Interesting post. I think the key points raised make sense to me.
I’ll share a few quick thoughts in separate comments.
Firstly, this issue was briefly discussed in The Precipice by Toby Ord. Though I’m not sure if that discussion contained any important insights that this post missed.
Secondly, something that seemed (in my non-expert opinion) slightly odd about the discussion The Precipice, and that also seems applicable to this post, is the apparent focus just on how the benefits from being able to deflect asteroids away from the Earth compare to the risks from being able to deflect asteroids towards the Earth, without also discussing the risks just from a proliferation of additional nuclear explosives and related technologies. I.e., perhaps the explosives developed for use in deflection could just be used “directly” on targets on the Earth?
It’s possible that there’s a reason to not talk much about that side of things. Though recently I discovered that GCRI have a paper on that matter, which looks interesting, though I’ve only read the blog post summary.
Interesting post. I think the key points raised make sense to me.
I’ll share a few quick thoughts in separate comments.
Firstly, this issue was briefly discussed in The Precipice by Toby Ord. Though I’m not sure if that discussion contained any important insights that this post missed.
Secondly, something that seemed (in my non-expert opinion) slightly odd about the discussion The Precipice, and that also seems applicable to this post, is the apparent focus just on how the benefits from being able to deflect asteroids away from the Earth compare to the risks from being able to deflect asteroids towards the Earth, without also discussing the risks just from a proliferation of additional nuclear explosives and related technologies. I.e., perhaps the explosives developed for use in deflection could just be used “directly” on targets on the Earth?
It’s possible that there’s a reason to not talk much about that side of things. Though recently I discovered that GCRI have a paper on that matter, which looks interesting, though I’ve only read the blog post summary.