Bioweapons shelter project launch
Update 15MAY2023: The following post is quite outdated as the project has changed considerably. That said, the goal remains largely the same, perhaps with the addition of a focus on civilizational collapse scenarios in addition to extinction events. Please reach out to author 1 if you would like a more detailed update.
TL;DR: We are recruiting a team with backgrounds in disaster response, physical security, or physical design to join a project building biological weapons shelters. Those who join will have the chance to use their skills and expertise to identify the most effective solution, secure funding, and deploy the project. Our ultimate aim: to lower the risk of human extinction.
Register your interest or sign up to follow our work here.
Introduction
We are building a civilizational resiliency[1] project, “...” currently incubated by EA Sweden (Effektiv Altruism Sverige), which aims to research and create the ultimate refuge, especially from non-agentic[2] disasters and with a special focus on extinction-level bioweapons releases/(engineered) pandemics. The main reason to be excited about this project is that it could lower the risk of human extinction, as suggested by e.g. Andrew Snyder-Beattie and Ethan Alley as well as by the FTX Future Fund. Additionally, a project like this likely requires skills and expertise that might otherwise be hard to deploy in other EA-aligned projects. As one of the first team members in this project, you will have autonomy, take ownership of critical tasks and be invested from the early stage of selecting the best solutions.
Specific talent needs
Here is a list of some immediate talent needs in Logistics that might not easily find a place in other EA-aligned organisations:
Military backgrounds
Other physical security (as opposed to e.g. IT security) experts used to thinking about possible failure modes and identifying ways to mitigate them (e.g. Oil & Gas supply chains in conflict areas, Quality Assurance within biotech, etc.)
Disaster response professionals, such as Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross, etc.
Generalists in physical design, who are able to think about the design and make cost estimates of everything from bunkers and ships to laboratories and eco villages (could be architects, civil engineers, urban planners, etc.)
In addition to the skills above, Logistics would greatly benefit from more typically sought-after EA skill sets:
Cost-effectiveness modellers
Epidemiologists
Logistics
Risk management
Project management
Organisational strategy and planning
Project planning/scheduling
Budgeting/cost estimation for buildings, retrofits and similar
Management consultants
(X-risk) Researchers
Other relevant skills we might have missed
Again, please fill in this form if you or someone you know would be a good fit for Logistics, or to follow our development. Note that filling in the form is only a non-committing expression of interest. You are free to describe any requirements that you would have for joining this project such as salary, work location, part-time, start date, etc. The main focus will be on assembling a strong initial team and we are willing to make accommodations to reach this goal.
We are aware that others might be working on the same idea, and we have started a Slack group to collaborate openly with all others interested in researching or building refuges. If you have already started your own project, get in touch. We would be excited to learn about your work and discuss whether the projects should be merged or if there is merit in having two competing teams executing on this idea.
Background
We first want to quickly acknowledge the long tradition of shelters and refuges both within and outside EA. Fortified buildings as a means to increase chances of survival have been around for millenia. However, with the advent of large nuclear arsenals last century, shelters moved from ensuring group survival to ensuring human survival—never before had humanity faced the very real possibility of complete extinction. As the existential risk community has identified even more pathways to human extinction beyond nuclear weapons, the awareness of the need for shelters has increased, especially within EA circles. EA Forum posts on the subject include those written by Nick Beckstead in 2014 and, more recently, Andrew Snyder-Beattie & Ethan Alley. The topic has also attracted intermittent academic investigation (Jebari 2014, Beckstead 2015, Boyd and Wilson 2019, and others). And Biological weapons shelters and Infrastructure to recover after catastrophes are listed as areas that the FTX Future Fund is interested in.
