Imagination, Values, and Consciousness: Missing Levers in Risk Reduction?

By Ross McMath @ 2025-08-19T18:27 (–1)

This is a linkpost to https://open.substack.com/pub/valuelife/p/nourish-the-algorithm-weave-the-web?r=ksyyq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

This essay argues that alongside technical fixes, imagination, values, and culture are critical leverage points for shaping civilisation’s trajectory. It draws inspiration from Mo Gawdat’s “fruit salad” metaphor (Diary of a CEO podcast), Indra’s Net, and systems thinking — applied through an existential risk lens.

While frameworks like 80,000 Hours have mapped out crucial technical and institutional interventions, the piece suggests that speculative domains such as consciousness exploration and free-energy research — though currently outside mainstream science and policy — may also hold underexplored potential to reduce risks or expand our response options.The piece closes with a challenge: if technical fixes address how civilisation survives, imagination, values, and even expanded states of consciousness may shape what kind of civilisation we pass on. What ideas, norms, or institutions can we seed now that will most influence the trajectory of future generations? And how do we ensure those seeds reflect not only caution, but compassion, dignity, and trust?

I’d love community input on:

• Do frameworks like 80,000 Hours underweight imagination and culture as levers for change?
• How should EA treat speculative but high-impact domains (e.g. consciousness research, explore and comment on the credibility of non-mainstream energy tech)?
• Where are the highest-leverage points for integrating values and foresight into existing risk strategies?