I think this comment on another post about the polycrisis is pretty good and captures why I’m skeptical of the polycrisis as a concept. But I’m very suspicious of people downvoting a post that is not actually a substantive claim about the polycrisis, but rather an invitation to a collaboration (which can’t possibly be negative, and could definitely be positive).
I’ve observed that some folks (in EA or other disciplines) have skepticism for the idea of a polycrisis, while others view it as obviously correct, and others (like myself) are see it as plausible and worth exploring further. I suspect part of the differences in reaction have something to do with how we make sense of nebulosity (like Jackson’s comment suggests).
Part of what may make polycrisis framing so challenging to grapple with is that it is so big, so multifaceted, that individual attempts to ‘hold the whole concept in our heads’ is often not helpful. I’m quite interested in how we may collectively become more capable of working with this kind of incredibly complex challenge. And how might we coordinate on challenges that we can each individually only grasp a part of?
Karthik, I’d love to hear if you have more to share about your thinking on this thread overall. Cheers!
My view is that “polycrisis” is a useful term because from a neartermist view, we should dedicate some EA resources to mitigating the low probability scenario where interconnected disasters happen at once, and the best approaches to mitigating polycrises could differ from the best approaches to mitigating individual disasters.
One example could be:
climate change, naturally arising pandemics, drought, famine, wars, recessions
I’m not a longtermist but from a longtermist view, I’d think that again, some EA resources should be dedicated to the extinction risk posed by simultaneous, smaller, interconnected risks.
I think this comment on another post about the polycrisis is pretty good and captures why I’m skeptical of the polycrisis as a concept. But I’m very suspicious of people downvoting a post that is not actually a substantive claim about the polycrisis, but rather an invitation to a collaboration (which can’t possibly be negative, and could definitely be positive).
I’ve observed that some folks (in EA or other disciplines) have skepticism for the idea of a polycrisis, while others view it as obviously correct, and others (like myself) are see it as plausible and worth exploring further. I suspect part of the differences in reaction have something to do with how we make sense of nebulosity (like Jackson’s comment suggests).
Part of what may make polycrisis framing so challenging to grapple with is that it is so big, so multifaceted, that individual attempts to ‘hold the whole concept in our heads’ is often not helpful. I’m quite interested in how we may collectively become more capable of working with this kind of incredibly complex challenge. And how might we coordinate on challenges that we can each individually only grasp a part of?
Karthik, I’d love to hear if you have more to share about your thinking on this thread overall. Cheers!
My view is that “polycrisis” is a useful term because from a neartermist view, we should dedicate some EA resources to mitigating the low probability scenario where interconnected disasters happen at once, and the best approaches to mitigating polycrises could differ from the best approaches to mitigating individual disasters.
One example could be: climate change, naturally arising pandemics, drought, famine, wars, recessions
I’m not a longtermist but from a longtermist view, I’d think that again, some EA resources should be dedicated to the extinction risk posed by simultaneous, smaller, interconnected risks.