Team
Currently, Logistics consists of author 1 as the project lead with Kayla generously supporting the project in its initial phases. We also have a couple of advisory board members and a handful of supporters happy to help review key documents and weigh in on bigger decisions. EA Sweden will support with administration and project infrastructure.
author 1’s professional journey started with a Mechanical Engineering degree with a minor in Mathematics from University of Pennsylvania where he graduated cum laude and was on the Dean’s List in his junior year. After graduating, he has held a variety of leadership and entrepreneurial roles within the climate tech industry and predominantly within wind energy. One of his most recent engagements was as an interim CEO of an offshore wind company where he led a team of around 15 people from the very early stages of the venture until it was incorporated and there was alignment both within the team and at the board level on the path to success (not yet on his LinkedIn, but he is happy to share details during a call). He has worked at all stages in the wind industry from selecting where to build a wind farm to inspecting delivery of wind turbine components to the construction site as well as ensuring the proper operation of producing turbines. We think this is relevant to the creation of a refuge as the process to create one is likely to roughly follow the steps taken during the construction of a wind farm.
author 1 has also worked in several start-ups and is no stranger to risk, uncertainty and how to make something from nothing. He is currently employed full time and his work on Logistics is for the time being limited to evenings and weekends. However, he is prepared at any time to use funding to make this his full time engagement.
Kayla graduated from Oxford University with the highest grade achievable (First Class) in English Language and Literature. Since then she has run communications for the United Nations Mine Action Service office in Geneva and currently works full-time managing the community and public information of the Laidlaw Foundation. Her experience with strategic communications will be useful in managing the project, donor, and team’s image once funding is secured, although she is likely to take more of an advisory role going forward due to entering a master’s program in the fall of 2022.
Work done to date
Work to date includes outreach within EA, idea generation, preliminary idea screening, tentative shallow research into current top ideas and recruitment.
To avoid sunk costs by e.g. working on a sub optimal idea for the next 2 years only to realise there was a much better path, the team has decided to take the following approach: 1) Generate potential solutions, 2) Research and rank options to eliminate unviable candidates and select the optimal approach, 3) Implement the solution (or the portfolio of a few, less capital intensive solutions with different failure modes.)
Our first step is to generate 100 potential ideas. This number is _somewhat _arbitrarily chosen. The important part is to generate a large number of ideas. This paper from INSEAD sums it up better than we can:
“If an equal number of ideas, the best _best n_, are selected from the initial pool, the _best n_ from a larger pool will be better on average than the _best n_ from a smaller pool. For example, the tallest 5 people from a city of 1,000,000 inhabitants will be taller than the tallest 5 people from a city of 1,000 inhabitants.”
We are currently at around 50 ideas and will hit 100 this summer. To illustrate the process author 1 has tentatively and preliminarily ranked the first 17 ideas. This is by no means a final selection of best ideas (for example, it could well be that a bunker is best, as we know talented people have promoted this solution), and great care will be taken in performing the final ranking of the 100 ideas. author 1 has also done some shallow research and analysis on the “top” 3 ideas emerging from this analysis and would be happy to share this precursory work during a call although this will also be reworked after the final idea selection. To illustrate, we show below 7 of the 17 ideas and their associated score:
| Brief description | Score |
| Other, relatively self isolated communities (especially small island populations) | 7.8 |
| Support for protecting uncontacted peoples, especially ensuring their isolation during pandemics | 7.6 |
| Distributed. Using e.g. homes with sealed envelopes and upgrading with sanitizing HVAC, solar+batteries, water harvesting, etc. | 7.0 |
| Bushcraft/eco village with backup equipment (like Auroville, or something even less dependent) | 6.5 |
| Underground bunker | 5.3 |
| Cruise ship dual use, refuge in high-risk times | 2.5 |
| Large sailboat (to be fuel independent) | -15.1 |
Lastly, we have been spending more and more time recruiting for the advisory board and more urgently, for the founding team as well as early contributors/employees. As others have pointed out, this is perhaps the most challenging part of getting an EA project off the ground. However, the recruitment efforts so far have been limited and the general excitement about the idea gives us confidence that the task is not insurmountable.
The road ahead
Before describing the separate stages of Logistics, it might be helpful for the reader to get an overview over all tasks. In the table below rows indicate separate tasks while the columns indicate different times, progressing from left to right. The intensity of the yellow colour indicates the hours worked per month.
