Any predictions on whether the film will seem to be positive from an existential-risk-reducing perspective or not?
Or perhaps more constructively, what possible features of the film could make it seem positive from an xrisk perspective? Which possible features could make it seem negative?
Possible Positives:
- If it makes viewers viscerally feel the importance of preventing extinction
- If it reminds viewers of the importance of preventing extinction, such that they are more likely to take other action to reduce extinction risks in the future
- If it educates people on coordination problems or other obstacles that humanity actually faces (or may actually face) when trying to deal with extinction risks
Possible Negatives:
- If it leaves viewers with a false impression of the absolute risk of extinction due to asteroids
- If it leaves viewers with a false impression of the relative risk of extinction due to asteroids (relative to other extinction risks)
- If it reduces the chance that other (positive) Hollywood films about extinction risk get made in the coming years
A random idea on how this film could end by explicitly promoting existential risk awareness:
Toby Ord reading a table out loud sounds like a bridge too far, but it's not uncommon for movies to end with a link to some relevant real-world resource. If I knew the people behind this movie (I don't) and thought there might be time to change it (no idea), I'd probably advocate for something like this (many ways to improve the wording, I'm sure) before the credits:
This film isn't based on a true story. But it may become one.
Learn about risks to humanity, and how you can help:
theprecipice.com
(More realistically, if I did have an in, I'd ask people like Toby Ord what message they'd want millions of random viewers to see.)
I could imagine them interviewing Toby Ord for a mockumentary, like Death to 2020
beautiful
How much would it cost to influence the film to make this happen?
I don't know; I doubt it's a problem where throwing money at it is the right answer. In any case, it's unclear to me whether doing this would actually be positive value or not. I imagine it would be quite controversial, even among EAs who are into longtermism. I just shared the idea because I thought it was interesting, not because I necessarily thought it was good.
Yeah, I agree that money is not the bottleneck. I think the strongest bottleneck is decision quality on whether this is a good idea, and a secondary bottleneck is whether our Hollywood contacts are good enough to make this happen conditional upon us believing it's actually a good idea.
Do you have a story for why this could be a bad idea?
Having popular presentations of our ideas in an unnuanced form may either a) give the impression that our ideas are bad/silly/unnuanced or b) low-status, akin to how a lot of AI safety efforts are/were rounded off as "Terminator" scenarios.