Sorry for the late comment. I've recently been listening to, and enjoying, The End of the World with Josh Clark. It seems like a really solid and approachable introduction to existential risks. It starts by covering why x-risks might be things that we should be concerned about, and then talks about AI, biosecurity and other possible threats. Includes interviews with Nick Bostrom, Toby Ord, Anders Sandberg, Robin Hanson and others :)
Thanks for the write-up :) I agree with the other commenters. In particular, I'm inclined to think it's too early for the suggested actions, especially the proposed public health initiative. I think it would be interesting to see more research, but a public health initiative is premature.
You say:
This makes sense, but by doing more studies on mewing, we may move mewing up the hierarchy of evidence, yet in the process find that the effect is not as large as we might have hoped. Or maybe there are other factors that come into play such as low adherence (as Julia suggested). That is, being in the early adopters phase / being low on the hierarchy of evidence isn't a reason to act with insufficient evidence.
I think there's progress to be made here, but it's at the stage of information-gathering, not a public health initiative (yet).