Stage I: Recruitment and fundraising
The next few months will be focused on recruitment in parallel with approaching potential funders. The main reason for this parallel focus is due to the chicken and egg nature of the two workstreams: Grantmakers are likely to be more excited the more proof points we have of our ability to assemble a strong team. At the same time, potential employees are more likely to want to join if we can show a pathway to reliable funding.
Regarding recruitment, as the skill sets needed are not as EA-specific as for example cause prioritisation research, we are planning to reach out beyond the EA community. Stockholm, where author 1 is located, has a culture of entrepreneurship and a diverse, well educated workforce as well as hosting both the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control and Karolinska Institutet (among top ten Life Sciences and Medicine universities worldwide).
Regarding funding, the next step is to create a plan and associated budget from now until the set of interventions is identified. This will also help us understand better the complete hiring needs as each workstream will be broken out separately and any skill gaps should become more evident. The plan will be vetted by our advisory board, EA Sweden leadership and any relevant, external experts we are able to bring in. After creating a plan and budget, we will craft the necessary documents for a funding application. It is then envisioned that the grantmakers would like additional information, such as digging into the plan and budgets as well as interviewing the founding team and talking to advisors.
Stage II: Solution identification
Once an initial team is in place and funding secured for this stage of the project, the team will build the above-mentioned list of ideas, rank them, downselect, and conduct research. The below description of the work to be done is speculative in nature as we are certain that our contributors and funders will shape the process and that we will climb a learning curve in the coming months.
To avoid skewed outcomes, such as a bias towards for-profit initiatives, we envision that scoring of the 100 ideas will be performed independently by several people. After reviewing the convergence of the final contenders, sensitivity analysis will be performed and discussions had, including the advisory board and outside experts, in order to establish consensus about which final ideas will have a more thorough review performed on them. This process could take a few weeks, perhaps a couple of months.
Each idea will have a preliminary plan and budget for implementation set up, as well as a risk register both for development/construction but more importantly for the possible, future catastrophic scenarios we are building resiliency against. We will also rely significantly on consultations, including with HVAC experts, naval architects, anthropologists, or organisations already working to protect uncontacted peoples. There could also be a need to outsource certain parts of the analysis such as getting rough cost estimates for building a medical laboratory, or a vessel, depending on the set of top ideas.
Biorisk experts will be consulted throughout the project. But we foresee that such consultation will be more intense during Stage II, with a special focus infohazards.
The last part of the scope for this stage of Logistics is to apply for funding for the next phase.
Stage III: Preparing to build solution(s)
Once we confirm the top ideas and secure funding, work will go from being broad and multidisciplinary to becoming more focused.
Stage III will likely be some form of “project development” phase where we plan the work out until “Commercial Operations Date,” and then start executing on this plan based on both disciplined budget control as well as a keen awareness of mitigating risks as they appear (standard project management). Funding will likely be needed in phases and in case there is need to install significant equipment/build infrastructure we need to continuously prepare for and secure large funding needs required ahead of procurement. The funding need and the associated team size is likely to remain relatively constant for 2-5 years during this “development phase” until the point where procurement happens and the funding need will increase markedly (and the team, although probably largely external employees working for our subcontractors, could include a large group of workers building/installing whichever design we land on).
———
Since you read all the way to the end, surely you want to see how Logistics develops? Or perhaps you or someone you know might be interested in joining, especially after we hopefully secure funding?
Fill out the form if you have not already done so. Critical perspectives are warmly welcome.
———
Thanks to everyone who has helped us refine and edit this post. Tereza has provided lots of helpful feedback. Ajay has given the project high level input on topics including infohazards. There are also a number of other people including individuals affiliated with Charity Entrepreneurship and other, central EA organizations that have given helpful direction to this post but also the project as a whole. Any mistakes are the fault of the authors.
