Someone filled out my anonymous contact form earlier this week asking to talk, but didn't leave their contact info. If this was you, please let me know how to reach you!

So, now let's allow for a more egalitarian society, where everyone works, but not for ever hour of the day, they get some time to contemplate the world, and be creative. Now out of your population of 1,000,000 you have 100 genuine 1 in 10,000 geniuses, each with a chance of being discovered

Thanks, this changed how I was thinking about this!

Thanks, fixed!

High Impact Athletes is one effort in this direction.

I'm really glad I was able to help make this experience better, and that you stayed in the community.

Night work just does seem to be worse for people's cognition: metastudy

Asking people to try out a minimum viable product, which they can abandon if they don't like it, seems fine. Asking people to take a minimum viable pledge about how they will orient their entire career seems very different to me.

I'd think a better way to get feedback is to ask "What do you think of this pledge wording?" rather than encourage people to take a lifelong pledge before it's gotten much external feedback.

For comparison, you could see when GWWC was considering changing the wording of its pledge (though I recognize it was in a different position as an existing pledge rather than a new one): Should Giving What We Can change its pledge?

Sometimes people mention "expanding the moral circle" as if it's universally good. The US flag is an item that has expanded and contracted in how much care it gets.

The US Flag Code states: "The flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing." When I was a child, my scout troop taught us that American flags should never touch the ground, and a worn-out flag should be disposed of respectfully by burial (in a wooden box, as if it were a person) or burning (while saluting the flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance) and then burying. Example instructions. People from most countries find this hard to believe!

One explanation is that the veneration for this physical object is symbolic of respect for military troops and veterans, but my scout troop sure put more effort into burning the flag properly than we ever did to helping troops or veterans in any more direct way.

Which beings / objects / concepts are worthy of special care can be pretty arbitrary. Expansion isn't always good, and contraction of the moral circle isn't always bad.

Further reading: https://gwern.net/narrowing-circle 
 

Worth a try! Different meds are activating (make you more alert / awake) vs sedating, so it's also worth noticing if an evening dose makes it harder to sleep.