I recently got my masters degree in television directing. For my masters project I had to conceptualise a video series and make one episode.
The episode I made is about engineered pandemics and what we can do to help prevent them.
I was thinking of making a longer EA forum post where I'd get more into detail about the process and the results, but this made me postpone sharing it here altogether. So I think the better approach may be to just answer your questions instead.
I know about infohazards, so I discussed the script with a couple of people who had written on the topic before publishing the video.
I've recently tried to share bits of the video on my Twitter and will continue doing so, but at the moment it has had very little impact on the views.
Any feedback on the video is welcome!
Hi! Just watched the video and I think it's super well produced, good job.
I was surprised how you managed to summarise a lot of the knowledge I already had on this topic in under 15 minutes.
Furthermore, I have talked to lots of people who mentioned that EA seems underrepresented in video format. YouTube seems like a good opportunity here that could be used more. Regarding this, I think this is valuable work. Also I like that you didn't give it the Effective Altruism "stamp". There should be more discussion on when it's appropriate to publicly advertise EA as a concept and when it's better to just introduce a topic we're concerned about without explicitely relating it to EA. This is related to the idea of external movement building:
Thank you! There is actually a longer version of my video (that I didn't publish) where I mention the EA longterm future fund and quickly pitch EA itself. But I decided to cut out that part because I already share it in a link in the description and it didn't add a lot to the central claims of the video. It would've made the video longer and lose its focus.
Good thinking! Attention spans are short enough these days so 15min seems plenty :)
Michael Montague, 7:48:
This sounded like an improvised answer instead of a succinct summary of the strongest argument against extinction level events being likely--which I think would have been a more ideal thing to include in the video.
In particular, Michael's answer leads me to wonder how he knows that future technological developments wouldn't make it much easier to predict which pathogens would "immunologically be a hit" and yet the video doesn't tell me.
Or a second objection: Why, given a long enough time horizon, wouldn't the possibility of a bad actor engineering many, many pathogens until one of them finally hits wouldn't be a concern?
This generally looks great!
I hadn't been expecting a professional narrator (at least, I assume that's not your voice, unless you were born to narrate YouTube videos). He does sound a little bit matter-of-fact in some places (like he's trying to sell me a product instead of expounding on the wonders of scientific development), but I think his presence is still a strong net positive.
A few notes -- I'm avoiding tiny notes for things not worth editing, but thinking about ways to improve future videos:
Things I really liked:
Great video! I didn't know the history about the weaponization of smallpox, cholera, anthrax and plague.