Metaphors and short explanations have a large influence on how we think.
But most of our common reference points lean dystopian: P(doom), the paperclip maximizer, Black Mirror, Brave New World, 1984, the list goes on. Where are the equally compelling ones for positive futures; abundant clean energy, infinite knowledge, no infectious disease, no poverty, solved aging, effective global coordination?
There has been some valuable recent work on this, such as the Better Futures series by Will MacAskill and Fin Moorhouse, which explores how to think more seriously about positive trajectories. Still, there’s a lot of space left for cultural references that can stick as easily as the dystopian ones.
As one small step toward filling this gap, we are launching the Existential Hope Meme Prize offering $10,000 for the best meme that conveys a hopeful vision of the future.
This project was first suggested at Vision Weekend Europe 2024. Much thanks to Ben Cumming and Jan Kulveit for this idea.
Details and submissions here: existentialhope.com/existential-hope-meme-prize
We’d appreciate your help spreading the word, and of course, if you make memes yourself we’d love to see your submissions!
This is not a good use of money. Maybe $100 for this, and the rest can save children or animals?
$10,000 seems reasonable.
A base rate of ~(1/number of top entries) for the chance of winning $100 isn't going to motivate high effort tweets.
One hundred dollars for a single tweet is a huge reward when you compare it to the amount of effort that goes into it, and would have no trouble motivating plenty of people.
Ten thousand dollars for a tweet is outrageously high, and could end up as another PR disaster.
This seems misleading and false?
yep potential change of PR disaster was my first thought here. 500 dollars or even 1000 would be safe on the PR front i think, and i doubt there is much to be gained in the quality meme to front between offering 1k or 10k
The format can also be a video or an image or another meme format.
The high $10000 value can bring in non-EA marketing or meme professionals, and I’m not sure how to feel about that if they’re extrinsic motivated.
This line of reasoning seems very shortsighted to me. Historically intellectual innovation, popularization and outreach have sometimes yielded extremely high returns; it can be prudent to invest rather than consuming all your seed corn immediately. It could be a bad investment, but the mere counterfactual possibility of donating to AMF doesn't automatically discredit anything upstream.
Why not split the prize money over a range of winners ( like the best 20 memes).
I agree with most folks here that this is a pretty poor allocation of resources. However, ignoring all that and thinking about the task, I would say that the 'indomitable human spirit' trend from a while back is probably the best example of what is being looked for. If you're going to be forcing a meme it's probably best to just rehash that.
If you still want to spend the whole $10,000 cash amount to get attention without having fallout you can also restrict the money to be donated to a charity of the winner’s choice. If the winner is an EA, it is more than likely that the money would go to an EA charity.