First of all, this is outstanding. Perhaps the best piece I have read in this forum.
I will use the rigth/left of the boom distinction, to comment:
I think that there is not need of left of the boom specific interventions, because everything that improves human welfare, and helps to move the world towards distributed governance and a satified human population helps to reduce nuclear risk.
Regarding rigth of the boom, the opportunities are huge, because this is the most important and neglected human problem. In my view, fiding “double use” interventions is critical.
Let’s take my favorite organization: ALLFED. They need to deploy their tecnologies for other uses. How can ALLFED help with famine in Niger? Can Open Ecology build open source machinery that can be used in Niger? To some extent after nuclear war, we all become Niger, so everything learnt there can be used in a post nuclear scenario worldwide. I commented this in detail in my first post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4viLtxnwzMawqdPum/time-consistency-for-the-ea-community-projects-that-bridge
A final and obvious comment, is how important is to find ways to cooperate with the Defense organizations: NATO and RAND are natural partners.
Arturo, thank you for this comment and the very kind words!
I really like your point about beneficially “dual-use” interventions, and that we might want to look for right-of-boom interventions with near-term positive externalities. I think that’s useful for market-shaping and for political tractability (no one likes to invest in something that their successor will take credit for) -- and it’s just a good thing to do!
It feels similar to the point that bio-risk preparedness has many current-gen benefits, like Kevin Esvelt’s point here that “Crucially, any passive defence capable of substantially impeding the spread of a novel pandemic agent would also suppress or outright eliminate many or even most endemic human viruses and pathogenic bacteria”
Hello,
First of all, this is outstanding. Perhaps the best piece I have read in this forum.
I will use the rigth/left of the boom distinction, to comment:
I think that there is not need of left of the boom specific interventions, because everything that improves human welfare, and helps to move the world towards distributed governance and a satified human population helps to reduce nuclear risk.
Regarding rigth of the boom, the opportunities are huge, because this is the most important and neglected human problem. In my view, fiding “double use” interventions is critical.
Let’s take my favorite organization: ALLFED. They need to deploy their tecnologies for other uses. How can ALLFED help with famine in Niger? Can Open Ecology build open source machinery that can be used in Niger? To some extent after nuclear war, we all become Niger, so everything learnt there can be used in a post nuclear scenario worldwide. I commented this in detail in my first post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4viLtxnwzMawqdPum/time-consistency-for-the-ea-community-projects-that-bridge
A final and obvious comment, is how important is to find ways to cooperate with the Defense organizations: NATO and RAND are natural partners.
Kind Regards,
Arturo
Arturo, thank you for this comment and the very kind words!
I really like your point about beneficially “dual-use” interventions, and that we might want to look for right-of-boom interventions with near-term positive externalities. I think that’s useful for market-shaping and for political tractability (no one likes to invest in something that their successor will take credit for) -- and it’s just a good thing to do!
It feels similar to the point that bio-risk preparedness has many current-gen benefits, like Kevin Esvelt’s point here that “Crucially, any passive defence capable of substantially impeding the spread of a novel pandemic agent would also suppress or outright eliminate many or even most endemic human viruses and pathogenic bacteria”