This is a more serious problem than it might first seem: advances in cognitive science have found the existence of cognitive biases such as scope insensitivity mean that effortful analytical thought is required for accurate reasoning about large-scale phenomena, so the world needs its greatest analytical thinkers to be caring and conscientious participants in steering its future. (See, for example, this recent open letter from AI research experts like Berkeley CS department head Stuart Russell and DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis calling for increased attention to the technical challenges of AI safety.)
As we become an increasingly advanced technological civilization, we need more of our mathematical genius to be socially interconnected and engaged with the rest of the world in a way that can competently perceive and act upon humanity’s most important problems.
To this end, SPARC strives to inspire the confidence, empathy, and strategic competence of our next generation’s brightest analytical minds, through a curriculum that includes not only mathematics, cognitive science, economics, and programming, but also frequent discussions of how to apply these fields to make better personal, professional, and altruistic decisions.
The amazing thing is that in 2012 when we were just beginning, this was just the aim of SPARC. But at this point, I can say that SPARC is actually working. We’ve seen our alumni forming and participating in interest groups at MIT and Harvard focussed on effective altruism and the future of humanity (harvardea.org), and even the near-term tactics of preserving the long-term survival of Earth-originating life (vis a vis thefutureoflife.org).
The next step in our mission is to secure a reliable funding source for SPARC. So far, fundraising from year to year has been an ad-hoc venture requiring many volunteer person-hours of effort that could be instead spent on developing and testing new curriculum. (We’ve been subjecting most of our lectures to testing on other volunteers before selecting the best ones for delivery at the camp itself, and freeing up more time to spend on this would surely enhance the program’s effectiveness.) If you can make an introduction to any foundation or individual who would be interested in funding such a high-impact, outside-the-box program as SPARC, please contact me via critcha@rationality.org … thanks!