Just came across this post from a friend. I’m a co-founder of Life Itself which would count itself as part of the ecosystem and we have been developing an ecosystem mapping of this space over the 2y+ and published an online guide and directory in 2021:
https://ecosystem.lifeitself.us
We specifically sought to try and identify some of the key features and settled on “paradigmatic, integrated and engaged”:
This project maps an emerging ecosystem centred on a radical, alternative approach to social change – one that is simultaneously paradigmatic, integrated and engaged. Discover key features and ideas of this growing space. Explore associated organizations, individuals and initiatives. See how it relates to other established and emerging movements.
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Paradigmatic
There is the belief that the change required is paradigmatic. That is to say, it seeks a transition of the entire social paradigm at both a systems and “ontological” (worldview and narratives) level. This contrasts with approaches that either simply seek reform e.g. making market liberalism better, or transformation that is deep but only in a given area e.g. transforming our structures of economic production and ownership but leaving base assumptions about who we are and how we relate to the natural world untouched.
IntegratedIt identifies the need to incorporate methods and routes to change spanning a variety of fields and “locations” (e.g. personal, cultural, institutional etc). One central and basic example common to most (though not all) actors is the belief that inner and outer transformation have to go hand in hand. In Integral terms it is “all-quadrant” and in particular, prioritises the neglected “inner” quadrants.
Engaged
Participants are actively engaging with wider society for the purposes of social transformation. This sets it apart from groups which may be doing large amount of inner work but without connecting this directly and explicitly to broader social change, for example certain parts of the spiritual, developmental and psychedelic communities.
Thanks for everyone who shared comments and links and the directory project is open to contributions and is an open knowledge project.
A 1% probability of “ruin” i.e. total extinction (which you cite is your assessment) would still be more than enough to warrant complete pausing for a lengthy period of time.
There seems to be a basic misunderstanding of expected utility calculations here where people are equating the weighting on an outcome with a simple probability x cost of outcome e.g. if there is a 1% chance of the 8 billion dying the “cost” of that is not 80 million lives (as someone further down this thread computes).
Normally the way you’d think about this (if you want to do math to stuff like this) is to think about what you’d pay to avoid that outcome using Expected Utility.
This weights over the entire probability distribution with their expected (marginal utility). In this case, marginal utility goes to infinity if we go extinct (unless you are in the camp: let the robots take over!) and hence even small risks of it would warrant us doing everything possible to avoid it.
This is essentially precautionary principle territory.