- ^
We are using a range of different terms interchangeably throughout this post. This is because no single term yet captures the range of interventions hinted at. In essence, what all proposed approaches to “refuges” or “shelters” have in common is that they envision using currently available, mature technology to hopefully significantly reduce the risk of extinction and/or civilizational collapse under certain Global Catastrophic Scenarios (GCSs). For example, an engineered pandemic with the potential for human extinction could possibly be hedged against by isolating a minimum viable population from the pathogen until either they have found a way to deal with the pathogen, until the pathogen disappears (even just locally) or mutates into something more benign. We know some proposals have been made for terminology to capture this range of possible interventions but still do not feel like any term accommodates even the most unusual, or “edge” solutions.
- ^
By non-agentic we mean that pathogens themselves do not have agency, and hence are easier to protect against than e.g. malicious, super-intelligent AI. That said, one could argue that the people deploying a bioweapon in the form of a pathogen have agency. However, at this early phase it seems that it is more likely that extinction from a bioweapon release would happen because of unintended consequences or some type of accident. It seems unlikely that a military (or even terrorist organization) deploying a bioweapon would spend years if not decades traversing the planet to make sure every single person is killed. And a terrorist organization with the goal of human extinction is unlikely to have enough resources to deploy bioweapons at such scales. However, this will be looked more closely into during Stage II.
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Just a comment from me, the main driver of: I am still on the look-out for people interested in joining.
I have received quite a bit of interest from both strong candidates and people with the requested skills. Things have changed slightly on my end and I am now focusing more on a co-founder and I think what the realistically ideal candidate looks like is something like a strong research (as in enjoying going through lots of scientific and technical literature and performing analysis) profile combined with entrepreneurial drive (not needing direction—able to structure one’s own work and setting priorities) and being “EA” (at least subscribing to the main ideas but ideally also having contributed over perhaps more than a year in one way or another—not sure what “EA enough” is as this requirement is something I have deferred to others on).
Quick update for anyone stumbling upon this post: I have now pivoted and instead of the plan above, I am continuing the work that Linc et al. started. I made this pivot as after writing this post, I learnt more about the work they had done and considered it better and less disruptive to build on existing work on the topic, especially as their work had received significant diverse and expert feedback.
This seems like a great opportunity to sponsor a contest on the forum.
Also, there is an application out there for running polls where users make pairwise comparisons over items in a pool and a ranking is imputed. It’s not necessary for all pairs to be compared, the system scales with a high number of alternatives. I don’t remember what it’s called, it was a research project presented by a group when I was in college. I do think it could be a good way to extract a ranking from a crowd (alternative to upvotes / downvotes and other stuff). If you are super excited about this then I can spend some time at some point trying to hunt it down.
Your approach to exploring solutions is neat. Good luck.
One idea I think I would suggest would be trying to bring personal doomsday solutions to market that actually work super well / upgrading the best-available option somehow.
Thanks for the encouragement! That does seem like a possibly relevant process for scoring the ideas. As I mentioned, I want to put quite a bit of work into setting up the process for scoring ideas as it will have a primary, if not the biggest impact on the future trajectory of the project. But I am noting down already to talk to you down the road if we do not come across that process ourselves when researching existing processes for ranking alternatives.
Good idea on improving the currently available bunkers—one of the ideas I already noted down is a consultancy, possibly subsidized, that advises current bunkers being built on how to design them for extinction/civilizational collapse scenarios!
1. I would think that we, as a species:
Should have a/an/multiple/on-going Asilomar conference(s).
And that treaties would be enacted as a result of these conferences/talks. Whereby all nation/states sign that they will not make bioweapons or not weaponize newer developments.
With help/support and oversight via UNIDIR and also private institutions including but not necessarily limited to the ‘Secure World Foundation.’
2. Also, in his talks, Mr. Ray Kurzweil highlights that the Asilomar conference from 1975 has been useful and as it relates to bringing effective regulation (relating to the area of recombinant DNA). (Paraphrased). Link is below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asilomar_Conference_on_Recombinant_DNA
3. Intent: I feel that this is/has been an on-going discussion. A sensitive issue at that. Particularly with unintended consequences for possibly enacting any measures that could cause accidental harm. With either an innocent person/group being targeted with a counter-measure approach. As well, the possibility that freedoms/liberties/real innovation could take a negative hit as a result of the measures taken.
