I’ve had interesting conversations with people based on this question, so I thought I’d ask it here. I’ll follow up with some of my thoughts later to avoid priming.
By novel insights, I mean insights that were found for the first time. This excludes the diffusion of earlier insights throughout the community.
To gesture at the threshold I have in mind for major insights, here are some examples from the pre-2015 period:
Longtermism
Anthropogenic extinction risk is greater than natural extinction risk
AI could be a technology with impacts comparable to the Industrial Revolution, and those impacts may not be close-to-optimal by default
An example that feels borderline to me is the unilateralist’s curse.
[Question] What are novel major insights from longtermist macrostrategy or global priorities research found since 2015?
I’ve had interesting conversations with people based on this question, so I thought I’d ask it here. I’ll follow up with some of my thoughts later to avoid priming.
By novel insights, I mean insights that were found for the first time. This excludes the diffusion of earlier insights throughout the community.
To gesture at the threshold I have in mind for major insights, here are some examples from the pre-2015 period:
Longtermism
Anthropogenic extinction risk is greater than natural extinction risk
AI could be a technology with impacts comparable to the Industrial Revolution, and those impacts may not be close-to-optimal by default
An example that feels borderline to me is the unilateralist’s curse.