Though it is objectively the case that our underlying economic woes are smaller now than they were in 2012 and 2008.
On aggregate, yes. I’m talking about the economic situation for a certain group, which is the lower-middle class. I don’t know that this is true for them. I’ll go try and dive in on this.
Well think about it this way, if the majority of political positions increased x-risk, we would make the world safer just by doing things in the opposite way all the time.
If I’ve parsed your meaning correctly, you are saying every action has a counterfactual non-action, and if you include not just the space of possible actions but the impact of non-action, then risks break 50/50? That makes more sense, but doesn’t really seem to be helpful in deciding between actions to take. The space of possible actions to take is what should concern us, yes?
Regardless, I take your larger point, which is that we should put efforts where you can maximize impact and you are skeptical on the effective value of this one as opposed to others. I would certainly need to be more quantitative in my analysis of this and back up my ideas/claims for sure.
The more general point is that you can construct a complicated chain of reasoning for lots of things to increase x risk, so it’s not particularly interested just that something increases it. What matters is how much and how tractable it is.
Totally agreed. I have yet to hear an argument that 1) invalidates my chain of reasoning or 2) indicates there are other inflection points along the chain that are better. Whether or not this compares well with other options for x-risk reduction is an exercise I have yet to perform (as I mentioned above).
On aggregate, yes. I’m talking about the economic situation for a certain group, which is the lower-middle class. I don’t know that this is true for them. I’ll go try and dive in on this.
If I’ve parsed your meaning correctly, you are saying every action has a counterfactual non-action, and if you include not just the space of possible actions but the impact of non-action, then risks break 50/50? That makes more sense, but doesn’t really seem to be helpful in deciding between actions to take. The space of possible actions to take is what should concern us, yes?
Regardless, I take your larger point, which is that we should put efforts where you can maximize impact and you are skeptical on the effective value of this one as opposed to others. I would certainly need to be more quantitative in my analysis of this and back up my ideas/claims for sure.
Totally agreed. I have yet to hear an argument that 1) invalidates my chain of reasoning or 2) indicates there are other inflection points along the chain that are better. Whether or not this compares well with other options for x-risk reduction is an exercise I have yet to perform (as I mentioned above).
Thanks for this!