I recently looked through the current version of the virtual groups intro syllabus and was disappointed to see zero mention of s-risks within the sections on longtermism/existential risk. I think this is a symptom of a larger problem, where “longtermism” has come to mean a very particular set of future-oriented projects (primarily extinction risk reduction) that primarily derive from a very particular set of values (primarily classical utilitarianism). As facilitators responsible for introducing people to the ideas of EA, I think it’s important for us to diversify our readings and discussions to account for multiple reasonable starting positions. For a start, I suggest that we rework the week on existential risk to have a more general focus on cause prioritization in longtermism, including readings and discussions on the topic of s-risks.
More generally, I think that we should take the threat of groupthink very seriously. The best-funded and most influential parts of the EA community have come to prioritize a particular worldview and value system that is not necessarily definitive of EA, and one that reasonable people in the community could disagree with. Throughout my experience as a student organizer, I've seen many of my peers just defer to the views and values supported by organizations like 80,000 Hours without reflecting much on their own positions, which strikes me as quite problematic given that many want to represent EA as a question, not an ideology. Failing to include a broader range of ideas and topics in introductory fellowships only exacerbates this problem of groupthink.
I’d love to talk more about how we can diversify the range of views represented to newcomers, and in particular how we can “diversify longtermism.”
Well I think moral circle expansion is a good example. You could introduce s-risks as a general class of things, and then talk about moral circle expansion as a specific example. If you don't have much time, you can keep it general and talk about future sentient beings; if animals have already been discussed, mention that idea that if factory farming or something similar was spread to astronomical scales, that could be very bad. If you've already talked about risks from AI, I think you could reasonably discuss some content about artificial sentience without that seeming like too much of a stretch. My current guess is that focusing on detailed simulations as an example is a nice balance between (1) intuitive / easy to imagine and (2) the sorts of beings we're most concerned about. But I'm not confident in that, and Sentience Institute is planning a survey for October that will give a little insight into which sorts of future scenarios and entities people are most concerned about. If by "introductions" you're looking for specific resource recommendations, there are short videos, podcasts, and academic articles depending on the desired length, format etc.
Some of the specifics might be technical, confusing, or esoteric, but if you've already discussed AI safety, you could quite easily discuss the concept of focusing on worst-case / “fail-safe” AI safety measures as a promising area. It's also nice because it overlaps with extinction risk reduction work more (as far as I can tell) and seems like a more tractable goal than preventing extinction via AI or achieving highly aligned transformative AI.
A second example (after MCE) that benefits from being quite close to things that many people already care about is the area of reducing risks from political polarisation. I guess that explaining the link to s-risks might not be that quick though. Here's a short writeup on this topic, and I know that Magnus Vinding of the Center for Reducing Suffering is publishing a book soon called Reasoned Politics, which I imagine includes some content on this. Its all a bit early stages though, so I probably wouldn't pick this one at the moment.