Thanks for sharing your reflections here!
I was rather taken aback when reading the headline and remain so after reading your “What I think” section:
You write that you’re “glad the BWC exists,” but also that you’re “weakly against the BWC.” Did I understand correctly that you mean that you’re glad that the legal agreement exists but are weakly against supporting or engaging in work to uphold the convention (at least the kind of work that is currently undertaken with that aim)? If so, could you explain whether you think that the durability and strength of the agreement is largely unaffected by such work; or that such work has value but less value than alternative efforts; or that such work has value but should be left to “others” (maybe: “non-EA-minded people” who are less focused on reducing unconventional risks)?
Whatever the answer to the above, I’m somewhat concerned by the normative effects of the phrasing you chose, and would be curious to hear your thoughts on those concerns. What I worry about is that your title and parts of the write-up suggest that the BWC and its surrounding structure is bad, is a waste of resources, and should thus be dismantled, or at least neglected even more than it already is. I share your sentiment that it’s good to have the BWC as some backstop against state development of biological weapons programmes; and I believe that this backstop works mostly through normative means (rather than some material enforcement mechanism). I further believe that such normative measures consist of how the BWC is spoken about (whether it is taken seriously, appreciated as important, etc) and of dedicated events to bring together relevant stakeholders (i.e. those people who might contribute to upholding and further developing the convention). The concern is that articles like yours contribute to undermining both.
Thanks, useful thoughts, I think I roughly agree with you and will change this. I suppose the tradeoff I was facing with the title (not that I spent any time weighing up different options consciously) is between brevity, accurateness, and interestingness. I think the more complete title would be something like ‘Updating weakly against the Biological Weapons Convention being as important to work on as I thought’. I think I will change the title to ‘Reflections on the BWC’ so that people who only see the title don’t get a negative vibe (I agree we want people overall to think good thoughts about the BWC). And then if people are interested enough to read the post, they will see that I raise, quite sloppily/intuitively, some drawbacks. More than me arguing the BWC is −10 on some scale of goodness, what I was thinking is it moved from +20 to +10 or something.
I haven’t thought about it lots but I think I would endorse something like ‘the BWC should continue to exist, and should be larger and bigger and better, but it is less of a central priority than I thought, and so people who care about prioritisation and don’t have individual reasons that the BWC is unusually good for them should strongly consider focusing more on something else’.
Thanks for sharing your reflections here! I was rather taken aback when reading the headline and remain so after reading your “What I think” section:
You write that you’re “glad the BWC exists,” but also that you’re “weakly against the BWC.” Did I understand correctly that you mean that you’re glad that the legal agreement exists but are weakly against supporting or engaging in work to uphold the convention (at least the kind of work that is currently undertaken with that aim)? If so, could you explain whether you think that the durability and strength of the agreement is largely unaffected by such work; or that such work has value but less value than alternative efforts; or that such work has value but should be left to “others” (maybe: “non-EA-minded people” who are less focused on reducing unconventional risks)?
Whatever the answer to the above, I’m somewhat concerned by the normative effects of the phrasing you chose, and would be curious to hear your thoughts on those concerns. What I worry about is that your title and parts of the write-up suggest that the BWC and its surrounding structure is bad, is a waste of resources, and should thus be dismantled, or at least neglected even more than it already is. I share your sentiment that it’s good to have the BWC as some backstop against state development of biological weapons programmes; and I believe that this backstop works mostly through normative means (rather than some material enforcement mechanism). I further believe that such normative measures consist of how the BWC is spoken about (whether it is taken seriously, appreciated as important, etc) and of dedicated events to bring together relevant stakeholders (i.e. those people who might contribute to upholding and further developing the convention). The concern is that articles like yours contribute to undermining both.
Thanks, useful thoughts, I think I roughly agree with you and will change this. I suppose the tradeoff I was facing with the title (not that I spent any time weighing up different options consciously) is between brevity, accurateness, and interestingness. I think the more complete title would be something like ‘Updating weakly against the Biological Weapons Convention being as important to work on as I thought’. I think I will change the title to ‘Reflections on the BWC’ so that people who only see the title don’t get a negative vibe (I agree we want people overall to think good thoughts about the BWC). And then if people are interested enough to read the post, they will see that I raise, quite sloppily/intuitively, some drawbacks. More than me arguing the BWC is −10 on some scale of goodness, what I was thinking is it moved from +20 to +10 or something.
I haven’t thought about it lots but I think I would endorse something like ‘the BWC should continue to exist, and should be larger and bigger and better, but it is less of a central priority than I thought, and so people who care about prioritisation and don’t have individual reasons that the BWC is unusually good for them should strongly consider focusing more on something else’.