History

TagLast edit: 12 Feb 2022 14:53 UTC by Pablo

The history tag is for posts that are strongly focused on historical events or trends (rather than just mentioning these things briefly), or that discuss or make heavy use of historical research methods.

Some history topics it might be very valuable to investigate

MichaelA🔸8 Jul 2020 2:40 UTC

91 points

34 comments6 min readEA link

Tom Moynihan on why prior generations missed some of the biggest priorities of all

80000_Hours29 Jul 2021 16:38 UTC

20 points

0 comments156 min readEA link

A (Very) Short History of the Collapse of Civilizations, and Why it Matters

Davidmanheim30 Aug 2020 7:49 UTC

53 points

16 comments2 min readEA link

Rose Hadshar: From the Neolithic Revolution to the far future

EA Global26 Oct 2018 8:35 UTC

14 points

0 comments1 min readEA link

(www.youtube.com)

How tractable is changing the course of history?

Jamie_Harris22 May 2019 15:29 UTC

41 points

2 comments7 min readEA link

(www.sentienceinstitute.org)

Does Economic History Point Toward a Singularity?

bgarfinkel2 Sep 2020 12:48 UTC

140 points

55 comments3 min readEA link

What Helped the Voiceless? Historical Case Studies

Mau11 Oct 2020 3:38 UTC

129 points

16 comments88 min readEA link

Long-Term Influence and Movement Growth: Two Historical Case Studies

Aron_Vallinder13 Dec 2018 19:03 UTC

58 points

9 comments1 min readEA link

Lessons from the history of animal rights

JesseClifton17 May 2016 19:32 UTC

40 points

10 comments9 min readEA link

How moral progress happens: the decline of footbinding as a case study

rosehadshar26 Jul 2022 9:18 UTC

104 points

10 comments13 min readEA link

What factors allow societies to survive a crisis?

FJehn9 Apr 2024 8:05 UTC

23 points

1 comment10 min readEA link

(existentialcrunch.substack.com)

Call for Cruxes by Rhyme, a Longtermist History Consultancy

Lara_TH1 Mar 2023 10:20 UTC

147 points

6 comments3 min readEA link

Discontinuous progress in history: an update

AI Impacts17 Apr 2020 16:28 UTC

69 points

3 comments24 min readEA link

Potatoes: A Critical Review

Pablo Villalobos10 May 2022 15:27 UTC

118 points

27 comments9 min readEA link

(docs.google.com)

Social Movement Lessons from the US Prisoners’ Rights Movement

Jamie_Harris22 Jul 2020 12:10 UTC

32 points

3 comments128 min readEA link

(www.sentienceinstitute.org)

Key Lessons From Social Movement History

Jamie_Harris30 Jun 2021 17:05 UTC

122 points

24 comments11 min readEA link

(www.sentienceinstitute.org)

What the EA community can learn from the rise of the neoliberals

Kerry_Vaughan6 Dec 2016 18:21 UTC

55 points

10 comments20 min readEA link

The History of AI Rights Research

Jamie_Harris27 Aug 2022 8:14 UTC

48 points

1 comment14 min readEA link

(www.sentienceinstitute.org)

Why Undergrads Should Take History Classes

TW1237 Nov 2021 14:25 UTC

44 points

12 comments3 min readEA link

How fragile was history?

Gregory Lewis🔸2 Feb 2018 6:23 UTC

22 points

9 comments4 min readEA link

[Question] Are there historical examples of excess panic during pandemics killing a lot of people?

Linch27 May 2020 17:00 UTC

28 points

15 comments1 min readEA link

[Short Version] What Helped the Voiceless? Historical Case Studies

Mau15 Dec 2020 3:40 UTC

52 points

2 comments10 min readEA link

Persistence—A critical review [ABRIDGED]

Jaime Sevilla10 Nov 2021 11:30 UTC

90 points

6 comments2 min readEA link

[Question] How did our historical moral heroes deal with severe adversity and/or moral compromise?

Linch9 Jan 2023 18:12 UTC

46 points

3 comments2 min readEA link

The end of the Bronze Age as an example of a sudden collapse of civilization

FJehn28 Oct 2020 12:55 UTC

53 points

7 comments7 min readEA link

[Question] What would an entity with GiveWell’s decision-making process have recommended in the past?

Mati_Roy25 Jun 2021 6:12 UTC

28 points

11 comments1 min readEA link

New History Exploration Club for EAs!

aaronmayer27 May 2022 15:00 UTC

25 points

0 comments2 min readEA link

Summary of history (empowerment and well-being lens)

Holden Karnofsky28 Sep 2021 17:48 UTC

62 points

11 comments11 min readEA link

The Mystery of the Cuban missile crisis

Nathan_Barnard5 May 2022 22:51 UTC

10 points

4 comments9 min readEA link

Are you really in a race? The Cautionary Tales of Szilárd and Ellsberg

HaydnBelfield19 May 2022 8:42 UTC

478 points

44 comments18 min readEA link

[Question] I’m interviewing historian of abolitionism Christopher Brown. What should I ask him?

