SIAI (where I’m currently a volunteer) is doing another matching challenge campaign. This time you get to choose what specific projects to fund. Michael Anissimov has more details.

Here are some reasons to invest in reducing existential risk that you might not have considered before:

  • “The religions disperse, kingdoms fall apart, works of science would have been invented anyway, but feats of existential risk reduction remain for all ages.”
  • Stories where the world is saved excitingly depend necessarily on the real world being saved less excitingly.
  • To make the world a better place, you must first make the world a place.
  • Think of it as extreme survivalism: everyone lives.
  • Even if you believe Armageddon is coming, wouldn’t it be embarrassing if we went extinct before that happened?
  • Reducing existential risk just means saving the whales with extremely broad safety margins around the definition of “whale”.
  • If we go extinct, all possible terrorists win.