Thanks for putting this list together, and including a whole bunch of handy links! This post has already caused me to buy After Tamerlane (there’s an audiobook version) and to download some of the IISS podcast episodes.
Two things I particularly appreciated were the mention of atomic scale manufacturing and risks of stable totalitarianism. Those are two problems where it seems like there are either some estimates or some arguments suggesting we should be substantially concerned, and yet where there’s relatively little discussion of the poblems in EA. So I’d be excited to see a bit more discussion of those topics, even if it’s just to make a clearer case for de-prioritising those topics for now. (That said, I don’t actually have strong reasons for thinking those problems matter more than the rest of the problems listed in this post.)
Also, here are three other collections of links relevant to some problems covered here, which some readers may find useful:
Crucial questions for longtermists: Overview: This is a draft-stage series of posts I’m working on, with a bunch of links to many of the problems covered in this post, as well as some others.
Glad you’ve found it helpful, and thanks for these resource lists! I’m adding them to our inernal list of resources. Anything you’ve read from them you think it’d be particularly good to add to the above blurbs?
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any papers, chapters, or even blog posts fully focused on robust totalitarianism, except for the Caplan chapter you already mentioned. I assume that (a) there’s a lot of fairly relevant work in fields like international relations or political science, but also that (b) such work won’t focus on the matter of global and very long-lasting totalitarianism—but to be honest I haven’t actually checked either of those assumptions. (If anyone else knows of any relevant work, please comment about it on that collection I made.)
For “Broadly promoting positive values”, it might be worth adding one or more of:
But I’ve only read the first two of those posts thus far, and I at least slightly disagreed with parts of both, personally.
As for the other topics, the only things that immediately come to mind as particularly noteworthy are Should Longtermists Mostly Think About Animals? and Space governance is important, tractable and neglected, both for the “Space settlement and terraforming” topic. (Tobias already mentioned space governance in another comment; I’m neutral about whether a separate topic should be added for space governance specifically, but I also think it could make sense to just fold that into the “Space settlement and terraforming” topic.)
Thanks for putting this list together, and including a whole bunch of handy links! This post has already caused me to buy After Tamerlane (there’s an audiobook version) and to download some of the IISS podcast episodes.
Two things I particularly appreciated were the mention of atomic scale manufacturing and risks of stable totalitarianism. Those are two problems where it seems like there are either some estimates or some arguments suggesting we should be substantially concerned, and yet where there’s relatively little discussion of the poblems in EA. So I’d be excited to see a bit more discussion of those topics, even if it’s just to make a clearer case for de-prioritising those topics for now. (That said, I don’t actually have strong reasons for thinking those problems matter more than the rest of the problems listed in this post.)
Also, here are three other collections of links relevant to some problems covered here, which some readers may find useful:
My collection of sources related to dystopias and “robust totalitarianism” (the sources are written by other people; I’m just collecting them)
My collection of sources relevant to moral circles, moral boundaries, or their expansion, and thereby relevant to “Broadly promoting positive values”
Crucial questions for longtermists: Overview: This is a draft-stage series of posts I’m working on, with a bunch of links to many of the problems covered in this post, as well as some others.
Hey Michael,
Glad you’ve found it helpful, and thanks for these resource lists! I’m adding them to our inernal list of resources. Anything you’ve read from them you think it’d be particularly good to add to the above blurbs?
Hey Arden, glad those resource lists look useful!
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any papers, chapters, or even blog posts fully focused on robust totalitarianism, except for the Caplan chapter you already mentioned. I assume that (a) there’s a lot of fairly relevant work in fields like international relations or political science, but also that (b) such work won’t focus on the matter of global and very long-lasting totalitarianism—but to be honest I haven’t actually checked either of those assumptions. (If anyone else knows of any relevant work, please comment about it on that collection I made.)
For “Broadly promoting positive values”, it might be worth adding one or more of:
Against moral advocacy—Paul Christiano, 2013
Arguments for and against moral advocacy—Tobias Baumann, 2017
Values Spreading is Often More Important than Extinction Risk—Brian Tomasik, 2013
But I’ve only read the first two of those posts thus far, and I at least slightly disagreed with parts of both, personally.
As for the other topics, the only things that immediately come to mind as particularly noteworthy are Should Longtermists Mostly Think About Animals? and Space governance is important, tractable and neglected, both for the “Space settlement and terraforming” topic. (Tobias already mentioned space governance in another comment; I’m neutral about whether a separate topic should be added for space governance specifically, but I also think it could make sense to just fold that into the “Space settlement and terraforming” topic.)
Thanks! Helpful pointers.