Note: The previous wikipedia entry for the ‘Global Catastrophic Risk’ page had a ‘Likelihood’ section. (Since removed). It cited the ‘Future of Humanity’s Technical Report from 2008’ as a source (link below. But I have not verified via the actual source via FLI). Whereby the ‘Estimated probability for human extinction before 2100’ was categorized as (in random order): a) 0.05% for a Natural pandemic and b) 2% for an Engineered pandemic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Global_catastrophic_risk&oldid=999079110
On one end of the spectrum. I am thinking that better intelligence is needed. As well, some ability to be able to go back in slices of time (without invoking relativity or however space- time functions).
On the other end of the spectrum. If a pandemic with a high mortality rate does emerge. I would reserve my comments on this. But I mentioned this somewhere and the need to War-Game existential risk. But also peace-game existential hope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wargame
Responding to part of your comment: I think OpenPhil or some other organization is actively looking for people to help put better numbers (I think they called them base rates) for risk from engineered pandemics. If you cannot find this “call for proposals” within 20 minutes of Googling and browsing the EAF, I can try to dig that up.
For convenience: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xFsmibHafAu8APgiS/request-for-proposals-help-open-philanthropy-quantify
(Deadline has passed, but it seems likely to be an ongoing need.)
Yes that is super relevant. Hopefully there would even be information coming out from such work that could help people working on refuges/shelters calculate likely reductions in biological risk. This would help both assess different proposed solutions against each other as well as help inform whether a refuge/shelter should be built at all (it seems initially that one would want a substantial reduction in the risk in order to proceed with something as ambitious as a refuge/shelter).
Can you explain the relationship between this project and the upcoming SHELTER Weekend?
That is a very good question. We were aware of the planning for the SHELTER Weekend as that was discussed in, and conceived of by people in the Slack channel mentioned in this post and has an ongoing dialogue with the individuals in that Slack channel. This post has been in the works for several weeks, I think from even before we became aware of the SHELTER Weekend. It should be noted that managing the start of a new project/organization in the non-profit sector in general, and perhaps EA in particular, is not straight forward and I would be happy to hear suggestions on how to manage this and the relationship to others thinking about and working on refuges. I know Charity Entrepreneurship has a lot of experience doing so in a structured manner. Having said all this, we felt that the time was ripe and the resources in place to launch a new, specific project. Then as we learnt about SHELTER Weekend, we saw that as a positive development to both refine thinking around refuges but also to draw more attention to the intervention, broadly speaking. The thinking behind is that a refuge could cost in the $100s of millions while there is little or no feedback on whether the intervention is working (one cannot test the facility under a GCBR scenario, especially an extinction level one) and therefore it is important to spend time and consult with a broad range of experts up front to “stress test” various solutions as much as possible up front so one both ensures that a solution is viable at all and also that among proposed solutions, one proceeds with the most promising one. We are therefore trying to give clarity as to our proposed plan while leaving open as much as possible to a time when enough funding and talent is in place to think rigorously about how a specific intervention should look, if it should be pursued at all.
I guess a question could be whether and SHELTER Weekend is in “competition”. For now I would not say so, but it is not impossible and perhaps not even undesirable to have two teams proposing quite different approaches so that grantmakers have a choice between interventions to fund—I know others have suggested more competition is healthy.
I agree that everyone should be secure during a global or local biological risk event. Shelters are effective in protecting persons from contagion for extended periods of time, given that these are self-sufficient for that period.
Probably the most (marginally) cost-effective (and (thus) profitable) solutions relate to upgrading existing homes to bio shelters. A service like this can be welcome by governments on which the biosecurity conundrum is slowly creeping with the currently increased EA advocacy. Universal (global, at least among major powers) preparedness directs this uncomfortable attention to increased cooperation on health matters rather than the ‘explosion’ of someone’s patience and acting in a risky manner.
