Existential risks open thread

Thanks for reminding me about GCR.

it seems harder to think of the equivalent for preventing the accidental or deliberate release of synthetic diseases.

OK, how about really easy stuff, like systematically emailing researchers involved with synthetic biology and trying to convince them to reconsider their choice of field? Feels like ideally we would get someone who knew stuff about biology (and ideally had some level of respect in the biology community) to do this.

However its no secret that the cost-effectiveness of political advocacy is really hard to measure, which is perhaps why its been underanalysed in the Effective Altruism community.

Does anyone reading LW know stuff about political advocacy and lobbying? Is there a Web 2.0 "lobbyist as a service" company yet? ;)

Are there ways we can craft memes to co-opt existing political factions? I doubt we'd be able to infect, say, most of the US democractic party with the entire effective altruism memeplex, but perhaps a single meme could make a splash with good timing and a clever, sticky message.

Is there any risk of "poisoning the well" with an amateurish lobbying effort? If we can get Nick Bostrom or similar to present to legislators on a topic, they'll probably be taken seriously, but a half-hearted attempt from no-names might not be.

It feels like more research on this issue would have the effect of gradually improving the clarity of the existential risk picture. Do you think the current picture is sufficiently unclear that most potential interventions might backfire? Given limited resources, perhaps the best path is to do targeted investigation of what appear to be the most promising interventions and stop as soon as one that seems highly unlikely to backfire is identified, or something like that.

What level of clarity is represented by a "first pass"?

It is good idea. But anyway booklenth format is obsolete - that is why sequenses in LW is more popular then earlier booklenth Creating Friendly AI. So for the book it is better to be cut on wiki pages of chapter lenth. Another problem is luck of interest - I could create such wiki but most likely nobody would visit it. Anyway may be I should create it and invite people to try and add information.

"not you regular math camp" I gather

So pushing for more democratic governments in states like Russia and China

Do you expect democratic governments to engage less in arms races? Or to be less capable of engaging in them (because they might have less domestic/economic/military power)? Or to be less willing to actually deploy the produced arms? Or to be less willing to compete with the US specifically? Or to cause some other change that is desirable? And why?

I ask because "democracy" is an applause light that is often coopted when people mean something else entirely that is mentally associated with it. Such as low corruption, or personal freedom, or an alliance with Western nations.

Pushing for more democratic governments in states like Russia and China

That sounds like the sort of aggression which would lead to an arms race. How would America react if China tried to achieve regime change here?

Cyberattacks

...thereby encouraging them to invest in intelligent tech defence

I agree that if Russia and China became more democratic the world would be a safer place. Liberal democracies are generally better at cooperation, and almost never go to war with one another [see the extensive literature on Democratic Peace Theory].

However like Larks, I think this is a baaaaaad idea. Foreign inteference would either have no effect, or provoke harsh countermeasures.

Pushing for more democratic governments in states like Russia and China might also decrease the chances of nuclear war, etc.

Most Chinese people I talked to really disliked Japan, and seemed in favour of China invading Taiwan to "get it back". And that's from a sample that was more educated and western-friendly than the general population. I'm really not sure giving everybody the vote would really decrease the chances of nuclear war. It's not as if democratic elections in Iran, and Egypt (and maybe Libya?) were making the countries more stable.

if the Chinese government decided to stop helping North Korea, that might cause the country to "implode", which feels like a good thing from an x-risk reduction standpoint.

Sure, a civil war in a highly militarized country that has The Bomb, what could go wrong?

This article from the Christian Science Monitor suggests that if the Chinese government decided to stop helping North Korea, that might cause the country to "implode", which feels like a good thing from an x-risk reduction standpoint.

I think the civil war that would result combined with extreme proximity between Chinese and US troops (the latter supporting South Korea and trying to contain nuclear weapons) is probably an abysmal thing from an x-risk reduction standpoint.

Pushing for more democratic governments in states like Russia and China might also decrease the chances of nuclear war, etc.

How sure are you?

• Acts of military aggression by the PRC since 1949: About 5.
• Acts of military aggression by the USSR/Russia in the same period: About 5
• Acts of military aggression by the USA in the same period: About 7

(I've tried to be upwardly biased on numbers for all three, since it's obviously hard to decide who the aggressors in a conflict are)

• Wars that the PRC have participated in that were not part of domestic territorial disputes since 1949: 2
• Likewise for Russia: 5
• Likewise for the USA: 17

(for the USA and USSR figures I'm counting all of the Cold War as one conflict, and likewise all of the War on Terror)

Sources found here

Edit: What happened to my formatting? I've had this problem before but I've never been able to fix it.

What would be game changing in terms of avoiding threats, and our resilience to threats?

Interesting.

They seem more focused on general problem solving than game changing, but just raising the questions they do is game changing in a way. The blue team is Us, and what would harm us is Them. Getting people to increasingly view everyone else as Us would be game changing.

One of the things that cheers me about Death - it's a common bond with everyone else. Well, those living today for an afterlife tomorrow probably aren't so much part of that common bond, but maybe they'll come around someday.