Thanks! I hadn’t seen the Cotton-Barratt piece before.
Extinction risk reduction punts on the question of which future problems are most important to solve, but not how best to tackle the problem of extinction risk specifically. Building capacity for future extinction risk reduction work punts on how best to tackle the problem of extinction risk specifically, but not the question of which future problems are most important to solve. They seem to do more/less punting than one another along different dimensions, so, depending on one’s definition of direct vs punting, each could be more of a punt than the other. I’m not clear on whether this means we should pick a dimension to talk about, or whether there is no meaningful single spectrum of directness vs punting.
I agree that it seems important to get more clarity over the direct work vs buck-passing/punting distinction.
Building capacity for future extinction risk reduction work may be seen as more “meta”/”buck-passing/”punting” still.
There has been an interesting discussion on direct vs meta-level work to reduce existential risk; see Toby Ord and Owen Cotton-Barratt.
Thanks! I hadn’t seen the Cotton-Barratt piece before.
Extinction risk reduction punts on the question of which future problems are most important to solve, but not how best to tackle the problem of extinction risk specifically. Building capacity for future extinction risk reduction work punts on how best to tackle the problem of extinction risk specifically, but not the question of which future problems are most important to solve. They seem to do more/less punting than one another along different dimensions, so, depending on one’s definition of direct vs punting, each could be more of a punt than the other. I’m not clear on whether this means we should pick a dimension to talk about, or whether there is no meaningful single spectrum of directness vs punting.