For example, sound window and door seals alongside with ventilator filters through which even anthrax does not pass, compact balanced (vegan?) food that elegantly fits in empty spaces and can be even consumed outside of emergency, and water and waste infrastructure agreements with cities and backups (water synthesizers probably too costly? - but a tank for 2 people who drink 2 liters per day for 100 days still fits above a closet) can cover needs comprehensively and together cost under $500.[1] This should score highly on your metrics except the passion one—it is like providing people some tape and resolving their questions about if the closet will hold the tank, will it taste poorly, etc.
Regarding your metrics, I would substitute the crowd protection for accessibility/popularity. Of course, you’d probably be interested in protecting a strategic set of industry, ethics, spirituality, etc thought leaders first before maybe machine operators get protected with scarce resources, to allow the re-emergence of prosperous society, and if you are looking for an R&D investment, this is what you would narrate, but even these leaders could hesitate to support something that would privilege them so glaringly. So, maybe strive for affordability/popularity among cool people, but acknowledge that not everyone would be able to afford at least the first prototypes, before economies of scale reduce the price.
Other ideas that I have include (some of which are complementary):
Underground bunkers where experts collaborate on thought development (comprehensive set that advances human morality and progress) within their fields of expertise and rotate (not everyone has to always be there but if maybe 4 are around at least 2 are always underground). They can work on developing systems or scaling up already beneficial solutions efficiently. This should also work for nuclear and general warfare protection. Rapid vaccine development researchers should be present disproportionately (to keep supported while resolving the issue on ground).
Remoting work (so that economy does not decline during biorisky events). Powers can be interested in weakening others’ economies, in order to gain advantage. If economy is relatively unaffected (in addition to persons’ health), then there is no point in waging war.
Animal farm proofing. When animal farms are protected during human biorisky periods, less pathogen mutations can occur, which contributes to human security. Plus, animals are protected for any intrinsic value (assuming that their lives are net positive) and for the value to humans. Automating animal farms can also benefit the animals, especially if they would feel nervous about humans (14:21–19:54). Animal farms can be added to shelters.
Crop protection. Food is a strategic industry. Seed/spore varieties should probably be protected, to enable people benefit from special drought/flood resistant/high yield/better taste etc varieties and could extend the time survivable in a shelter if they are sustainably farmed there. This can be commercially interesting to enthusiasts and nations with little farm land, such as Singapore, that already invests in space-efficient production.
Libraries. Libraries of nice texts should be gathered at the shelters. Humans should be able to develop their thinking (thus aspect of humanity?) while waiting for others to resolve the issues or in their free time. Digital libraries are possible.
Power generators or power grid assurances/airtightness. Human-powered generators (‘bicycles’ etc) can come to mind, but
Permanent/perpetual disinfection that can safely act when humans are present (e. g. not like UV light). If this could cover entire cities, that would be great. Covering shelters would be nice but applicable only when people would be coming in and out.
Relatedly to disinfecting incoming humans (and products), disinfectant entry chambers could be a great alternative to fully isolated shelters. For example, these could soak clothes in disinfectant and ‘shower’ the person.
Comfortable (and fashionable) overalls. If it turns out that people have to wear overalls all the time when they go out, these should be comfortable and nice looking/undiscernible.
Bathroom solutions. These could relate to the combination of disinfecting bathrooms and overalls.
Nanofilters that one almost does not feel but are entirely protective. It should be that the larger the surface area the easier it is to breathe. For example folded filter backpacks or stomach fans can ease breathing while reducing the amount of material covering face. Assisted ventilation could also help.
Industry norms. In the case of an increased risk situation, industries should be able to increase their biosafety based on an already developed and rehearsed protocol. For example, food products transfer should be air-tight after boiling or the machine rooms should be sealed etc. Non-food products should be disinfected (e. g. by UV light or heat) before (airtight) packaging. Etc.
