animals</strong> In order: Passenger Pigeons, Thylacines, Dodos, Great Auks, <a href="https://colossal.com/mammoth/">Wooly Mammoths</a>, the Tarpan horse, Neanderthals, <a href="https://fantasticanachronism.com/2021/03/23/two-paths-to-the-future/">John von Neumann</a>, Srinivasa Ramanujan… Comparable to the revival of the (2000 years extinct) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judean_date_palm">Judean date palm</a> and the (32k years extinct) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wikipedia.org/wiki/Silene_stenophylla"><em>silene stenophylla</em></a>.</li>
<li><strong>Masturbation research</strong></li>
<li><strong>Explorables for causal inference</strong></li>
<li><strong>Find and test amnestics</strong><!--TODO: link-->: Find drugs that cause short-term memory loss with ideally no side effects (useful for blinding in scientific studies)—perhaps <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midazolam">Midalozam</a> can be used for this?</li>
<li><strong>Run Newcomb's problem in real life</strong></li>
<li><strong>Run the <a href="https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/05/01/generalized-wada-test-and-the-total-order-of-consciousness/">generalized wada test</a></strong></li>
<li><strong>Better wireheading</strong>: Achieving reversible (you can remove it and the rat feels/behaves as before) & non-adaptative (no hedonic adaptation happening) & non-addictive (isn't sought after when removed) & safe (doesn't have any serious health consequences) & ability-preserving (cognitive function isn't impaired, and ideally improved) & anti-slippery (when in the state the being doesn't seek more of it) long-term pleasure centric wireheading via extensive experiments on animals, either by direct brain stimulation or novel compounds.
<ul>
<li>This one's pretty ethically questionable</li>
<li>Replicate the work at the <a href="https://semalab.arizona.edu/">semalab</a> that uses ultrasound brain stimulation for meditation enhancement.</li>
</ul></li>
</ul>
<h2 id="Infrastructure"><a class="hanchor" href="#Infrastructure">Infrastructure</a></h2>
<ul>
<li><strong>Build beautiful geometric objects</strong>
<ul>
<li>The platonic solids in physical form, similar to tungsten cubes, but of varying size & material (from a steel icosahedron with a few centimetres vertex length to a granite cube or obsidian dodecahedron twenty metres at each side)—the stuff that would make future people say "they considered themselves a powerful culture"</li>
</ul></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa_project">Atlantropa</a> dam at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Gibraltar">Strait of Gibraltar</a></strong><!--TODO: expand based on https://claude.ai/chat/80404ec5-190f-4fb7-a3c2-6d01a2bc1be5--></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://sideways-view.com/2018/06/07/messages-to-the-future/">Send helpful messages to the future</a></strong>: Estimated at $10 mio.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="Metascience"><a class="hanchor" href="#Metascience">Metascience</a></h2>
<ul>
<li><strong>The distillation team</strong>: A group of people whose sole job it is to talk with smart people whose perfectionism blocks them from writing any of their ideas down and doing it for them</li>
<li><strong>The meta-analysis team</strong>: A group of people who, whenever I have a question, do a deep dive into the topic & produce a large & in-depth report on the topic (ideally <a href="https://www.gwern.net">Gwern</a>-style, but I would be willing to make compromises)</li>
<li><strong>A roadmap to learn everything</strong>: A list of textbooks whose order is optimised for having all dependencies covered. Plus professionally done sets of flashcards for those textbooks.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="Other"><a class="hanchor" href="#Other">Other</a></h2>
<h3 id="New_Modes_of_Being"><a class="hanchor" href="#New_Modes_of_Being">New Modes of Being</a></h3>
<p>What activity-shaped holes are there in our society? How can we find
them?</p>
<p><strong>Examples</strong>: At some point someone must have invented music, and
at another point someone invented meditation. That was a pretty big
deal! Maybe we're missing a bunch of these kinds of things and don't
even notice.</p>
<h3 id="Really_Out_There_Stuff_Institute_ROTSI"><a class="hanchor" href="#Really_Out_There_Stuff_Institute_ROTSI">Really Out There Stuff Institute (ROTSI)</a></h3>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faculty_of_Philosophy,_University_of_Oxford#Global_Priorities_Institute">Global priorities
