Create and distribute civilizational restart manuals
A number of “existential risks” we are worried about may not directly kill off everybody, but would still cause enough deaths and chaos to make rebuilding extremely difficult. Thus, we propose that people design and distribute “civilizational restart manuals” to places that are likely to survive biological or nuclear catastrophes, giving humanity more backup options in case of extreme diasters.
The first version can be really cheap, perhaps involving storing paper copies of parts of Wikipedia plus 10 most important books sent to 100 safe and relatively uncorrelated locations—somewhere in New Zealand, the Antarctica research base, a couple of nuclear bunkers, nuclear submarines, etc.
We are perhaps even more concerned about great moral values like concern for all sentient beings surviving and re-emerging than preserving civilization itself, so we would love for people to do further research and work into considering how to preserve cosmopolitan values as well.
Agreed, very important in my view! I’ve been meaning to post a very similar proposal with one important addition:
Anthropogenic causes of civilizational collapse are (arguably) much more likely than natural ones. These anthropogenic causes are enabled by technology. If we preserve an unbiased sample of today’s knowledge or even if it’s the knowledge that we consider to have been most important, it may just steer the next cycle of our civilization right into the same kind of catastrophe again. If we make the information particularly durable, maybe we’ll even steer all future cycles of our civilization into the same kind of catastrophe.
The selection of the information needs to be very carefully thought out. Maybe only information on thorium reactors rather than uranium ones; only information on clear energy sources; only information on proof of stake; only information on farming low-suffering food; no prose or poetry that glorifies natural death or war; etc.
I think that is also something that none of the existing projects take into account.
Research the technology required to restart modern civilization and ensure the technology is understood and accessible in safe havens throughout the world
A project could ensure that not only the know-how but also the technology exists dispersed in various parts of the world to enable a restart. For instance, New Zealand is often considered a relatively safe haven, but New Zealand’s economy is highly specialized and for many technologies, relies on importing technology rather than producing it indigenously. Kick-starting civilization from wikipedia could prove very slow. Physical equipment and training enabling strategic technologies important for restart could be planted in locations like New Zealand and other social contexts which are relatively safe. At an extreme, industries could be subsidized which localize technology required for a restart. This would not necessarily mean the most advanced technology; rather, it means technologies that have been important to develop to the point we are at now.
Yes this is exciting to me, and related. Though of course generalist research talent is in short supply within EA, so the bar for any large-scale research project taking off is nontrivially high.
I didn’t write this up as a separate proposal as it seemed a bit self-serving, but creating underground cities for EAs with all the ALLFED technology and whatnot and all these backups could enable us to afterwards build a utopia with all the best voting methods and academic journals that require Bayesian analyses and publish negative results and Singer on the elementary school curriculum and universal basic income etc.
I note there isn’t much on Kiwix in terms of survival/post-apocalype collections (just a few TED talks and YouTube videos): a low-hanging fruit ripe for the picking.
Maybe someone should make an EA related collection and upload it to Kiwix? (Best books, EA Forum, AI Alignment Forum, LessWrong, SSC/ACX etc). This might be a good way of 80/20-ing preserving valuable information. As a bonus, people can easily and cheaply bury old phones with the info on, along with solar/hand-crank chargers.
The group who discovers this restart manual could gain a huge advantage over the other groups in the world population—they might reach the industrial age within a few decades while everyone else is still in the stone age.
This discoverer group will therefore have a huge influence over the world civilization they create.
I wonder if there were a way to ensure that this group has good values, even better values than our current world.
For example, imagine there were a series of value tests within the restart manual that the discoverers were required to pass in order to unlock the next stage of the manual. Either multiple groups rediscover the manual and fail until one group succeeds, or some subgroup unlocks the next step and is able to leap technologically above the others in the group fast enough to ensure that their values flourish.
If those value tests somehow ensure that a high score means the test-takers care deeply about the values we want them to have, then only those who’ve adopted these values will rule the earth.
As a side note, this would be a really cool short story or movie :)
Create and distribute civilizational restart manuals
A number of “existential risks” we are worried about may not directly kill off everybody, but would still cause enough deaths and chaos to make rebuilding extremely difficult. Thus, we propose that people design and distribute “civilizational restart manuals” to places that are likely to survive biological or nuclear catastrophes, giving humanity more backup options in case of extreme diasters.
The first version can be really cheap, perhaps involving storing paper copies of parts of Wikipedia plus 10 most important books sent to 100 safe and relatively uncorrelated locations—somewhere in New Zealand, the Antarctica research base, a couple of nuclear bunkers, nuclear submarines, etc.
We are perhaps even more concerned about great moral values like concern for all sentient beings surviving and re-emerging than preserving civilization itself, so we would love for people to do further research and work into considering how to preserve cosmopolitan values as well.
My comment from another thread applies here too:
Relatedly, see this post about continuing AI Alignment research after a GCR.
Very good!
Building on the above idea...
Research the technology required to restart modern civilization and ensure the technology is understood and accessible in safe havens throughout the world
A project could ensure that not only the know-how but also the technology exists dispersed in various parts of the world to enable a restart. For instance, New Zealand is often considered a relatively safe haven, but New Zealand’s economy is highly specialized and for many technologies, relies on importing technology rather than producing it indigenously. Kick-starting civilization from wikipedia could prove very slow. Physical equipment and training enabling strategic technologies important for restart could be planted in locations like New Zealand and other social contexts which are relatively safe. At an extreme, industries could be subsidized which localize technology required for a restart. This would not necessarily mean the most advanced technology; rather, it means technologies that have been important to develop to the point we are at now.
Yes this is exciting to me, and related. Though of course generalist research talent is in short supply within EA, so the bar for any large-scale research project taking off is nontrivially high.
I didn’t write this up as a separate proposal as it seemed a bit self-serving, but creating underground cities for EAs with all the ALLFED technology and whatnot and all these backups could enable us to afterwards build a utopia with all the best voting methods and academic journals that require Bayesian analyses and publish negative results and Singer on the elementary school curriculum and universal basic income etc.
All of wikipedia is just 20GB.
Maybe there could be an way to share backups via Bittorrent or an ‘offline version’ of it… it would fit comfortably on most modern smartphones.
Digital solutions are not great because ideally you want something that can survive centuries or at least decades.
But offline USBs in prominent + safe locations might still be a good first step anyway.
I’ve got a full version of the English Wikipedia, complete with images, on my phone (86GB). It’s very easy to get using the Kiwix app.
I note there isn’t much on Kiwix in terms of survival/post-apocalype collections (just a few TED talks and YouTube videos): a low-hanging fruit ripe for the picking.
Maybe someone should make an EA related collection and upload it to Kiwix? (Best books, EA Forum, AI Alignment Forum, LessWrong, SSC/ACX etc). This might be a good way of 80/20-ing preserving valuable information. As a bonus, people can easily and cheaply bury old phones with the info on, along with solar/hand-crank chargers.
The group who discovers this restart manual could gain a huge advantage over the other groups in the world population—they might reach the industrial age within a few decades while everyone else is still in the stone age.
This discoverer group will therefore have a huge influence over the world civilization they create.
I wonder if there were a way to ensure that this group has good values, even better values than our current world.
For example, imagine there were a series of value tests within the restart manual that the discoverers were required to pass in order to unlock the next stage of the manual. Either multiple groups rediscover the manual and fail until one group succeeds, or some subgroup unlocks the next step and is able to leap technologically above the others in the group fast enough to ensure that their values flourish.
If those value tests somehow ensure that a high score means the test-takers care deeply about the values we want them to have, then only those who’ve adopted these values will rule the earth.
As a side note, this would be a really cool short story or movie :)