I agree, it’s too hard to disentangle these from any political discussion. I guess we could separate discussion of the issues (which we can reasonably link to politicians and parties) but not discuss the elections themselves. I (weak to moderate confidence) think EA and this forum could play a valuable role in bringing good epistemics, reasoning, and expertise to the discussions of the issues. And I think we should not trip over ourselves to refrain from tying these to the politics, where this is obvious.
In line with your list, I think it’s plausible that
1. HEALTH/PANDEMIC RISK: Putting RFK in charge of health, or giving him influence over it will strongly escalate the risk of pandemics and large-scale disease outbreaks in the US and internationally. As I understand it, RFK rejects vaccines and the integrity of the current scientific institutions. He will spread this as a matter of policy as well as through his social influence; both will boost vaccine hesitancy. He will likely drastically reduce US support for vaccine development and promotion, with global implications.
(Representative evidence: He proposed allocating half of the NIH’s research budget to “preventive, alternative, and holistic” medicine.)
2. NUCLEAR RISK: The US will fully or substantially abandon NATO and other institutions. This will be destabilizing and raise the risk of adventurism from Russia, China, and others, in turn raising the risk of nuclear war.
Fwiw these claims were broadly backed up by a query on Perplexity. Full disclosure, Perplexity was less convinced than I am that that Trump will undermine foreign development aid budgets. They had a mixed response on animal welfare issues, but they agreed it is “likely that a future Trump administration would attempt to undermine or preempt state legislation on animal welfare standards, particularly those related to farm animals.”
I agree, it’s too hard to disentangle these from any political discussion. I guess we could separate discussion of the issues (which we can reasonably link to politicians and parties) but not discuss the elections themselves. I (weak to moderate confidence) think EA and this forum could play a valuable role in bringing good epistemics, reasoning, and expertise to the discussions of the issues. And I think we should not trip over ourselves to refrain from tying these to the politics, where this is obvious.
In line with your list, I think it’s plausible that
1. HEALTH/PANDEMIC RISK: Putting RFK in charge of health, or giving him influence over it will strongly escalate the risk of pandemics and large-scale disease outbreaks in the US and internationally. As I understand it, RFK rejects vaccines and the integrity of the current scientific institutions. He will spread this as a matter of policy as well as through his social influence; both will boost vaccine hesitancy. He will likely drastically reduce US support for vaccine development and promotion, with global implications.
(Representative evidence: He proposed allocating half of the NIH’s research budget to “preventive, alternative, and holistic” medicine.)
2. NUCLEAR RISK: The US will fully or substantially abandon NATO and other institutions. This will be destabilizing and raise the risk of adventurism from Russia, China, and others, in turn raising the risk of nuclear war.
Fwiw these claims were broadly backed up by a query on Perplexity. Full disclosure, Perplexity was less convinced than I am that that Trump will undermine foreign development aid budgets. They had a mixed response on animal welfare issues, but they agreed it is “likely that a future Trump administration would attempt to undermine or preempt state legislation on animal welfare standards, particularly those related to farm animals.”