This is a bit of a tangent, but one implicit assumption I find interesting in your list and when other EA biosecurity-focused people talk about existential biosecurity (eg, this talk by Kevin Esvelt ) is that there’s relatively little focus on what I consider “classical epidemiology.”
This seems in contrast to the implicit beliefs of both a) serious EAs who haven’t thought as much about biosecurity (weak evidence here: the problem/speaker selection 80000 hours podcasts) and b) public health people who are less aware of EA (weak evidence here: undergrad or grad students in public health who I sometimes talk to or are in an advisory position for).
Putting numbers to this vague intuition, I would guess that your reading list here would suggest an optimal biosecurity-focused portfolio will have a focus of ~5-20% in classical epidemiology, whereas many EA students would think the weighting of epidemiology should be closer to ~30-60%.
I’m interested in whether you agree with my distinction here and consider it a fair characterization? If so, do you think it’s worthwhile to have a writeup explaining why (or why not!) many EA-aligned students overweight epidemiology in their portfolio of considerations for important ways to reduce existential biorisk?
Interesting observation! To be honest, I hadn’t thought much about this list from the perspective of it being a portfolio of (types of) expertise, rather than a list of interesting + useful topics.
Epidemiology: A sketch of infectious disease epidemiology: surveillance and outbreak detection, some basic understanding of infectious disease dynamics (e.g. R0, attack rate, compartment models).
I do feel that 60% classical epidemiology (if I’m understanding your distinction right; your link gave the definition as “the study of the determinants and distribution of disease in populations”) would be too high a weighting in a portfolio aimed at reducing global catastrophic biorisks. I think my reasoning there is based on a belief that GCBRs are most likely to arise from deliberate misuse of biology, and preventing that deliberate misuse is higher priority than developing better responses to natural pandemics. I don’t feel terribly confident in this; my response here is pretty off-the-cuff, and I’ll try to give this topic more thought.
Thanks a lot for this list!
This is a bit of a tangent, but one implicit assumption I find interesting in your list and when other EA biosecurity-focused people talk about existential biosecurity (eg, this talk by Kevin Esvelt ) is that there’s relatively little focus on what I consider “classical epidemiology.”
This seems in contrast to the implicit beliefs of both a) serious EAs who haven’t thought as much about biosecurity (weak evidence here: the problem/speaker selection 80000 hours podcasts) and b) public health people who are less aware of EA (weak evidence here: undergrad or grad students in public health who I sometimes talk to or are in an advisory position for).
Putting numbers to this vague intuition, I would guess that your reading list here would suggest an optimal biosecurity-focused portfolio will have a focus of ~5-20% in classical epidemiology, whereas many EA students would think the weighting of epidemiology should be closer to ~30-60%.
I’m interested in whether you agree with my distinction here and consider it a fair characterization? If so, do you think it’s worthwhile to have a writeup explaining why (or why not!) many EA-aligned students overweight epidemiology in their portfolio of considerations for important ways to reduce existential biorisk?
EDIT: Relevant Twitter poll.
Interesting observation! To be honest, I hadn’t thought much about this list from the perspective of it being a portfolio of (types of) expertise, rather than a list of interesting + useful topics.
For what it’s worth, epidemiology is one of four topics (along with cell biology, microbiology, and immunology) included under recommended Technical knowledge/Basic science in Gregory Lewis’s “ultra-rough” Global Catastrophic Biological Risks Reading List:
I do feel that 60% classical epidemiology (if I’m understanding your distinction right; your link gave the definition as “the study of the determinants and distribution of disease in populations”) would be too high a weighting in a portfolio aimed at reducing global catastrophic biorisks. I think my reasoning there is based on a belief that GCBRs are most likely to arise from deliberate misuse of biology, and preventing that deliberate misuse is higher priority than developing better responses to natural pandemics. I don’t feel terribly confident in this; my response here is pretty off-the-cuff, and I’ll try to give this topic more thought.
I asked an epidemiologist for some paper recommendations and got the following (which I haven’t yet read):
*On the epidemiology of influenza, John Cannell et al., Virology Journal, February 2008.
*The population genetics and evolutionary epidemiology of RNA viruses, Andrés Moya, Edward C. Holmes & Fernando González-Candelas, Nature Reviews Microbiology, April 2004.
*Global trends in emerging infectious diseases, Kate Jones et al., Nature, February 2008.
I have also had my mind blown a little bit by Virulence evolution and the trade‐off hypothesis: history, current state of affairs and the future. Learning more about viral evolution and evolutionary epidemiology has been fun, but/and I remain uncertain how helpful this is in thinking about high-potential-consequence biorisks.