Robert_Wiblin12 Dec 2022 15:17 UTC

30 points

4 comments1 min readEA link

Humanities Research Ideas for Longtermists

Lizka9 Jun 2021 4:39 UTC

151 points

13 comments13 min readEA link

Briefly, the life of Tetsu Nakamura (1946-2019)

Emrik3 Oct 2022 15:44 UTC

155 points

5 comments2 min readEA link

The Fabian society was weirdly similar to the EA movement

MathiasKB🔸26 Apr 2022 8:23 UTC

77 points

4 comments1 min readEA link

[Question] Most harmful people in history?

SiebeRozendal11 Sep 2022 3:04 UTC

17 points

9 comments1 min readEA link

The world is much better. The world is awful. The world can be much better.

Max Roser22 Aug 2022 14:33 UTC

101 points

5 comments5 min readEA link

Why do social movements fail: Two concrete examples.

NunoSempere4 Oct 2019 19:56 UTC

102 points

16 comments8 min readEA link

Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace Speech

Akash17 May 2023 16:10 UTC

17 points

1 comment1 min readEA link

Which properties does the EA movement share with deep-time organisations?

FJehn26 Aug 2020 10:59 UTC

47 points

6 comments8 min readEA link

Defending against hypothetical moon life during Apollo 11

eukaryote7 Jan 2024 23:59 UTC

67 points

3 comments32 min readEA link

(eukaryotewritesblog.com)

Environmentalism in the United States Is Unusually Partisan

Jeffrey Heninger13 May 2024 21:23 UTC

63 points

3 comments4 min readEA link

(blog.aiimpacts.org)

“A Creepy Feeling”: Nixon’s Decision to Disavow Biological Weapons

TW12330 Sep 2022 15:17 UTC

48 points

3 comments17 min readEA link

Muddling Along Is More Likely Than Dystopia

Jeffrey Heninger21 Oct 2023 9:30 UTC

87 points

3 comments8 min readEA link

(blog.aiimpacts.org)

Notes on ‘Atomic Obsession’ (2009)

lukeprog26 Oct 2019 0:30 UTC

62 points

16 comments8 min readEA link

Request for proposals: Help Open Philanthropy quantify biological risk

djbinder12 May 2022 21:28 UTC

137 points

10 comments7 min readEA link

The sense of a start

Gavin28 Sep 2022 13:37 UTC

53 points

0 comments5 min readEA link

(www.gleech.org)

[Part 2] Amplifying generalist research via forecasting – results from a preliminary exploration

jacobjacob19 Dec 2019 16:36 UTC

32 points

1 comment14 min readEA link

[Question] Who are some less-known people like Petrov?

Lizka6 Sep 2022 13:22 UTC

54 points

19 comments1 min readEA link

[Question] How many times would nuclear weapons have been used if every state had them since 1950?

eca4 May 2021 15:34 UTC

16 points

13 comments1 min readEA link

The Pugwash Conferences and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty as a case study of Track II diplomacy

rani_martin16 Sep 2022 10:42 UTC

82 points

5 comments27 min readEA link

H-Day, a case study in coordinated change

EdoArad16 Apr 2022 7:51 UTC

14 points

0 comments1 min readEA link

(en.wikipedia.org)

GovAI Annual Report 2021

GovAI5 Jan 2022 16:57 UTC

52 points

2 comments9 min readEA link

Is Democracy a Fad?

bgarfinkel13 Mar 2021 12:40 UTC

165 points

36 comments18 min readEA link

Will MacAskill: The Beginning of History

Zach Stein-Perlman13 Aug 2022 22:45 UTC

36 points

0 comments1 min readEA link

(www.foreignaffairs.com)

[Podcast] Thomas Moynihan on the History of Existential Risk

finm22 Mar 2021 11:07 UTC

26 points

2 comments1 min readEA link

(hearthisidea.com)

[Question] Projects for EA historians

quinn7 Jun 2022 14:48 UTC

10 points

4 comments1 min readEA link

9/26 is Petrov Day

Lizka25 Sep 2022 23:14 UTC

77 points

10 comments2 min readEA link

(www.lesswrong.com)

On the longtermist case for working on farmed animals [Uncertainties & research ideas]

MichaelA🔸11 Apr 2021 6:49 UTC

78 points

12 comments8 min readEA link

Notes on Henrich’s “The WEIRDest People in the World” (2020)

MichaelA🔸25 Mar 2021 5:04 UTC

44 points

4 comments3 min readEA link

Bruce Kent (1929–2022)

Gavin10 Jun 2022 14:03 UTC

47 points

3 comments2 min readEA link

How big a deal was the Industrial Revolution?

lukeprog16 Sep 2017 7:00 UTC

31 points

0 comments2 min readEA link

(lukemuehlhauser.com)

Has Life Gotten Better?