Transport norms. Transportation of goods should not spread pathogens. Disinfecting before travels, of travel contact surfaces (roads, etc), before joining a place where goods are aggregated (customs line, port, …) should be very facile /stations should exist.
Storage disinfection. Warehouses should also be disinfected, sealed, and incoming goods disinfected before stocking.
Disinfectant production. The production of disinfectant should be possible to be significantly raised rapidly and sustainably. For example, ethanol production by microorganisms can be facilitated by distilleries. Iodine production from soil and sea could work.
Shelter enjoyability. Persons should really be looking forward to getting into a shelter, and be used to some of the things there (e. g. compact food, library, …). Shelters should be a ‘reward’ stimulating environment. Thus, activities one can do there should be enjoyable. In addition to intellectual, spiritual, civilization-preserving and biorisk solving (if applicable) engagement, also exercise should be available. Adequate rest, nutrition, and temperature should also be possible. Participants should be able to enjoy time with others by vetting them (ideally prior to the risky event). Interaction courses, materials, and programs should also be available.
Heating and cooling systems that can be operated with little power. Possibly, isolation materials for places in very cold environments and cooling mechanisms for hot environments and underground.
So, it seems that making bioshelters is relatively facile and that it could be possible for persons and goods move in between of them safely. Certain materials production should be possible to be increased during more risky situations, but most solutions should already be implemented. Actually, these solutions could prevent the spread of transmittable diseases overall, so could be popular among governments.
[Edited to remove offensive language]
This could be sold to governments that spent more than this amount per person as a reactive measure.
I just want to flag for potential readers that I am thinking about the wording in the comment above on uncontacted peoples. I feel uncomfortable with the wording and perhaps implicit comparisons made above but am new to the forum so am seeking advice on how to handle this.
The wording is really bad, and it seems like the beliefs are really, really bad (“species”).
RE: “Shoot everyone else”. It’s plausible that it’s objectively optimal for these tribes to be hostile as they are. Many educated people might come to that conclusion, based on readings of history.
No one I know in EA believes or talks like this.
“Species” refers to homo sapiens sapiens. Even if you look at history, for example in the Middle Ages in Europe (The Better Angels of Our Nature), you could possibly be less interested in allowing humans to develop further, extrapolating from the trends at that time. It could have been a chance that industry allowed for specialization and currently we are at the position of protecting all ours and others’ wellbeing. It could have been that actually torture instruments undergo significant development, monarchs fight for territory, and overtake each other in threatening people with suffering to yield and work on land.
It would have been optimal for the monarch to also be relatively hostile. However, their benevolence would have been exclusive to a selected few (or themselves). I suggest that the moral circles of the future civilization are expanded. Since there would be no external accountability in the event of a disaster, the protected group should have this principle internalized. It may be that bonobos would also be hostile to others if needed but it can also be likely that if bonobos and humans develop to the same technological level, humans will be more exclusive in advancing wellbeing to other individuals and species. Since natural evolution is not as time constrained, it may be better to protect bonobos than human tribes with little to no contact with other humans to safeguard a positive development of future civilization.
Ok, I saw images and read stories, which may be selected to fit the texts where they are introduced and be captured by an unfamiliar device relatively near the persons, in which these humans aimed arrows at the camera or threw spears at helicopters with emergency aid. It is also possible that these humans hunt and use devices which can be thrown or released by a spring to cover relatively longer distances fast.
Some articles specify that at least some of these groups’ members had negative experiences with some other humans and so the groups chose to discontinue interacting. So, it may be that some ancestors in the human groups have been traumatized and the emotional perception of others is carried forward. In general, when no unfamiliar devices are causing them fear or when they do not need to hunt or otherwise protect themselves, they can be supporting each other and other species in wellbeing.
However, notwithstanding any possible rationale for any hostility in some cases, I guess that the intuition/norm leaders of these groups would not aim for scaling up wellbeing across moral circles as much as possible.
Similarly, leaders of other homo sapiens sapiens groups, who could have gained dominance by the use of force, the threat of such, or limited support when they could have increased others’ wellbeing, may be unlikely to extend wellbeing prioritizing norms across the sentience landscape.
