Certainly there exist people who will be pushed to useful action by a pamphlet. They’re fairly common for wells in Africa, and rare for risks from self-improving AI. To get 5 “hits” with well pamphlets, you’ve got to distribute maybe 1000 pamphlets. To get 5 hits with self-improving AI pamphlets, you’ve got to distribute maybe 100,000 pamphlets. Obviously you should be able to target the pamphlets better than that, but then distribution and planning costs are a lot higher, and the cost per New Useful Person look higher to me on that plan than distributing HPMoR to leading universities and tech companies, which is a plan for which we already have good evidence of effectiveness, and which we are therefore doing.
Certainly there exist people who will be pushed to useful action by a pamphlet. They’re fairly common for wells in Africa, and rare for risks from self-improving AI. To get 5 “hits” with well pamphlets, you’ve got to distribute maybe 1000 pamphlets. To get 5 hits with self-improving AI pamphlets, you’ve got to distribute maybe 100,000 pamphlets. Obviously you should be able to target the pamphlets better than that, but then distribution and planning costs are a lot higher, and the cost per New Useful Person look higher to me on that plan than distributing HPMoR to leading universities and tech companies, which is a plan for which we already have good evidence of effectiveness, and which we are therefore doing.