Your post hits like a fresh blast of reason in the middle of a doomsday, conspiracy-like fringe. I think you are on the right track by addressing ‘the risk hype.’
Stay tuned for more! Just one note. While I do think people in the effective altruism community have often been exaggerating the risks, I would say using terms like “conspiracy”, “fringe” and “hype” tends to increase the chance of adversarial rather than constructive discussions, and therefore can be counterproductive. Yet, I appreciate you sharing your honest feelings.
To be honest, the “Biosecurity & Pandemics” topic enticed me to join the EA Forum, and I have been having a hard time understanding how this fits with EA.
I am glad you joined. I think people with expertise in bio who have not been exposed to effective altruism since their early age may have different takes which are worth listening to. You can check 80,000 Hours’ profile on preventing catastrophic pandemics for an overview of why it is a top cause area in EA. If you see yourself disagreeing with many points, and would like a side project, you can then consider sharing your thoughts in a post.
There are only a few things more wasteful and frankly counterproductive to spend money on than mitigating obscure pandemic/bioweapon threats.
This may not apply in all cases. Charity Entrepeneurship has estimated that advocating for academic guidelines to limit dual-use research of concern (DURC) can save a life for just 30 $ (related post), which is around 200 (= (5*10^3)/30) times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities (often consided the best interventions in global health and development).
For example, the US has spent something like $40-50 billion dollars since 2001 on anthrax research alone – a disease that only has a few cases in the US and a few thousand globally per year.
That does look like a bad investment. Considering the value of a statistical life (VSL) used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of 7.5 M$, an investment of 45 G$ (= (40 + 50)/2*10^9) would have to save 6.00 k (= 45*10^9/(7.5*10^6)) lives in the US in expectation, i.e. 261 per year (= 6.00*10^3/23) over the 23 years from 2001 to 2023. This looks like a high bar considering that anthrax is not contagious, which limits the probability of having lots of deaths.
That being said, it is worth noting the deaths from pandemics are very heavy-tailed in general, so the actual cost-effectiveness is not a good proxy for the expected cost-effectiveness, which is what one should care about. I can imagine investments in mRNA vaccines also saved few lives before Covid-19, but their expected cost-effectiveness was driven by relatively rare events, which in this case did happen.
the incident with the Ames strain from USAMRIID in the 2001 anthrax letters
For reference, Peter is referring to the 2001 anthrax attacks. People may also want to check Wikipedia’s list of bioterrorist attacks. As a side note, I think your comment would benefit from having a few links, but I appreciate this takes time!
And thirdly, I would address this notion – probably doing some heavy lifting to prop up the chances of existential catastrophe in some eyes – that any day now, some nut will self-educate on YouTube or some skilled professional with lab access will flip and construct a DIY bioweapon capable of posing a critical threat to society. I will give it some rope in terms of somebody starting that “secret project” not being too far-fetched. Can happen, people can be very weird! However, I can see difficulties even if the person gains access to free and unlimited NA printing resources. There is a reason why the Soviet Union had tons of anthrax and smallpox – you are going to need a large-scale, sophisticated delivery system for the initial release. Otherwise, the list of victims will include only the bioterrorist or close people, and it will never be more than a regional incident.
Thanks, Peeter!
Stay tuned for more! Just one note. While I do think people in the effective altruism community have often been exaggerating the risks, I would say using terms like “conspiracy”, “fringe” and “hype” tends to increase the chance of adversarial rather than constructive discussions, and therefore can be counterproductive. Yet, I appreciate you sharing your honest feelings.
I am glad you joined. I think people with expertise in bio who have not been exposed to effective altruism since their early age may have different takes which are worth listening to. You can check 80,000 Hours’ profile on preventing catastrophic pandemics for an overview of why it is a top cause area in EA. If you see yourself disagreeing with many points, and would like a side project, you can then consider sharing your thoughts in a post.
This may not apply in all cases. Charity Entrepeneurship has estimated that advocating for academic guidelines to limit dual-use research of concern (DURC) can save a life for just 30 $ (related post), which is around 200 (= (5*10^3)/30) times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities (often consided the best interventions in global health and development).
That does look like a bad investment. Considering the value of a statistical life (VSL) used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of 7.5 M$, an investment of 45 G$ (= (40 + 50)/2*10^9) would have to save 6.00 k (= 45*10^9/(7.5*10^6)) lives in the US in expectation, i.e. 261 per year (= 6.00*10^3/23) over the 23 years from 2001 to 2023. This looks like a high bar considering that anthrax is not contagious, which limits the probability of having lots of deaths.
That being said, it is worth noting the deaths from pandemics are very heavy-tailed in general, so the actual cost-effectiveness is not a good proxy for the expected cost-effectiveness, which is what one should care about. I can imagine investments in mRNA vaccines also saved few lives before Covid-19, but their expected cost-effectiveness was driven by relatively rare events, which in this case did happen.
For reference, Peter is referring to the 2001 anthrax attacks. People may also want to check Wikipedia’s list of bioterrorist attacks. As a side note, I think your comment would benefit from having a few links, but I appreciate this takes time!
Relatedly, I enjoyed listening to Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley on Barriers to Bioweapons, which I plan to linkpost on the EA Forum in the coming weeks.