Thanks for putting this list together, and including a whole bunch of handy links! This post has already caused me to buy After Tamerlane (thereās 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 thereās relatively little discussion of the poblems in EA. So Iād be excited to see a bit more discussion of those topics, even if itās just to make a clearer case for de-prioritising those topics for now. (That said, I donāt 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 Iām working on, with a bunch of links to many of the problems covered in this post, as well as some others.
Glad youāve found it helpful, and thanks for these resource lists! Iām adding them to our inernal list of resources. Anything youāve read from them you think itād be particularly good to add to the above blurbs?
Unfortunately, I havenāt 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) thereās a lot of fairly relevant work in fields like international relations or political science, but also that (b) such work wonāt focus on the matter of global and very long-lasting totalitarianismābut to be honest I havenāt actually checked either of those assumptions. (If anyone else knows of any relevant work, please comment about it on that collection I made.)
For āBroadly promoting positive valuesā, it might be worth adding one or more of:
But Iāve 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 āSpace settlement and terraformingā topic. (Tobias already mentioned space governance in another comment; Iām 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 āSpace settlement and terraformingā 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 (thereās 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 thereās relatively little discussion of the poblems in EA. So Iād be excited to see a bit more discussion of those topics, even if itās just to make a clearer case for de-prioritising those topics for now. (That said, I donāt 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 ārobust totalitarianismā (the sources are written by other people; Iām just collecting them)
My collection of sources relevant to moral circles, moral boundaries, or their expansion, and thereby relevant to āBroadly promoting positive valuesā
Crucial questions for longtermists: Overview: This is a draft-stage series of posts Iām working on, with a bunch of links to many of the problems covered in this post, as well as some others.
Hey Michael,
Glad youāve found it helpful, and thanks for these resource lists! Iām adding them to our inernal list of resources. Anything youāve read from them you think itād be particularly good to add to the above blurbs?
Hey Arden, glad those resource lists look useful!
Unfortunately, I havenāt 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) thereās a lot of fairly relevant work in fields like international relations or political science, but also that (b) such work wonāt focus on the matter of global and very long-lasting totalitarianismābut to be honest I havenāt actually checked either of those assumptions. (If anyone else knows of any relevant work, please comment about it on that collection I made.)
For āBroadly promoting positive valuesā, it might be worth adding one or more of:
Against moral advocacyāPaul Christiano, 2013
Arguments for and against moral advocacyāTobias Baumann, 2017
Values Spreading is Often More Important than Extinction RiskāBrian Tomasik, 2013
But Iāve 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 āSpace settlement and terraformingā topic. (Tobias already mentioned space governance in another comment; Iām 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 āSpace settlement and terraformingā topic.)
Thanks! Helpful pointers.