Thus, ‘shoot everyone else’ can be understood as accurate, if one focuses on its normative meaning. It means rather than emotionally focusing on others in order to increase their own wellbeing and support the wellbeing of the other, if that is what the other prefers, or support them otherwise if this is generally good, these people seek to reduce others’ pursuit and development of their objectives, in order to reduce the need of engaging with them, including by the use of force or threat of such. Shooting is one way to achieve this objective.
I do dumber stuff all the time than this, but I want you to know that this reads like a shallow rationalization or even reiteration of the original sentiment.
The comment is using what I call “EA rhetoric” which has sort of evolved on the forum over the years, where posts and comments are padded out with words and other devices. To the degree this is intended to evasive, this is further bad as it harms trust. These devices are perfectly visible to outsiders.
I think you care and I’m not sure you see this and it seems good to know as I think other people will have similar takes.
I agree that this has evolved on the forum over the years and it is driving me insane. Seems like a total race to the bottom to appear as the most thorough thinker. You’re also right to point out that it is completely visible to outsiders.
It is an explanation and an elaboration that seeks to explain the sentiment, so that you and other readers can better understand the intuitive/emotional meaning, which is that protecting abusive and neglectful human societies may be suboptimal.
Notwithstanding that Forum users can use rhetorical devices to attract attention, limit readers’ critical thinking and response and motivate them to an impulsive action, or gain credibility by using specific expressions, readers can always critically think, react, and focus on the content rather than form.
If users point out any of these devices, the authors may reduce or eliminate their usage. Open critique and positive responses should gain trust. Trust would be undermined by ignorance. Even though these devices are visible, they may not always be discerned or concretely pointed out by users.
For example, I can point out an appeal to emotion and possibly a false implication without a concrete request. You are implying that if I do not respond, I do not care about a specific topic, such as protecting the future or the populations of groups called uncontacted peoples.
Further, you are implying your ‘vulnerability’ in expressing that you are uncertain whether I see this and rhetorically empowering me to a free action in this exchange, which can motivate me to a response through my willingness to ‘assure’ the vulnerable.
‘It seems good to know’ can be understood as an (abstract) threat of being considered uninformed (and thus shameful or worthy of exclusion) if I do not acknowledge your comment, while agreeing may seem to be the solution to avert being considered as such.
‘I think other people will have similar takes’ appeals to the thread to exclusion, which can further motivate me to respond, since intuitively, animals could fear exclusion.
So, I ask you to refrain from appealing to emotion in your comments. Before you post a comment, analyze whether it can be interpreted as seeking to gain attention by motivating the reader’s emotions. If so, change it so that the same suggestion is conveyed without an appeal to emotions. These suggestions can be better perceived and (perhaps—although ideally only content would be always considered) met with positive implementation of your suggestions by readers.
Further, I ask you to have concrete/more elaborated complaints and/or suggestions, which can be useful to the Forum users. For example, which wording, specifically is bad, is it just the word “species” or does it relate to another idea that I suggested, or are you referring to the expression “shoot everyone else,” and if so, are you mostly concerned about the generalization ‘everyone’ or the assumption ‘shoot.’
What beliefs are bad and bad from what perspective? Do you think that I am not focusing on understanding the realities of these individuals and instead making assumptions based on objectification, or is it that my moral values are incorrect because I do not prioritize humans over bonobos, or are you commenting on anything else that you are not explicitly stating?
By offering a reasoning behind your specific complaint, you could perhaps point me out to an alternative thinking about the problem, or a resource that I could review. Then, I could alter or change my thinking, present a counterargument, or share another resource. Suggesting an alternative solution can have similar thought/solution development effect.
I don’t think I agree with you on the above. I see myself as trying to help. In my opinion, the consequences of some of the writing here seems pretty serious.
Whether right or wrong, I’m going to disengage now.
It cracks me up that this is the first comment you’ve ever gotten posting here, it really is not the norm.