I am very much not a fan of this project's website linking to it's leaders' coaching program. I'm sorry, but that just screams grift. James Norris: If you are even a real person (your personal website screams SEO-optimized LLM slop), please do better. You are being actively unhelpful.
EDIT ~9 hours after posting: I'm feeling a bit bad about probably making another human being feel bad, even if I endorse the appropriateness of forceful negative feedback in this case.
Thanks for the feedback, but it looks like you're deeply misunderstanding key facts. Upgradable (a.k.a., 700,000 Hours) is and always has been entirely free to do on your own. Similarly, you can read the 80,000 Hours website or use the CFAR handbook to improve your career or your rationality. With CFAR, you did have to pay for the workshops.
You might not realize how difficult it is to do this kind of work without a stable financial base, as seen with Lightcone/LessWrong's recent financial challenges. If I had made more money, I could have donated back here.
If it wasn't clear, Upgradable was designed specifically to help people maximize the amount of good they can do with their lives (and started around the time when the rationality and EA movements started). If you did want to work with a coach, you and the coach would collaboratively set your price together. It can be a "pay for results or it's free" model, in some cases. We rarely coach folks these years, as almost all of our efforts are on Collective Action for Existential Safety and related initiatives. I do have a very high p(doom), as mentioned. Money is likely about to be completely useless.
Nothing on my site was LLMed and I've never learned SEO. I actually only put the site back up after many years of nothing being live. I prefer privacy and leading a quieter life. It's quite painful to try to be "out there" again to spread this message. (Primarily because of the hostility anyone in the spotlight gets, like in this case.)
I've coached for a long time now and, if I had to guess, I'd say I'm sensing something in you that has nothing to do with me. I'd be happy to help you explore that, if you wanted. Pro bono, of course. 95% of the 1,000+ folks I've helped over the years was done pro bono. You certainly don't go into coaching/rationality training if you want to make money.
If you don't think I'm real or that I haven't spent my lifetime in the fight to make a better world, I'm not sure what I can say here to convince you. My history is quite public and easy to research. I'm 26+ years in and 96% of what I've built or helped build was non-profit/social enterprise. The one exception was an educational startup I helped my mentor build about 20 years ago, but that was so I could earn to give. I pledged 90% of all of my assets to doing the most good around 1998, when I realized my mother was going to die of cancer. If civilization had gotten its act together earlier, that would never have happened.
The pledges I've taken are public and I'd be happy to open books to external auditors if there were ever a need. That's the plan for Profits for Safety organizations if the idea takes off. In the spirit of "criticize by creation, not by finding fault" you're welcome to volunteer for the initiative to make it happen.
If we spoke, happy to even show you the files I've created for my organizations over the years, my bank records, etc. You could report back your findings.
Even if you don't take me up on the offer to talk, kindly don't let your dislike of a person distract you from taking action to ensure humanity's future. The point of Collective Action for Existential Safety is to get people to act strategically to help the world. In that spirit, I hope you do use the resources to improve your impact.
Collective Action for Existential Safety is an initiative of the Center for Existential Safety, a new non-profit organization being formed in the United States.
Our central aim is to catalyze collective action to ensure humanity survives this decade. If we can achieve that, then we are likely to create an unimaginably good future for all.
We serve all Existential Safety Advocates globally. We believe artificial intelligence, nuclear weapons, engineered pandemics, and soon-to-be invented technologies threaten our civilization. The more of us working together to mitigate the risks, the better.
Feedback is very much welcome, but ideally it would be offered in a kind, collaborative, and well-informed manner. We believe unkind and uninformed criticism in this community has very likely reduced its positive impact on the world. My favorite guidelines for this are here. Please directly suggest changes to our actions list here.
On a personal note, I’ve been preparing for this for 26+ years now. I have short timelines and a high p(doom). But I believe we can still collectively raise our p(eutopia) if we act now as if our lives depended on it. They do. This could also be humanity’s finest hour.
Join us at existentialsafety.org. Please share the site widely and engage with us on social media. Everyone’s future is at stake and there are useful actions just about everyone can do to help.