Thanks for writing this up so nicely. The framing in terms of EA relevance is perfect.
Here’s another question I have that would be relevant to EA. Do you think that currently the risks from Back Contamination and Forward Contamination receive too much attention (relative to other risks)? In other words: is there some inertia in the sense that once a novel catastrophic risk does get recognized as a serious issue, it then doesn’t easily get out of people’s minds & institutional processes again?
(The background for my question is this: I read quite a bit about space ethics and sustainability in recent months. At times, I was astonished to see how often back & forward contamination come up as one of the “big topics” in space ethics/sustainability discussions. According to my—extremely unreliable—intuition, I found it hard to see why planetary protection should be such a central topic given that space exploration comes with many other major risks & opportunities. This was just my vague, subjective impression...)
Thanks for writing this up so nicely. The framing in terms of EA relevance is perfect.
Here’s another question I have that would be relevant to EA. Do you think that currently the risks from Back Contamination and Forward Contamination receive too much attention (relative to other risks)? In other words: is there some inertia in the sense that once a novel catastrophic risk does get recognized as a serious issue, it then doesn’t easily get out of people’s minds & institutional processes again?
(The background for my question is this: I read quite a bit about space ethics and sustainability in recent months. At times, I was astonished to see how often back & forward contamination come up as one of the “big topics” in space ethics/sustainability discussions. According to my—extremely unreliable—intuition, I found it hard to see why planetary protection should be such a central topic given that space exploration comes with many other major risks & opportunities. This was just my vague, subjective impression...)