Hi @Jason,

Thanks for your question!

This book is targeted at people who are looking for purpose from a scientific perspective, and as such, will focus on morality from a (suffering-focused) perspective of sentient well-being: this gives many important problems (such as climate change or the suffering in factory farming) many of us can help alleviate. This isn't new, but I believe the combination of sentientism and longtermism with ideas like Functional Decision Theory is unique. Furthermore, the focus on S-risk over X-risk (though both are incredibly important) puts a different perspective on space colonization than the one that's usually popularized by e.g. Elon Musk (where space colonization is seen as an obviously good thing given that it can reduce X-risk).

Does this answer your questions?

Hi @Jacy,

First of all, thanks so much for your offer! I also want to thank you explicitly for taking the time to write such a thoughtful comment. I'll try to reply to your thoughts below.

"I appreciate that the author is focused on longtermism and sentientism and that they have an interest in FDT. I wouldn't be too excited about a more generic pitch for such a wide-ranging book, but I think with particular angles like these, it could be more unique and promising. On the other hand, I expect a successful book to usually have a clearer vision and pitch for that uniqueness at the current stage of this project."

Thank you. Part of the goal of this book is to teach subjects that are little known and yet important. One of these subjects is FDT, another is S-risks. I believe discussing S-risks is particularly important as it seems many people believe colonizing space is a good idea as it lowers X-risk without considering it could increase S-risk. Humanity needs to get clear on how to build a moral civilization first (and act on that), and then colonize space. That's where sentientism and longtermism (and effective altruism, even though I didn't mention it in the pitch) come in, and they form the main theme of this book. Everything else flows from there. I hope this makes my vision a bit more clear, and believe the uniqueness of this book will come from the combination of sentientism, longtermism (including X-risk and S-risk) and FDT.

"I don't have a good sense of what sort of publication is being targeted, and my prior for the success of a self-published book without a significant author platform or exceptionally creative marketing strategy is quite low. I also think two years (even one year) is a long time to write a successful book like this, at least unless there is a lot of original research (e.g., travel, interviews)."

One good way to publish this book would simply be on Medium, either as one long post or multiple chapters in one publication: I have a following on Medium (>800 at the moment), and Medium curators may even "boost" the post (or some of the chapters) to reach more people. Additionally, publishing this as an ebook could be useful as well, as it would have a bit more credibility.

"I'd be more excited about a smaller grant to develop the idea further and explore alternative strategies like a highly targeted and themed blog, newsletter, forum post sequence, or social media presence. I see my tiny impact certificate offer primarily as a skin-in-the-game upvote for this direction."

I get this, but I do see this as one large, unified project: all concepts - sentientism, longtermism, FDT - come together in one philosophy which I like to call Timeless sentientism.

I hope I've made things a bit more clear with this reaction. Obviously, feel free to ask me anything!