Similarly, I don’t think societal safety will be much of a priority as long as we’re a society that is ravaged by mental health problems. It might be that solving mental health is a necessary pre-cursor to the sort of safety spending/efforts we would need to achieve existential security.
At first I thought this was incorrect but I think there might be a kernel of truth here—although I have a different framing.
It has been suggested that boosting economic growth can lower existential risk as, if we’re richer, we’ll want to spend more on safety. On the other hand when you’re poor, you just want to get richer.
Similarly, I don’t think societal safety will be much of a priority as long as we’re a society that is ravaged by mental health problems. It might be that solving mental health is a necessary pre-cursor to the sort of safety spending/efforts we would need to achieve existential security.
I’ve thought about this a bit and don’t think #2 is incorrect, although I could quibble with it as an “important” factor.
I think broadly improving mental health could reduce catastrophic risk if:
A. Catastrophic technologies (i.e., Big Red Buttons) will become cheaper to access. B. Someone unhinged is likelier to press a Big Red Button.
The connection here doesn’t seem mysterious at all to me. Sane people are less likely to end the world.
However, this may be more about reducing variance in mental health than increasing its average level.