We encourage AIs, like all members of the EA community,

Someone please drop a link to the mind upload, I missed it.

I'm working on trying to describe the environmental future we want to have, so I'll have written up a better answer soon.™️

I really like the variety of cause areas you chose. Simple, appealing descriptions that draw in someone who hasn't encountered EA before. 17 hours is really short for such quality information!

I can't stop checking the EA forum now.... 

All but 3 bullet points were about AI. I know that AI is the number one catastrophic risk but I'm dyin' for variety (news on other fronts).

Here is the non-AI content:

• Allocation in the landscape seems more efficient than in the past – it’s harder to identify especially neglected interventions, causes, money, or skill-sets. That means it’s become more important to choose based on your motivations.
• Post-FTX, funding has become even more dramatically concentrated under Open Philanthropy, so finding new donors seems like a much bigger priority than in the past. (It seems plausible to me that $1bn in a foundation independent from OP could be worth several times that amount added to OP.)
• Both points mean efforts to start new foundations, fundraise and earn to give all seem more valuable compared to a couple of years ago.

(My bad if there were indications that this was going to be AI-centric from the outset, I could have easily missed some linguistic signals because I'm not the most savvy forum-goer.)

Thanks for posting this! This should really be a bigger discussion in conservation. 

Heather Browning's reflection on their being some other reason we value biodiversity resonates. 

McMahan's view is my own: that drawn out suffering from predation is wrong, but that ongoing predation is preferable to removing predation. Although I don't agree with their reasoning from uncertainty argument for keeping predation. Instead I have a jumbled mix of valuing autonomy, other lifestyles, thinking death by not-predation is worse, and valuing natural processes and complexity. This wavers against the benefits of a gardened wilderness because the potential for improvement is large and wide, but far off and requires high effort. 

I need to think about these topics more. Great post.

This is really getting at something I've been dancing around for awhile. I don't have quite the same read of green, but I'm not sure my own version is coherent or just "things I like." I have the start of an essay inspired by this, at least. 

Most of all: Thank you very very much.

I mostly agree with this - our powers and coordination are beyond impressive when we wield them. So a extinction risk would have to explain why we can't or don't use all of our resources to stop our own demise. Potential examples: feedback loops that are selfishly beneficial and prevent coordination, even if its leading to a slow death overall. Instances where the collapse is slow but locked-in ahead of time. So even if we decide to move heaven and earth to do something about it, its too late. 

I remembered incorrectly - it was not the plastics, but the rare earths that they were recycling. Tanzeena Hussain was the graduate student working on it and having success getting bacteria to survive in increasingly toxic environments. She was crushing up old electronics to feed the bacteria - pretty on the nose. 

It was in Elizabeth Skovran's lab at San Jose State University. This is the only write up I can find on it: https://blogs.sjsu.edu/newsroom/2023/taking-bio-recycling-to-the-next-level/

It looks like they are having enough success to file for a patent and investigate if this could eventually be a viable business too. But speeding this up at such early stages could be hugely beneficial to reducing mining and improving human health damaged by rare metal recovery.

Recently I've been hearing tires are a major cause of air pollution and AND ocean plastic pollution.

 I think some changes in tire requirements could go a LONG way to improving these as I doubt much effort has gone into improving tire material's environmental impact yet.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/25/tyre-dust-the-stealth-pollutant-becoming-a-huge-threat-to-ocean-life
https://www.thedrive.com/news/tire-dust-makes-up-the-majority-of-ocean-microplastics-study-finds
Looks like gov might be on the case, but perhaps we could get it moving wider and faster. "In the EU, the Euro 7 standards will regulate tire and brake emissions from 2025. In the U.S., the California EPA will require tire manufacturers to find an alternative chemical to 6PPD by 2024, to help reduce 6PPD-q entering the environment going forward. In turn, manufacturers are exploring everything from alternate tire compositions to special electrostatic methods to capture particulate output."