Disclaimer: I have no expertise, just want to share random thought. Only read if you’re willing to risk wasting time.
I think civilians theoretically have the power to stop the war in Ukraine (or at least make a successful peace deal/ceasefire more likely), if they pledge that which country they live in doesn’t depend on which country wins.
This means that if they want to live in the other country, they move there right now. If they want to stay in the current country, they will evacuate away from the front lines, and if they ever end up in the other country they promise they will try their best to leave. They do not stay where they are waiting to be liberated.
There are obvious downsides to this, as leaving one’s house and hometown is extremely costly. But then again, so is war. The war in Ukraine is not only costly in human lives, but makes the world a more hostile and uncooperative place, and reduces humanity’s ability to survive existential risks.
If enough civilians follow this strategy, there will be less political pressure for the Ukrainian government to liberate people trapped in Russian occupied territories, and Putin will have far less to gain by conquering large parts of Ukraine, because any people he hopes to add are more likely to flee. He still gains land and resources, but they won’t offset the enormous costs of war. A war over land and resources (instead of people) is still very hard to stop, but may end relatively sooner.
It sounds bad to let civilians to join the other side, but it’s possible that a deal can be reached, similar to prisoner swaps which have occurred in the past. It’s costly to keep civilians who want to leave to the other side, since they may be a liability, and keeping them in your territory means the other side is motivated to liberate civilians or increase their population by taking those territories.
There are definitely a large population of civilians who won’t follow this strategy no matter what, and a large population of civilians who already follow this strategy anyways. But I think there are still lots of war-weary people who are undecided and would be swayed if they knew its influence on ending the war.
Sorry if this idea is naive, but I’m interested in these things, and would like to learn why this idea probably won’t work, (or why all such “shower thought” ideas are so certain to fail they’re not worth asking about).
How would you rate current AI labs by their bad influence or good influence? E.g. Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, DeepSeek, xAI, Meta AI.
Suppose that the worst lab has a −100 influence on the future, for each $1 they spend. A lab half as bad, has a −50 influence on the future for each $1 they spend. A lab that’s actually good (by half as much) might have a +50 influence for each $1.
It’s possible this rating is biased against smaller labs since spending a tiny bit increases “the number of labs” by 1 which is a somewhat fixed cost. Maybe pretend each lab was scaled to the same size to avoid this bias against smaller labs.
Disclaimer: I have no expertise, just want to share random thought. Only read if you’re willing to risk wasting time.
I think civilians theoretically have the power to stop the war in Ukraine (or at least make a successful peace deal/ceasefire more likely), if they pledge that which country they live in doesn’t depend on which country wins.
This means that if they want to live in the other country, they move there right now. If they want to stay in the current country, they will evacuate away from the front lines, and if they ever end up in the other country they promise they will try their best to leave. They do not stay where they are waiting to be liberated.
There are obvious downsides to this, as leaving one’s house and hometown is extremely costly. But then again, so is war. The war in Ukraine is not only costly in human lives, but makes the world a more hostile and uncooperative place, and reduces humanity’s ability to survive existential risks.
If enough civilians follow this strategy, there will be less political pressure for the Ukrainian government to liberate people trapped in Russian occupied territories, and Putin will have far less to gain by conquering large parts of Ukraine, because any people he hopes to add are more likely to flee. He still gains land and resources, but they won’t offset the enormous costs of war. A war over land and resources (instead of people) is still very hard to stop, but may end relatively sooner.
It sounds bad to let civilians to join the other side, but it’s possible that a deal can be reached, similar to prisoner swaps which have occurred in the past. It’s costly to keep civilians who want to leave to the other side, since they may be a liability, and keeping them in your territory means the other side is motivated to liberate civilians or increase their population by taking those territories.
There are definitely a large population of civilians who won’t follow this strategy no matter what, and a large population of civilians who already follow this strategy anyways. But I think there are still lots of war-weary people who are undecided and would be swayed if they knew its influence on ending the war.
Sorry if this idea is naive, but I’m interested in these things, and would like to learn why this idea probably won’t work, (or why all such “shower thought” ideas are so certain to fail they’re not worth asking about).
Driving a car is safe, but only if you think it isn’t safe.
I don’t get it
How would you rate current AI labs by their bad influence or good influence? E.g. Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, DeepSeek, xAI, Meta AI.
Suppose that the worst lab has a −100 influence on the future, for each $1 they spend. A lab half as bad, has a −50 influence on the future for each $1 they spend. A lab that’s actually good (by half as much) might have a +50 influence for each $1.
What numbers would you give to these labs?[1]
It’s possible this rating is biased against smaller labs since spending a tiny bit increases “the number of labs” by 1 which is a somewhat fixed cost. Maybe pretend each lab was scaled to the same size to avoid this bias against smaller labs.
(Kind of crossposted from LessWrong)