I agree re preventing catastrophes at least—e.g. a nuclear war has great long-term harm via destroying many leading democracies, making the post-catastrophe world less democratic, even if it doesn’t result in extinction.
On resilience in particular, I’d need to see the argument spelled out a bit more.
Because the democracies (N America, Europe) would have been differentially destroyed (or damaged), and I think that the world is “unusually” democratic (i.e. more than the average we’d get with many historical replays).
If there is nuclear war without nuclear winter, there would be a dramatic loss of industrial capability which would cascade through the global system. However, being prepared to scale up alternatives such as wood gas powered vehicles producing electricity would significantly speed recovery time and reduce mortality. I think if there is less people killing each other over scarce resources, values would be better, so global totalitarianism would be less likely and bad values locked into AI would be less likely. Similarly, if there is nuclear winter, I think the default is countries banning trade and fighting over limited food. But if countries realized they could feed everyone if they cooperated, I think cooperation is more likely and that would result in better values for the future. For a pandemic, I think being ready to scale up disease transmission interventions very quickly, including UV, in room air filtration, ventilation, glycol, and temporary working housing would make the outcome of the pandemic far better. Even if those don’t work and there is a collapse of electricity/industry due to the pandemic, again being able to do backup ways of meeting basic needs like heating, food, and water[1] would likely result in better values for the future. Then there is the factor that resilience makes collapse of civilization less likely. There’s a lot of uncertainty of whether values would be better or worse the second time around, but I think values are pretty good now compared to what we could have, so it seems like not losing civilization would be a net benefit for the long-term (and obviously a net benefit for the short term).
I agree re preventing catastrophes at least—e.g. a nuclear war has great long-term harm via destroying many leading democracies, making the post-catastrophe world less democratic, even if it doesn’t result in extinction.
On resilience in particular, I’d need to see the argument spelled out a bit more.
Why would the post-catastrophe world be less democratic?
Because the democracies (N America, Europe) would have been differentially destroyed (or damaged), and I think that the world is “unusually” democratic (i.e. more than the average we’d get with many historical replays).
If there is nuclear war without nuclear winter, there would be a dramatic loss of industrial capability which would cascade through the global system. However, being prepared to scale up alternatives such as wood gas powered vehicles producing electricity would significantly speed recovery time and reduce mortality. I think if there is less people killing each other over scarce resources, values would be better, so global totalitarianism would be less likely and bad values locked into AI would be less likely. Similarly, if there is nuclear winter, I think the default is countries banning trade and fighting over limited food. But if countries realized they could feed everyone if they cooperated, I think cooperation is more likely and that would result in better values for the future.
For a pandemic, I think being ready to scale up disease transmission interventions very quickly, including UV, in room air filtration, ventilation, glycol, and temporary working housing would make the outcome of the pandemic far better. Even if those don’t work and there is a collapse of electricity/industry due to the pandemic, again being able to do backup ways of meeting basic needs like heating, food, and water[1] would likely result in better values for the future.
Then there is the factor that resilience makes collapse of civilization less likely. There’s a lot of uncertainty of whether values would be better or worse the second time around, but I think values are pretty good now compared to what we could have, so it seems like not losing civilization would be a net benefit for the long-term (and obviously a net benefit for the short term).
Paper about to be submitted.
Worrying.