To some extend, I’d prefer not yet to anchor people too much, before finishing the entire sequence. I’ll aim to circle around later and have more deep reflection on my own commitments. In fact, one reason why I’m doing this project is that I notice I have rather large uncertainties over these different theories myself, and want to think through their assumptions and tradeoffs.
Still, while going into more detail on it later, I think it’s fair that I provide some disclaimers about my own preferences, for those who wish to know them before going in:
[preferences below break]
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TLDR: my currently (weakly held) perspective is something like ’(a) as default, pursue portfolio approach consisting of interventions from Exploratory, Prosaic Engineering, Path-setting, Adaptation-enabling, Network-building, and Environment-shaping perspectives: (b) under extremely short timelines and reasonably good alignment chances, switch to Anticipatory and Pivotal Engineering; (c) under extremely low alignment success probability, switch to Containing;”
This seems grounded in a set of predispositions / biases / heuristics that are something like:
Given I’ve quite a lot of uncertainty about key (technical and governance) parameters, I’m hesitant to commit to any one perspective and prefer portfolio approaches.
—That means I lean towards strategic perspectives that are more information-providing (Exploratory), more robustly compatible with- and supportive of many others (Network-building, Environment-shaping), and/or more option-preserving and flexible (Adaptation-enabling);
—conversely, for these reasons I may have less affinity for perspectives that potentially recommend far-reaching, hard-to-reverse actions under limited information conditions (Pivotal Engineering, Containing, Anticipatory);
My academic and research background (governance; international law) probably gives me a bias towards the more explicitly ‘regulatory’ perspectives (Anticipatory, Path-setting, Adaptation-enabling), especially in multilateral version (Coalitional); and a bias against perspectives that are more exclusively focused on the technical side alone (eg both Engineering perspectives), pursue more unilateral actions (Pivotal Engineering, Partisan), or which seek to completely break or go beyond existing systems (System-changing)
There are some perspectives (Adaptation-enabling, Containing) that have remained relatively underexplored within our community. While I personally am not yet convinced that there’s enough ground to adopt these as major pillars for direct action, from an Exploratory meta-perspective I am eager to see these options studied in more detail.
I am aware that under very short timelines, many of these perspectives fall away or begin looking less actionable;
[ED: I probably ended up being more explicit here than I intended to; I’d be happy to discuss these predispositions, but also would prefer to keep discussion of specific approaches concentrated in the perspective-specific posts (coming soon).
Which are you?
To some extend, I’d prefer not yet to anchor people too much, before finishing the entire sequence. I’ll aim to circle around later and have more deep reflection on my own commitments. In fact, one reason why I’m doing this project is that I notice I have rather large uncertainties over these different theories myself, and want to think through their assumptions and tradeoffs.
Still, while going into more detail on it later, I think it’s fair that I provide some disclaimers about my own preferences, for those who wish to know them before going in:
[preferences below break]
… … … …
TLDR: my currently (weakly held) perspective is something like ’(a) as default, pursue portfolio approach consisting of interventions from Exploratory, Prosaic Engineering, Path-setting, Adaptation-enabling, Network-building, and Environment-shaping perspectives: (b) under extremely short timelines and reasonably good alignment chances, switch to Anticipatory and Pivotal Engineering; (c) under extremely low alignment success probability, switch to Containing;”
This seems grounded in a set of predispositions / biases / heuristics that are something like:
Given I’ve quite a lot of uncertainty about key (technical and governance) parameters, I’m hesitant to commit to any one perspective and prefer portfolio approaches. —That means I lean towards strategic perspectives that are more information-providing (Exploratory), more robustly compatible with- and supportive of many others (Network-building, Environment-shaping), and/or more option-preserving and flexible (Adaptation-enabling); —conversely, for these reasons I may have less affinity for perspectives that potentially recommend far-reaching, hard-to-reverse actions under limited information conditions (Pivotal Engineering, Containing, Anticipatory);
My academic and research background (governance; international law) probably gives me a bias towards the more explicitly ‘regulatory’ perspectives (Anticipatory, Path-setting, Adaptation-enabling), especially in multilateral version (Coalitional); and a bias against perspectives that are more exclusively focused on the technical side alone (eg both Engineering perspectives), pursue more unilateral actions (Pivotal Engineering, Partisan), or which seek to completely break or go beyond existing systems (System-changing)
There are some perspectives (Adaptation-enabling, Containing) that have remained relatively underexplored within our community. While I personally am not yet convinced that there’s enough ground to adopt these as major pillars for direct action, from an Exploratory meta-perspective I am eager to see these options studied in more detail.
I am aware that under very short timelines, many of these perspectives fall away or begin looking less actionable;
[ED: I probably ended up being more explicit here than I intended to; I’d be happy to discuss these predispositions, but also would prefer to keep discussion of specific approaches concentrated in the perspective-specific posts (coming soon).