1. At the time, EA was looking for bold ideas to use a lot of money productively. There was talk of a funding overhang. EA was looking to get aggressive at spending money on useful things. I think you’d have heard very little pushback at the time on this.
2. I’m still not against this. I think this is a very good piece of the puzzle in mitigating against bio risk. I know it is expensive. Whether we do it or not depends a bit on our other options and the amount of money EA has.
3. Maybe not this island specifically but it seems like a decent start.
4. I don’t think the island should be “specific to EAs” but a selected group that would be able to restart civilization? Sure
I’m curious about all the downvotes as I understood Marcus to simply be saying “Building a bunker for some people somewhere should at least be on the table.”
Is even this just too toxic an idea in the current political climate? Because if you can’t save everyone, you obviously shouldn’t save anyone or something like that?
(I know Garrison has given a response below that sounds like an explanation for a downvote, but actually I can’t see any disagreement in it.)
I think there definitely would have been pushback against this at the time! And if there wasn’t, I would have not felt like this was a community for me. Titotal’s comment explains this better than I could. Additionally, GiveDirectly could have deployed billions and animal welfare charities were nowhere close to fully funded even at the height of the FTX bubble.
The idea of refuges broadly isn’t obviously terrible, but all the specifics of this one seem terrible, again for reasons outlined by others.
See above
This seems like a pretty essential piece of the proposal!
It does depend on the cost, to be clear. And I fully agree with you that animal welfare charities are starved for cash and that we can be deploying far more to Global Health and Poverty.
About point 4: While commenting, I presumed the controversial bit was “let’s build bunkers only for EAs.” Reading other comments, however, it seems that maybe I misunderstood something because there is more focus on the “let’s build bunkers” part and not as much on the latter.
The idea of making bunkers is somewhat out there but not uncommon; governments have done it nationally at least once, and an active group of preppers do it now. In the event of a catastrophe, I would appreciate having access to a bunker, and I am sure so would others.
Making it only for EAs implies (the utterly wrong idea) that in the event of a catastrophe, EAs are somehow more valuable and worthy of saving than non-EAs. This goes against some core ideas that we aim to cultivate.
1. At the time, EA was looking for bold ideas to use a lot of money productively. There was talk of a funding overhang. EA was looking to get aggressive at spending money on useful things. I think you’d have heard very little pushback at the time on this.
2. I’m still not against this. I think this is a very good piece of the puzzle in mitigating against bio risk. I know it is expensive. Whether we do it or not depends a bit on our other options and the amount of money EA has.
3. Maybe not this island specifically but it seems like a decent start.
4. I don’t think the island should be “specific to EAs” but a selected group that would be able to restart civilization? Sure
I’m curious about all the downvotes as I understood Marcus to simply be saying “Building a bunker for some people somewhere should at least be on the table.”
Is even this just too toxic an idea in the current political climate? Because if you can’t save everyone, you obviously shouldn’t save anyone or something like that?
(I know Garrison has given a response below that sounds like an explanation for a downvote, but actually I can’t see any disagreement in it.)
I think there definitely would have been pushback against this at the time! And if there wasn’t, I would have not felt like this was a community for me. Titotal’s comment explains this better than I could. Additionally, GiveDirectly could have deployed billions and animal welfare charities were nowhere close to fully funded even at the height of the FTX bubble.
The idea of refuges broadly isn’t obviously terrible, but all the specifics of this one seem terrible, again for reasons outlined by others.
See above
This seems like a pretty essential piece of the proposal!
It does depend on the cost, to be clear. And I fully agree with you that animal welfare charities are starved for cash and that we can be deploying far more to Global Health and Poverty.
About point 4: While commenting, I presumed the controversial bit was “let’s build bunkers only for EAs.” Reading other comments, however, it seems that maybe I misunderstood something because there is more focus on the “let’s build bunkers” part and not as much on the latter.
The idea of making bunkers is somewhat out there but not uncommon; governments have done it nationally at least once, and an active group of preppers do it now. In the event of a catastrophe, I would appreciate having access to a bunker, and I am sure so would others.
Making it only for EAs implies (the utterly wrong idea) that in the event of a catastrophe, EAs are somehow more valuable and worthy of saving than non-EAs. This goes against some core ideas that we aim to cultivate.