“The Root Cause” by EuanMcLean

In her office nestled in the corner of constellation, Amina is checking in with her employee Diego about his project – a new AI alignment technique. It's 8pm and the setting sun is filling Amina's office with a red glow. Diego is clearly running a sleep deficit, and 60% of Amina's mind is on a paper deadline next week.

1: Hopelessness

Diego: I’m feeling quite hopeless about the whole thing.

Amina: About the project? I think it's going well, no?

Diego: No, I mean the whole thing. AI safety. It's so hard for me to imagine the work I’m doing actually moving the p(doom) needle.

Amina: This happens to a lot of people in the bay. There are too many doomers around here! Personally I think the default outcome is that we won’t get paperclipped, we’re just addressing a tail risk.

Diego: That's not really what I mean. It's [...]

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Outline:

(00:38) 1: Hopelessness

(11:02) 2: The metacrisis movement

(21:58) 3: The root cause of existential risk

(35:31) Wanna read more about the metacrisis (and related ideas)?

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First published:

June 17th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/w3zfrpg4YuHQKKSEG/the-root-cause

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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