1) Seems like a good start, as its likely to draw together people with a common concern, but its v unlikely to stop things. Research capabilities are dispersed, and if you’re saying that the stepping on each other’s toes effect is going to outweigh the standing on the shoulders of giants effect, then researchers in different parts of world society with different agendas will want to get going with it. It would need enough of the right people to subscribe to this for log enough to prevent the technology. Unlikely. But might buy time.
Differentiated scorched earth isn’t different in consequence than 2) - both are kinds of regulation. One official and centralised, one with the possibility of being unofficial and dispersed. The drawback of the scorched earth strategy is that it’s irreversable. The drawback of the regulatory strategy is that its game-able.
curing aging might be one of the threats to humanity as we know it? Mortality = vulnerability = dependence on others = good society? Also not dependable strategies to reduce incentives if they’re reliant on new tech fixes, as tech fixes are very hard to predict or encourage and possibly carry their own unknown risks even if we could do those things (so there’s a level at which you could be introducing more risk than risk control and its hard to figure out which is which)
I personally think a harm control strategy / centralised regulatory + intelligence function is our best bet for differentiated progress. This also comes with the side-benefit of forcing debate and norms in scientific research to allign or not and the public being brought in on it, and they’re usually in favour of regulating against scary risks even when they’re too small (unless they’re framed as protecting us from other human beings).
1) Seems like a good start, as its likely to draw together people with a common concern, but its v unlikely to stop things. Research capabilities are dispersed, and if you’re saying that the stepping on each other’s toes effect is going to outweigh the standing on the shoulders of giants effect, then researchers in different parts of world society with different agendas will want to get going with it. It would need enough of the right people to subscribe to this for log enough to prevent the technology. Unlikely. But might buy time.
Differentiated scorched earth isn’t different in consequence than 2) - both are kinds of regulation. One official and centralised, one with the possibility of being unofficial and dispersed. The drawback of the scorched earth strategy is that it’s irreversable. The drawback of the regulatory strategy is that its game-able.
curing aging might be one of the threats to humanity as we know it? Mortality = vulnerability = dependence on others = good society? Also not dependable strategies to reduce incentives if they’re reliant on new tech fixes, as tech fixes are very hard to predict or encourage and possibly carry their own unknown risks even if we could do those things (so there’s a level at which you could be introducing more risk than risk control and its hard to figure out which is which)
I personally think a harm control strategy / centralised regulatory + intelligence function is our best bet for differentiated progress. This also comes with the side-benefit of forcing debate and norms in scientific research to allign or not and the public being brought in on it, and they’re usually in favour of regulating against scary risks even when they’re too small (unless they’re framed as protecting us from other human beings).