After receiving an email today (below) from the Lifeboat Foundation's Board of Directors, headed by Eric Klien, I've created the ImmInst Lifeboat Foundation Team Forum.
LF's mission (excerpt below) is very much in line with ImmInst's mission (overcome the blight of involuntary death):
The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards a technological singularity.
It's also worthwhile to mention that a number of ImmInst members serve on LF's Strategic Advisory (contact me to add your name):
- Michael Anissimov
- Susan Fonseca-Klein
- Bruce Klein
- Ben Goertzel
- Richard Leis
- Natasha Vita-More
- Shannon Vyff
- Rudi Hoffman
- Anne Corwin
Our Lifeboat Foundation Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) will soon pass the mark of 500 members. High time to invite and incite the SAB's sub-boards to come to life and become productive... at each individual member's discretion, convenience, and availability.
We hereby invite and strongly encourage each SAB sub-board to start to self-organize by means of online collaboration tools, a wealth of which are freely available and easily findable on the web. We urge you to use whatever works for the members of the sub-board(s) you are on.
If your sub-board is unable to do this for itself, upon simple request to SABoardSupport@lifeboat.com, an online forum including polling capabilities, dedicated to your specific sub-board will be set up on behalf of your sub-board.
Through self-organization, we invite and encourage each sub-board to start its activities by achieving the following two tasks:
1) Elect or otherwise appoint, for a period of 1 year, 1 person who will moderate and drive, as a peer among peers, sub-board topic-focused discussions, and speak as the representative of that sub-board to the general meeting(s) of SAB sub-boards. Please make the name and contact information of each elected/appointed sub-board moderator known by e-mail to SABoardSupport@lifeboat.com
2) Formulate answers to (at least) the 5 key questions listed below and e-mail them -- together with anything else your sub-board wants to report or bring to LF's attention -- to: SABoardSupport@lifeboat.com.
The 5 key questions include:
a) What are the very best ways in which your LF SAB sub-board can help prevent or mitigate (which specific) x-risk(s)?
b) Prioritize these ways by likely effectiveness... and explain the rationale for it.
c) Estimate as precisely as reasonably possible the minimum costs as well as calendar time needed to execute each of these ways... and explain the estimation rationale for each.
d) Suggest -- per way -- the most likely effective approach to raise the funds you estimated as minimum costs for its execution. Optionally, also suggest most likely effective approaches to attracting the necessary human resources to each project representing a way.
e) List the commitments to action items which groups and/or individuals on your sub-board are willing to commit to... together with the deadline they set themselves for each commitment. In other words: the list of who commits to do what by when.
The answers received by LF will go on a webpage on the LF website dedicated to the description of the activities and achievements of each sub-board... as well as inform a general meeting of SAB sub-board representatives.
Note: If the members of a sub-board find that their answers need to be the subject of a vote before being forwarded for publication within LF, then please adopt voting by simple majorities for such.
LF's SAB counts a great many sub-boards. We need your active understanding and collaboration to minimize the administrative load of supporting and coordinating so many. Please exercise forbearance and avoid contributing to the swamping of our as yet limited administrative resources by self-organizing as much as possible without calling on the support of LF's administrative services.
Ideally, all of LF's coordination work will initially be limited to receiving your work product in the form of one or more e-mails and putting it up on the LF Web site.
All SAB members interested in volunteering some time as temporary sub-board moderators just to get things started... are encouraged to come forward right away -- preferably within a week from today -- and signal this to us by sending an e-mail to SABoardSupport@lifeboat.com.
Volunteer moderators who make themselves known in this manner will receive, upon simple request, a full list of the e-mail addresses of the members of the sub-board they are on.
We look forward to hearing from prospective -- and in due course elected -- LF SAB sub-board moderators shortly.
Thank you for helping safeguard humanity.
The Lifeboat Board of Directors
I also made a $100 donation to LF today as well:
Thank you for your donation to the Lifeboat Foundation.
You are now Lifeboat Member 2020 3102 6581 2094.
We are engaged in the most comprehensive effort being taken to ensure that humanity safely adopts increasingly powerful technologies, including genetics/biotechnology, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards a technological singularity.
We are working to educate the public to coming dangers while we help accelerate the development of defensive technologies including anti-biological virus technologies such as RNA interference and new vaccine methods, effective nanotechnological defensive strategies, and self-sustaining space colonies in case the other defensive strategies fail.
Thank you for your donation to our effort!
The Lifeboat Foundation
"Safeguarding Humanity"