Assessment companies

Epistemic Institutions, Empowering Exceptional People

Most certification processes (e.g schools & universities) require going through their teaching process in order to be certified. Due to either bad incentives or central planning, their tests are also often very bad at accurately assessing the skills of the assessed. This creates a situation where most certifications (e.g high school diplomas & degrees) aren't as credible and reliable as they should be, and yet people have to go through years of studying to get them because there aren't any other certifications processes they can go through to make their skills legible. Assessment companies fill this gap by separating teaching and assessment. They design their own tests and provide their own certifications, which they offer directly to people who want to take them to make their skills legible to other people (e.g employers). By competing on designing good tests and offering credible and reliable certifications, these companies allow people to study however they like and then take the test, they give teaching institutions more freedom as they no longer have to worry about certifying their students, and they help employers hire the right people (especially those they would currently miss).

(note: I've seen this idea mentioned by some people on LW, but I haven't seen anyone expand on it. I'm currently working on essay that expands on this idea.)

If you mentioned comment as an option I would probably comment instead of sending an email.

Fair, though I still tend to check what things I press on do before I press them. If there's no explanation I might still press them, but if it says "learn more" right there I will probably learn more before I do.

You shouldn't read too much into the amount of people pressing the button in terms of malice, but you can read into it in terms of negligence, lack of caution or impulsiveness. It's how many people saw a big red button and pressed it without first checking what it does. It's how many people took the chance that pressing it may do something bad even without the launch codes.

I was also curious what happens if you press the button and don't enter the code, but didn't check, because I view pressing the button as something you just don't do - I wouldn't do it even if a site admin specifically told me "you can press the button without any consequence". 

Though, having pressed the button, it was a good idea to publish how it looks, and you satisfied my curiosity.

Just found this post through your response to Tom VanAntwerp on twitter. There's a sequence of questions and posts on LessWrong made by me and a few others that's about this topic. I suggest checking it out for ideas, discussion, and references to a few things that already exist (though they're mostly agreed to be insufficient).

Perhaps also consider cross-posting this to LessWrong.

80,000 hours made an article calculating the chance any existential risk will happen (combined their probabilities), not sure if this fully applies to what you meant, but it's something.