This meetup is this Wednesday, from 7:00-9:30pm in QNC 2502. This is the second of two meetups that KWR is hosting jointly with EA Waterloo. 

Please note: for KWR attendees, this is half an hour earlier than the usual starting time. 

If you've never been to QNC 2502 before:

• QNC 2502 is the large lecture hall closest to the stairs on the 2nd floor.
• If you go to QNC through the bridge from MC, then QNC 2502 should be in front of the bridge exit.

Movie

We'll be watching Life in A Day, a 2010 documentary made by Youtube.

Content note: The film contains one shot of someone calling homosexuality a "disease", and a few scenes of factory farming/animal slaughter (the animal cruelty section runs from 42:10-44:40). The Love Parade section is pretty intense.

How the film works

Youtube asked people to film themselves on July 24th, 2010, and share the footage. They got 80,000 submissions and 4500 hours of content. They used it to make a 90-minute film about life on Earth.

We start and end at midnight. For each part of the day, we jump around the world to see what people are doing. Because people are similar, we see similar actions, in parallel.

For example, the sun comes up eight minutes into the movie. For the next 90 seconds, we watch people wake up. Some have alarms; some have roosters; some rise with the sun. Some are woken up by parents or lovers. Others wake up alone. One person sleeps on the street and wakes to the passing of cars. Everyone is different. But we all wake up.

Submitters also had the option to answer questions: 

"What do you love? What do you fear? What do you have in your pockets or handbag?" 

We get three minutes of fear (ten for love). People are afraid of ghosts, spiders, lions, and small noises in the middle of the night. They are afraid of God, Hell, and people different from themselves. They are afraid of losing childhood, losing their hair, and losing the people they love. We are all afraid of something.

This is what Life in a Day shows, over and over: In so many ways, we are the same.

(source)

Discussion

The Movie will be followed by some time for freeform discussion, regarding key concepts of effective altruism (as laid out in the top section here), and on the film specifically.

Some specific questions to discuss include:

• If you were an alien, and all you knew about humanity was this film...
  • ...what would you think were humanity's biggest problems? 
  • ...would you think that human life was, basically, good?
• Which elements of life do you think the film represents well, or poorly? If you were the director, what else would you have included?
• What issues didn't really appear in the film? Why do you think that was? And what does that tell us about seeking out neglected problems?
• If you had been filmed in 2010, how would you have answered the questions?
  • What do you love?
  • What do you fear?
  • What do you have in your pockets or handbag?