Casey_

(edit 7/24/2023: Certain sections of this post I no longer endorse, but the central dilemma of the Eye remains) The decision to reach out to the broad public isn't - or shouldn't - be one that comes lightly. However, once you are actively vying for the Eye of Sauron - writing in TIME, appearing on highly visible/viral podcasts, getting mentioned in white house press briefings, spending time answering questions from twitter randos, and admitting you have no promising research directions by way of partially explaining why all this public-facing work is happening - you are no longer catering exclusively to a select subset of the population, and your actions should reflect that. You are, whether you like it or not, engaged in memetic warfare - and recent events/information make me think this battle isn't being given proper thought. Perhaps this wasn't super intentional, and after now having poked the bear MIRI may realize this isn't in their best interest. But surely it's better to either be (1) completely avoiding the Eye of Sauron and not concerned with public facing memetics at all, or (2) committed to thorough, strategic, and effective memetic warfare. Instead, we are wandering around in this weird middle ground where, for example, Eliezer feels like X hours are well spent arguing with randos. If we are to engage in memetics, low hanging fruit are abound, and being ignored: * Refusing to engage billionaires on twitter - especially ones that are sufficiently open to being convinced that they will drop $44 billion for something as pedestrian as a social media company. * Not even attempting to convince other high leverage targets * Eliezer apparently hasn't even had (and isn't actively seeking to have!?) extended conversations with leading AI labs/scientists (I may add a timestamp later) * Existing rockstar researchers * Other billionaires/millionaires * Relying on old blogposts and 1-1 textual arguments instead of much more viral (and sca