Even though I think that something like a US-China war would be hard to prevent, I think that forecasts on its likelihood are still valuable because they affect many possible plans. A post that goes through Metaculus questions about whether “shit is going to hit the fan” (US-China war, a war between nuclear powers, nuclear weapons used, etc.), and tries to outline what implications those scenarios would have for the EA community—and perhaps what cheap mitigation steps could be taken—might be a small but valuable project. Note that per Laplace’s law, the likelihood of another great war in the medium term is not that low.
I agree with this. I’m planning to write 1 or more posts of vaguely that type, but I don’t know precisely when and it seems very unlikely I’ll 100% cover this. So if someone is interested in doing that, maybe contact me (michael AT rethinkpriorities DOT org), and perhaps we could collaborate or I could give some useful pointers?
Even though I think that something like a US-China war would be hard to prevent, I think that forecasts on its likelihood are still valuable because they affect many possible plans. A post that goes through Metaculus questions about whether “shit is going to hit the fan” (US-China war, a war between nuclear powers, nuclear weapons used, etc.), and tries to outline what implications those scenarios would have for the EA community—and perhaps what cheap mitigation steps could be taken—might be a small but valuable project. Note that per Laplace’s law, the likelihood of another great war in the medium term is not that low.
I agree with this. I’m planning to write 1 or more posts of vaguely that type, but I don’t know precisely when and it seems very unlikely I’ll 100% cover this. So if someone is interested in doing that, maybe contact me (michael AT rethinkpriorities DOT org), and perhaps we could collaborate or I could give some useful pointers?