I think you overlook the argument that he reduces the risk of a global totalitarian government.
I don’t have the citation you’re referring to, so briefly, how is global autocracy a GCR, and secondly, how is it a serious possibility in the first place?
on 1, Bostrom has repeatedly mentioned that any type of global singleton could reduce existential risks.
on 2, I’m assuming that your chain of reasoning is just that less probability of world government → less probability of every type of world government. It seems like a strange thing to worry about however, as we’re so far from having any world government, let alone one which lacks any kind of governmental legitimacy and has complete power over its constituents. I can’t imagine what forces would drive world leaders like the US and NATO to become autocratic, and likewise I can’t imagine how that would happen to the UN or to a democratic world government.
It seems pretty clear that generally increasing intergovernmental coordination is good, and it’s not clear exactly how the dynamics of global autocracy would be changed by a Trump presidency (for instance, maybe the norms propagated by isolationist powers would encourage forcible rather than federative construction of a global regime, making it bad by this profile as well).
single point of failure, potentially magnifying a disaster. Unclear which universe we live in. The one where the biggest risk is coordination failures (arms races), in which case we should prefer even a mediocre singleton. Or one where the biggest risk is failure to have a variety of decision making processes in play, in which case we should prefer many governments. Internal threats favor coordination, which is the bulk of the probability mass right now.
I don’t have the citation you’re referring to, so briefly, how is global autocracy a GCR, and secondly, how is it a serious possibility in the first place?
on 1, Bostrom has repeatedly mentioned that any type of global singleton could reduce existential risks.
on 2, I’m assuming that your chain of reasoning is just that less probability of world government → less probability of every type of world government. It seems like a strange thing to worry about however, as we’re so far from having any world government, let alone one which lacks any kind of governmental legitimacy and has complete power over its constituents. I can’t imagine what forces would drive world leaders like the US and NATO to become autocratic, and likewise I can’t imagine how that would happen to the UN or to a democratic world government.
It seems pretty clear that generally increasing intergovernmental coordination is good, and it’s not clear exactly how the dynamics of global autocracy would be changed by a Trump presidency (for instance, maybe the norms propagated by isolationist powers would encourage forcible rather than federative construction of a global regime, making it bad by this profile as well).
single point of failure, potentially magnifying a disaster. Unclear which universe we live in. The one where the biggest risk is coordination failures (arms races), in which case we should prefer even a mediocre singleton. Or one where the biggest risk is failure to have a variety of decision making processes in play, in which case we should prefer many governments. Internal threats favor coordination, which is the bulk of the probability mass right now.