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A comment on The world’s biggest problems and why they’re not what first comes to mind. Parent comment

Re:The world’s biggest problems and why they’re not what fir... by henryaj on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @09:05AM (#14445006)
One of the principles of effective altruism is finding causes which are important, tractable, and neglected. Climate change is definitely not neglected - you could certainly make the case that we ought to be doing more, but not that it's ignored.

Research into x-risks from AI, though, remains an extremely niche field - its total funding is probably several orders of magnitude less than the amount spent on climate change. 80,000 Hours care about effectiveness on the margin, which is why their list of priorities looks the way it does.

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Re:The world’s biggest problems and why they’re not what fir... by xapata on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @02:56PM (#14447552)
Climate change is still largely ignored by a majority or significant fraction of government officials, which are the ones who must take action.
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Re:The world’s biggest problems and why they’re not what fir... by BrandonMarc on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @08:54PM (#14449776)
Which makes it a much tougher problem, therefore harder to have as much impact as on a truly neglected problem.
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