It seems like the TLDR of your post is that short term risks are important because they impact the way long term risks are solved.
Although people in EA are more concerned about AI and bioextinction (perhaps disproportionately so), I feel like your argument can extend for any argument — any progress one makes, for instance, on disease prevention/malaria nets impacts the same outcome of economic wellbeing & thus transition + resilience against climate change.
your argument can extend for any argument — any progress one makes, for instance, on disease prevention/malaria nets impacts the same outcome of economic wellbeing & thus transition + resilience against climate change.
I think a lot of these arguments remind me of the narrow vs broad intervention framework, where narrow interventions are targeted interventions meant at mitigating a specific type of risk while broad interventions include generally positive interventions like economic wellbeing, malaria nets, etc. that have ripple effects.
Your point would be that the systemic cascading lens enables us to justify any broad intervention through its nth order impacts.
But my response would be that I’m not necessarily advocating for broad interventions, especially ones that might be perceived as taking time, having unpredictable effects, and often working with very general concepts like “peace” or “education.” While I still use n-th order effects to articulate my argument (and express the importance of economic & political systems in longterm risk), I’m arguing for a very narrowly focused intervention – meant to mitigate very specific political risks through securing stable supplies of commodities necessary to live during times of general political crisis & elucidated through the systemic cascading risk framework.
I’d further that systemic cascading risks aren’t just defined by ripple effects that go through systems (then, everything would definitionally be a systemic cascading risk or benefit), but rather ripples that increase in magnitude due to system vulnerabilities, helping to further confine the definition to a narrow subset of risks.
Although my critique at large is that EA has failed to connect complexity with longtermism, I’m arguing that the systemic cascading lens fills that gap – enabling specific, tractable, and targeted interventions.
It seems like the TLDR of your post is that short term risks are important because they impact the way long term risks are solved.
Although people in EA are more concerned about AI and bioextinction (perhaps disproportionately so), I feel like your argument can extend for any argument — any progress one makes, for instance, on disease prevention/malaria nets impacts the same outcome of economic wellbeing & thus transition + resilience against climate change.
Thanks a ton for your critique!
I think a lot of these arguments remind me of the narrow vs broad intervention framework, where narrow interventions are targeted interventions meant at mitigating a specific type of risk while broad interventions include generally positive interventions like economic wellbeing, malaria nets, etc. that have ripple effects.
Your point would be that the systemic cascading lens enables us to justify any broad intervention through its nth order impacts.
But my response would be that I’m not necessarily advocating for broad interventions, especially ones that might be perceived as taking time, having unpredictable effects, and often working with very general concepts like “peace” or “education.” While I still use n-th order effects to articulate my argument (and express the importance of economic & political systems in longterm risk), I’m arguing for a very narrowly focused intervention – meant to mitigate very specific political risks through securing stable supplies of commodities necessary to live during times of general political crisis & elucidated through the systemic cascading risk framework.
I’d further that systemic cascading risks aren’t just defined by ripple effects that go through systems (then, everything would definitionally be a systemic cascading risk or benefit), but rather ripples that increase in magnitude due to system vulnerabilities, helping to further confine the definition to a narrow subset of risks.
Although my critique at large is that EA has failed to connect complexity with longtermism, I’m arguing that the systemic cascading lens fills that gap – enabling specific, tractable, and targeted interventions.