research</a>
is a branch of (mostly) philosophy focusing on crucial considerations:
statements that, if they were true, would radically change which things
are most relevant for global and long-term thinking. This research
encompasses some of my favorite parts of philosophy: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_ethics">population
axiology</a>, <a href="./doc/philosophy/ethics/moral_uncertainty_macaskill_et_al_2020.pdf">moral
uncertainty</a>,
problems in decision theory such as <a href="./doc/philosophy/decision_theory/pascals_mugging_bostrom_2009.pdf">Pascal's
mugging</a>
(there caled fanaticism) and much more. Separately, a strand of
amateur thinking about philosophical problems with a strongly
computational bent has emerged from the website LessWrong. This
view is interested in formal epistemology using <a href="https://arbital.com/p/solomonoff_induction/">Solomonoff
induction</a>,
has broadly mathematical or computational Platonist
metaphysics ("all mathematical structures/possible
programs exist", inspired by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesis">mathematical universe
hypothesis</a>
(MUH)).</p>
<p>I find this strand of thought fascinating, and would love to
see a team of ~20 people or so working on it. The focus of
that research would include topics such as exotic decision theories
(<a href="./doc/cs/ai/alignment/decision_theory/timeless_decision_theory_yudkowsky_2010.pdf">TDT</a>
and its variants<!--TODO: link the papers here, after they're read--> &
<a href="./doc/cs/ai/alignment/decision_theory/wei_dais_updateless_decision_theory_mcallister_2011.pdf">UDT</a>
and <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zd2DrbHApWypJD2Rz/udt2-and-against-ud-assa">possible
successors</a>),
<a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/acausal-trade">acausal trade</a><!--TODO:
link multiverse-wide cooperation papers here after read-->,
<a href="http://fennetic.net/irc/finney.org/~hal/udassa/summary1.html">UDASSA</a>,
the possible implications of being in
simulated universes (such as the option to <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Qz6w4GYZpgeDp6ATB/beyond-astronomical-waste">escape to
base-universes</a>),
implications of assuming the existence of universes allowing for
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercomputation">hypercomputation</a>
in the MUH (and different results from
assuming the existence of universes higher in the
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetical_hierarchy">arithmetical</a>
and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperarithmetical_hierarchy">hyperarithmetical
hierarchy</a>),
as well as problems with the framework (such as the arbitrariness of the
Turing machine used) and more. Global priorities research on steroids
(being potentially less rigorous or philosophically satisfying, but
also willing to take larger steps). Currently, the only organisations
doing similar work (that I'm aware of) are the <a href="https://longtermrisk.org">Center for Long-Term
Risk</a> and the aforementioned Global Priorities
Institute.</p>
<p><strong>Cost</strong>: Hiring ~20 researchers (evenly split between analytical
philosophers, physicists, theoretical computer scientists and economists,
plus ~10 (?) supporting staff, each at \$100k per year, for ~20 years,
giving \$60 mio. in total.</p>
<p><strong>Output format</strong>: Mostly long PDFs with titles such as "Acausalism:
A Primer" or "Chaitinudassicon".</p>
<h2 id="Discussions"><a class="hanchor" href="#Discussions">Discussions</a></h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4TbTktGNu2vtGRbfM/if-i-was-an-eccentric-trillionaire">LessWrong</a></li>
</ul>
<h2 id="Appendix_A_Markets_from_a_Personal_Futarchy_Experiment_by_Tetraspace"><a class="hanchor" href="#Appendix_A_Markets_from_a_Personal_Futarchy_Experiment_by_Tetraspace">Appendix A: Markets from a Personal Futarchy Experiment by Tetraspace</a></h2>
<ol>
<li>"If […] win the next UK general election, what will the England & Wales prison population rate per 100,000 people be 5 years later?": <a href="https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4645/if-conservatives-win-the-next-uk-general-election-what-will-the-england--wales-prison-population-rate-per-100000-people-be-5-years-later/">Conservatives</a>, <a href="https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4644/if-labour-wins-the-next-uk-general-election-what-will-the-england--wales-prison-population-rate-per-100000-people-be-5-years-later/">Labour</a></li>
