richardbatty

There are organisations that work with people who have had challanging psychedelic experiences, but without taking the psychiatric approach. One such project is: https://zendoproject.org/

You could also try contacting https://challengingpsychedelicexperiences.com/

There are also therapists who work with people before and after psychedelic experiences, called psychedelic integration therapists. They usually have legit mainstream psychotherapy qualifications.

There are also integration circles where people support each other. For example, https://acerintegration.com/ This was set up by a researcher in psychedelics. Not sure if it would be appropriate for someone experiencing psychosis though. You could also try contacting the researcher directly for recommendations: https://www.drrosalindwatts.com/

There are also forums where you could ask for advice, e.g. https://old.reddit.com/r/RationalPsychonaut/

They might be able to point you to other resources like this in your area.

I really like the idea but one thing that puts me off is if most of the essays end up being blog posts from the last few years.

I'd be more interested in being sent a selection of recommended classic essays. E.g. by people like Orwell or Montaigne. You could populate it with essays found on project Gutenberg, or from high quality magazines like London Review of Books.

Also the examples are very tech focused. Are you planning to include other areas?

EconTalk - interviews with social scientists about various topics. The interviewer is an economist so it's an interesting discussion between experts.

Economics detective radio - similar to EconTalk

Rationally speaking - interviews related to rational thinking.

80,000 Hours podcast - in depth interviews about the world's biggest problems and how to use your career to solve them. (Disclaimer: I used to work for them, but I genuinely love the podcast)

Feeling good podcast - by one of the pioneers of cognitive behavioural therapy, discusses mental health techniques.

This calculator adjusts for cost of living: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/how-rich-am-i/

Earning at least $55,000 per year in the US with a household of one adult puts you in the top 1%.

$32,000 puts you in the top 3.4%, which is still pretty good.

> People believe them because of their credentials, when professors who actually teach AI will say otherwise

While some experts like Andrew Ng are sceptical of AI risk, there are lots of others like Stuart Russell who are concerned.

Here is a big list of quotes from AI experts concerned about AI risk: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/22/ai-researchers-on-ai-ri...

You can teach that, or at least learn it, with cognitive behavioural therapy for social anxiety and practice in progressively more difficult situations.

Oh right, I think a big difference is that in American courses it seems that there is one course textbook, and the assignments are taken from that. Our courses weren't designed around a textbook.

For us, assignments (both problem sheets and essay questions) were written by our tutors. They came with a reading list that would include a selection of relevant articles, books, and textbooks, but there was no single one that you had to use.

Why can't students just borrow textbooks from the library? I see the 'textbooks are expensive' complaint from Americans a lot and I'm confused. I never had to buy a textbook at my UK university, there were usually plenty of copies in the library. What's different about the US system?

The Open Philanthropy Project uses the word 'Open' to mean (http://www.openphilanthropy.org/what-open-means-us):

"Open to many possibilities ... instead of starting with a predefined set of focus areas, we’re considering a wide variety of causes where our philanthropy could help to improve others’ lives." and "Open about our work ... Very often, key discussions and decisions happen behind closed doors, and it’s difficult for outsiders to learn from and critique philanthropists’ work. We envision a world in which philanthropists increasingly document and share their research, reasoning, results and mistakes to help each other learn more quickly and serve others more effectively."

This all seems pretty useful so I don't get what your criticism is.

There's this facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1062957250383195/) where EA orgs tend to post their jobs, along with other jobs from orgs that are interesting to EAs even if not explicitly EA.

To add some numbers to this, according to http://www.climatefinancelandscape.org/ $392 billion was spent on various aspects of tackling climate change in 2014. In contrast, under $10 million per year is being spent on potential risks from AI (https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/artificial-intellige...).

That doesn't mean there's nothing neglected in climate change (e.g. negative emissions technology) and it would be good to see some more investigation into this.

I agree that silicon valley technologists are not well informed about the problems of the poor (or other important problems) and too often use the rhetoric of doing good whilst not thinking carefully enough about how to actually do that.

But I don't think concentrating on local problems is the right solution given that there are much more important non-local problems to solve. Perhaps entrepreneurs should concentrate on profit and then donate what they earn. Alternatively, they could learn about important problems and partner with experts in those problems to avoid naively doing more harm than good.

This article brings up an important source of bias that tech people risk - that we overuse models from programming when thinking about other aspects of the world. We should be learning alternative models from other subjects like economics, philosophy, sociology, etc so that we can improve our mental toolbox and avoid thinking everything works like a software system.

I'd say that another related source of bias is that we are surrounded by people who think like us.

It's a shame though, that the article dismisses without much explicit justification risk from artificial intelligence and the problem of death. When I first encountered these ideas, I dismissed them because they seemed weird. But if you read the arguments for caring you realise that they are actually well thought-out. For AI risk, check out http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolu... and https://www.amazon.co.uk/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategie.... For an argument for tackling death, checkout http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html.

Also, there's a clear answer to 'If after decades we can't improve quality of life in places where the tech élite actually lives, why would we possibly make life better anywhere else?' -- because the tech elite live in a rich society where most of the fundamental problems (e.g. infectious disease control, widespread dollar-a-day level poverty, access to education) have been solved. The remaining problems are much harder and we should focus on problems where our resources can go further - e.g. in helping the global poor. We should also work on important problems that we have a lot of influence over, such as risks from artificial intelligence and surveillance technology.

How do you find companies working on important problems? When I look at the London software scene, I mostly find trivial (or dull corporate) web and mobile apps.

Which kinds of industries have software engineers working on real technology problems?