Were some organisations or institutions ahead of the curve in terms of cause prioritisation relative to EA, and why do we think this was?
It might be useful to distinguish cases where an area / project was overlooked and later proved to be impactful because:
a) someone else worked on it (which suggests it wasn’t neglected at all);
b) something changed: there wasn’t enough information back then, or it was too far away from a tipping point (like, maybe, climate change and biorisks?);
c) nobody actually considered the project;
d) we now disagree with the former reasoning for disregarding the project—e.g., I (and I believe many others) have changed my mind in the last few years on the effectiveness of working / investing in advocacy, lobbying, politics, etc. I believe I already had enough information to think this way in 2016 (and possibly way earlier). I’d be more interested in cases of (c) and (d) above—though, of course, these explanations will likely overlap a lot.
An analyst I follow called Peter Zeihan managed to predict the Ukraine war and the impact it would have on global energy, food and fertiliser markets. He’s now predicting global famine and civil unrest considerably worse than the arab spring before the end of the year, potentially including the collapse of China.
If this is true, there’s a wide range of projects that need to be considered by way of making agriculture less fertiliser-dependent, and most projects aimed at, e.g, saving lives from tropical disease are small fry by comparison.
I agree—this sounds a bit like a “weak” version of the case for Allfed, right? IGM Forum kind of agree with this prediction, but less intensely. On the other hand, I wonder about what would be the marginal impact of an EA project on that. I don’t think this is neglected—I have recently read many journalists voicing these concerns, and I see some people in food systems concerned with similar problems in global supply chains… but then perhaps we could start discussing if neglectedness is still a useful metric when we deal if world-level problems.
I personally don’t think journalists have been voicing these concerns in anything like a manner proportionate to the risk of megadeath (compared with something like, say, climate change, which has become a perennial font of public hysteria even though its impact on quality of life will likely be minimal for most areas of the globe.)
Climate change’s effects on desertification and rising sea levels could plausibly either directly or indirectly kill tens of millions over the coming century- which isn’t exactly good news, but… given our global population size, tens of millions could statistically die from various causes over the course of a century and the average person will probably never notice, especially when most of those deaths will occur in ecologically marginal areas where life was never easy to begin with.
If Zeihan’s analysis is correct, then hundreds of millions could plausibly perish from war and famine just over the coming decade. If so, “keep global trade in fertiliser inputs cheap and safe” would have to be considered a project of overwhelming importance for rational altruists.
Thanks. I think this can be quite useful.
It might be useful to distinguish cases where an area / project was overlooked and later proved to be impactful because:
a) someone else worked on it (which suggests it wasn’t neglected at all);
b) something changed: there wasn’t enough information back then, or it was too far away from a tipping point (like, maybe, climate change and biorisks?);
c) nobody actually considered the project;
d) we now disagree with the former reasoning for disregarding the project—e.g., I (and I believe many others) have changed my mind in the last few years on the effectiveness of working / investing in advocacy, lobbying, politics, etc. I believe I already had enough information to think this way in 2016 (and possibly way earlier).
I’d be more interested in cases of (c) and (d) above—though, of course, these explanations will likely overlap a lot.
An analyst I follow called Peter Zeihan managed to predict the Ukraine war and the impact it would have on global energy, food and fertiliser markets. He’s now predicting global famine and civil unrest considerably worse than the arab spring before the end of the year, potentially including the collapse of China.
If this is true, there’s a wide range of projects that need to be considered by way of making agriculture less fertiliser-dependent, and most projects aimed at, e.g, saving lives from tropical disease are small fry by comparison.
I agree—this sounds a bit like a “weak” version of the case for Allfed, right?
IGM Forum kind of agree with this prediction, but less intensely.
On the other hand, I wonder about what would be the marginal impact of an EA project on that. I don’t think this is neglected—I have recently read many journalists voicing these concerns, and I see some people in food systems concerned with similar problems in global supply chains… but then perhaps we could start discussing if neglectedness is still a useful metric when we deal if world-level problems.
I personally don’t think journalists have been voicing these concerns in anything like a manner proportionate to the risk of megadeath (compared with something like, say, climate change, which has become a perennial font of public hysteria even though its impact on quality of life will likely be minimal for most areas of the globe.)
Climate change’s effects on desertification and rising sea levels could plausibly either directly or indirectly kill tens of millions over the coming century- which isn’t exactly good news, but… given our global population size, tens of millions could statistically die from various causes over the course of a century and the average person will probably never notice, especially when most of those deaths will occur in ecologically marginal areas where life was never easy to begin with.
If Zeihan’s analysis is correct, then hundreds of millions could plausibly perish from war and famine just over the coming decade. If so, “keep global trade in fertiliser inputs cheap and safe” would have to be considered a project of overwhelming importance for rational altruists.