<li>"If […] win the 2019 UK general election, what will be mean UK broadband download speeds 5 years later?": <a href="https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3341/if-conservatives-win-the-2019-uk-general-election-what-will-be-mean-uk-broadband-download-speeds-5-years-later/">Conservatives</a>, <a href="https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3340/if-labour-wins-the-2019-uk-general-election-what-will-be-mean-uk-broadband-download-speeds-5-years-later/">Labour</a></li>
<li>"If […] is (re)elected president, what will be the yearly CO2 emissions per capita in the US in 2024?": <a href="https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4101/if-donald-trump-is-reelected-president-what-will-be-the-yearly-co2-emissions-per-capita-in-the-us-in-2024/">Donald Trump</a>, <a href="https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3805/if-bernie-sanders-becomes-president-what-will-be-the-yearly-co2-emissions-per-capita-in-the-us-in-2024/">Bernie Sanders</a>, <a href="https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3806/2024-co2-emissions-if-biden-presidency/">Joe Biden</a></li>
</ol>
<div class="footnotes">
<hr/>
<ol>
<li id="fn1">
<p>It's not clear that Nauru is the best choice here. While it probably is the smallest nation state that can conceivably be bought (I don't think there is any realistic (or unrealistic) amount of money for which Vatican City could be acquired), it is not very fertile, and has only limited freshwater reserves, relying mostly on rainwater. The highest point is only 71 metres above sea level, which means that a large part of the island might be at risk of going under water with rising sea levels. <a href="#fnref1" rev="footnote">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn2">
<p>"Yes, I want housing costs to be AS HIGH AS POSSIBLE! MWAHAHAHAHAH!" <a href="#fnref2" rev="footnote">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn3">
<p><a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/SCP/comments/1434kh7/the_whole_scp_confinement_situation_is_both/">Rest in peace</a>. <a href="#fnref3" rev="footnote">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn4">
<p>Indeed, there is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland_Island#Human_presence_on_the_island">some evidence</a> that Auckland island was settled briefly by Polynesians 600-700 years ago. <a href="#fnref4" rev="footnote">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn5">
<p>Maybe I'm lacking in imagination, but this implies both that polynesians can survive for weeks on the open ocean, can reliably find their way back home if need be, and are adventurous enough to just sail out to the open ocean in the hopes of finding new islands. This seems extremely wild to me. <a href="#fnref5" rev="footnote">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn6">
<p>Another method of finding and moving to Antarctica would be from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tierra_del_fuego">Tierra del Fuego</a> to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siffrey_point">Siffrey point</a>, which is much closer (~1030km). I'm not sure whether this is more or less likely: the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahgan_people">Yahgan people</a> have lived in the Tierra del Fuego for ~8k years, which would give far more time for for extensive exploration, and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Head">Prime Head</a> is likely warmer and more hospitable than the rest of Antarctica, but I believe that the Polynesians were <em>much</em> better at spending long durations of time at sea, and at finding far away land from subtle cues. <a href="#fnref6" rev="footnote">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn7">
<p>Since the experiment would solely involve prostitution, my best guess<sub>80%</sub> is that it would be significantly more difficult to find a similar number of female participants. <a href="#fnref7" rev="footnote">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn8">
<p>I'd like to hear feedback on what people believe the right amounts of money for indifference between membership of the two groups+participation would be. <a href="#fnref8" rev="footnote">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</body></html>