I know GiveWell is aware of these articles, and has looked more into nukes. Probably more conversation notes will be coming out. There is broad agreement (and good object-level evidence) that NATO-Russia nuclear risk is the highest it’s been in the post Cold War period. One reason GiveWell has cited for not putting resources into nukes (although it was perhaps runner-up to the GCRs they have invested more in) is the existence of a large established community working on the problem that seemed fairly competent.
“A longer-term strategy might to found an organization dedicated to shifting incentives towards politicians in the US, UK, and France towards less bellicose rhetoric and less escalation, and more international compromise.”
Why not support the existing organizations, which have people with a lifetime of experience, scholarly background, and political connections?
“a survey of experts putting the risk of nuclear war with Russia over the next 5 years at 2%”
One note for interpreting that: the experts themselves didn’t give those numbers. I was talking about this with someone and they noted that the survey didn’t actually ask for probabilities (except 50:50), but verbal descriptions that the authors converted into probabilities by assuming a certain statistical distribution in the relationship between descriptions and probabilities. The previous ‘more rigorous’ study asked for answers on a 1-10 scale. Risk is definitely up a lot, but we don’t have experts’ explicit credences, which might be higher or lower than that.
In the EA community see GCRI’s work, e.g. this paper on “Analyzing and reducing the risks of inadvertent nuclear war between the United States and Russia.” It discusses the disproportionate role of high tension periods such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, or today’s fighting in Eastern Europe, many modelling details, and does some estimation.
I know GiveWell is aware of these articles, and has looked more into nukes. Probably more conversation notes will be coming out.
This is good to know.
Why not support the existing organizations, which have people with a lifetime of experience, scholarly background, and political connections?
Do you have any specific organizations in mind? Existing anti-nuclear weapons orgs seem focused on disarmament–which seems extremely unlikely as long as Putin (or someone like him) is in power in Russia. And existing US anti-war orgs seem tragically ineffective. But maybe that’s because it’s just too hard to have an effective anti-war organization in current US political context.
Partly, I was thinking of an org focused on achievable, narrowly defined actions, one that would fight say, a bill in Congress to provide arms to Ukraine, or authorize “limited” military intervention in eastern Europe, or raise a fuss when presidential candidates go a bit over the line in bellicose rhetoric (disincentivizing such rhetoric). Maybe there are already groups that do things like that–I admit I’ve only recently started trying to understand this area better.
Yes, GCRI seem to lie at the overlap of the antinuclear and effective altruist communities, and so if Chris was optimistic about prospects for research and activism there, GCRI would be good to look into.
I know GiveWell is aware of these articles, and has looked more into nukes. Probably more conversation notes will be coming out. There is broad agreement (and good object-level evidence) that NATO-Russia nuclear risk is the highest it’s been in the post Cold War period. One reason GiveWell has cited for not putting resources into nukes (although it was perhaps runner-up to the GCRs they have invested more in) is the existence of a large established community working on the problem that seemed fairly competent.
“A longer-term strategy might to found an organization dedicated to shifting incentives towards politicians in the US, UK, and France towards less bellicose rhetoric and less escalation, and more international compromise.”
Why not support the existing organizations, which have people with a lifetime of experience, scholarly background, and political connections?
“a survey of experts putting the risk of nuclear war with Russia over the next 5 years at 2%”
One note for interpreting that: the experts themselves didn’t give those numbers. I was talking about this with someone and they noted that the survey didn’t actually ask for probabilities (except 50:50), but verbal descriptions that the authors converted into probabilities by assuming a certain statistical distribution in the relationship between descriptions and probabilities. The previous ‘more rigorous’ study asked for answers on a 1-10 scale. Risk is definitely up a lot, but we don’t have experts’ explicit credences, which might be higher or lower than that.
In the EA community see GCRI’s work, e.g. this paper on “Analyzing and reducing the risks of inadvertent nuclear war between the United States and Russia.” It discusses the disproportionate role of high tension periods such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, or today’s fighting in Eastern Europe, many modelling details, and does some estimation.
This is good to know.
Do you have any specific organizations in mind? Existing anti-nuclear weapons orgs seem focused on disarmament–which seems extremely unlikely as long as Putin (or someone like him) is in power in Russia. And existing US anti-war orgs seem tragically ineffective. But maybe that’s because it’s just too hard to have an effective anti-war organization in current US political context.
Partly, I was thinking of an org focused on achievable, narrowly defined actions, one that would fight say, a bill in Congress to provide arms to Ukraine, or authorize “limited” military intervention in eastern Europe, or raise a fuss when presidential candidates go a bit over the line in bellicose rhetoric (disincentivizing such rhetoric). Maybe there are already groups that do things like that–I admit I’ve only recently started trying to understand this area better.
Yes, GCRI seem to lie at the overlap of the antinuclear and effective altruist communities, and so if Chris was optimistic about prospects for research and activism there, GCRI would be good to look into.