I was informed of this thread by someone in the EA community who suggested I help. I have deep subject matter expertise in this domain (depending on how you count, I’ve been working in it full-time for 5 years, and toward it for 10+ years).
The reason I started working on this could be characterized as resulting from my beliefs on the “threat multiplier” impact that broken information ecosystems have on catastrophic risk.
A few caveats about all this though:
Most of the public dialogue around these issues is very simplistic and reductionist (which leads to the following two issues...).
The framing of the questions you provide may not be ideal for getting at your underlying goals/questions. I would think more about that.
Much of the academic research is terrible, simply due to the lack of quality data and the newness and interdisciplinary nature of the fields; even “top researchers” sometimes draw the unsubstantiated conclusions from their studies.
All that said, I continue to believe that the set of problems around information systems (and relatedly governance) are a prerequisite for addressing catastrophic global risks—that they are among the most urgent and important issues that we could be addressing—and that we are still heading at a faster and faster rate in the wrong direction.
I have very limited bandwidth, with a number of other projects in the space, but if people are putting put significant money and time toward this, I may be able to put in some time in an advisory role at least to help direct that energy effectively. My contact info and more context about me is at aviv.me .
I was informed of this thread by someone in the EA community who suggested I help. I have deep subject matter expertise in this domain (depending on how you count, I’ve been working in it full-time for 5 years, and toward it for 10+ years).
The reason I started working on this could be characterized as resulting from my beliefs on the “threat multiplier” impact that broken information ecosystems have on catastrophic risk.
A few caveats about all this though:
Most of the public dialogue around these issues is very simplistic and reductionist (which leads to the following two issues...).
The framing of the questions you provide may not be ideal for getting at your underlying goals/questions. I would think more about that.
Much of the academic research is terrible, simply due to the lack of quality data and the newness and interdisciplinary nature of the fields; even “top researchers” sometimes draw the unsubstantiated conclusions from their studies.
All that said, I continue to believe that the set of problems around information systems (and relatedly governance) are a prerequisite for addressing catastrophic global risks—that they are among the most urgent and important issues that we could be addressing—and that we are still heading at a faster and faster rate in the wrong direction.
I have very limited bandwidth, with a number of other projects in the space, but if people are putting put significant money and time toward this, I may be able to put in some time in an advisory role at least to help direct that energy effectively. My contact info and more context about me is at aviv.me .
Thanks for this! I’ve sent you an email. Especially regarding caveat #2 I believe you can help with relative little time and resources.