If you’re talking more broadly, wouldn’t policy wins like decreasing the amount of lead being emitted into the atmosphere (which has negative effects on IQ and health generally) be a big policy win for the long term future?
Yeah, I think this is definitely a candidate for a great intervention, though I think importantly it wasn’t the result of someone entering the policy space with a longtermist mindset.
If someone had a concrete policy they wanted to push for (or a plan for discovering policies) of that magnitude, then I would likely be excited about funding it, though I would still be somewhat worried how likely it would be to differentially accelerate development of dangerous technologies vs. increase humanities ability to navigate rapid technological change (since most risk to the future is anthropogenic, I am generally skeptical of interventions that just speed up technological progress across the board), but my sense is abating lead poisoning looks better than most other things on this dimension.
Yeah, I think this is definitely a candidate for a great intervention, though I think importantly it wasn’t the result of someone entering the policy space with a longtermist mindset.
If someone had a concrete policy they wanted to push for (or a plan for discovering policies) of that magnitude, then I would likely be excited about funding it, though I would still be somewhat worried how likely it would be to differentially accelerate development of dangerous technologies vs. increase humanities ability to navigate rapid technological change (since most risk to the future is anthropogenic, I am generally skeptical of interventions that just speed up technological progress across the board), but my sense is abating lead poisoning looks better than most other things on this dimension.
An offshoot of lead emission in the atmosphere might be the work being done at LEEP (Lead Exposure Elimination Project) https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ktN29JneoQCYktqih/seven-more-learnings-from-leep