Holden Karnofsky5 Oct 2021 8:31 UTC

79 points

23 comments7 min readEA link

[Question] Why doesn’t WWOTF mention the Bronze Age Collapse?

Eevee🔹19 Sep 2022 6:29 UTC

16 points

4 comments1 min readEA link

Some promising career ideas beyond 80,000 Hours’ priority paths

Arden Koehler26 Jun 2020 10:34 UTC

142 points

28 comments15 min readEA link

Case studies of self-governance to reduce technology risk

jia6 Apr 2021 8:49 UTC

55 points

6 comments7 min readEA link

Some AI Governance Research Ideas

MarkusAnderljung3 Jun 2021 10:51 UTC

101 points

5 comments2 min readEA link

A Primer on God, Liberalism and the End of History

Mahdi Complex28 Mar 2022 5:26 UTC

8 points

3 comments14 min readEA link

The Germy Paradox—Filters: Hard and soft skills

eukaryote3 Oct 2019 1:28 UTC

20 points

0 comments1 min readEA link

(eukaryotewritesblog.com)

EA is too focused on the Manhattan Project

trevor15 Sep 2022 2:00 UTC

17 points

0 comments1 min readEA link

Modelling the odds of recovery from civilizational collapse

MichaelA🔸17 Sep 2020 11:58 UTC

41 points

10 comments2 min readEA link

[Question] What pieces of ~historical research have been action-guiding for you, or for EA?

rosehadshar29 Mar 2022 10:31 UTC

31 points

7 comments1 min readEA link

Welfare stories: How history should be written, with an example (early history of Guam)

kbog2 Jan 2020 23:32 UTC

48 points

3 comments59 min readEA link

Attempt at understanding the role of moral philosophy in moral progress

alexhill28 Oct 2019 16:32 UTC

34 points

8 comments5 min readEA link

[Question] Examples of pure altruism towards future generations?

richard_ngo26 Jan 2022 16:42 UTC

16 points

13 comments1 min readEA link

How the Jains built a culture of respect for nonhuman animals

siwani agrawal11 Jul 2023 18:51 UTC

29 points

1 comment4 min readEA link

Book Review: Seeing Like A State

Vasco Grilo🔸5 Sep 2024 15:25 UTC

11 points

1 comment9 min readEA link

(slatestarcodex.com)

Celebrating Benjamin Lay (died on this day 265 years ago)

Lizka8 Feb 2024 14:33 UTC

152 points

11 comments8 min readEA link

First clean water, now clean air

finm30 Apr 2023 18:01 UTC

188 points

14 comments17 min readEA link

(finmoorhouse.com)

Social Movement Lessons from the Fair Trade Movement

Jamie_Harris2 Apr 2021 10:51 UTC

44 points

0 comments41 min readEA link

(www.sentienceinstitute.org)

[Podcast] Tom Moynihan on why prior generations missed some of the biggest priorities of all

Eevee🔹25 Jun 2021 15:39 UTC

12 points

0 comments1 min readEA link

(80000hours.org)

Violence Before Agriculture

John G. Halstead2 Oct 2023 8:01 UTC

143 points

7 comments9 min readEA link

Marginal Revolution University’s courses and series

Vasco Grilo🔸1 Mar 2024 18:25 UTC

26 points

2 comments3 min readEA link

(mru.org)

The Protester, Priest and Politician: Effective Altruists before their time

NickLaing5 Sep 2024 11:50 UTC

119 points

18 comments7 min readEA link

(christandcounterfactuals.substack.com)

Case study: Traits of contributors to a significant policy success

Tom_Green29 Mar 2024 0:24 UTC

37 points

1 comment38 min readEA link

Scientific Charity Movement

Jeff Kaufman 🔸23 Jul 2016 14:33 UTC

40 points

6 comments7 min readEA link

AI Impacts: Historic trends in technological progress

Aaron Gertler 🔸12 Feb 2020 0:08 UTC

55 points

5 comments3 min readEA link

Before There Was Effective Altruism, There Was Effective Philanthropy

ColdButtonIssues26 Jun 2022 18:09 UTC

133 points

7 comments12 min readEA link

Bibliography of EA writings about fields and movements of interest to EA

Pablo21 Feb 2022 15:11 UTC

98 points

15 comments2 min readEA link

History of Philanthropy Literature Review: Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs

Holden Karnofsky18 Apr 2019 8:52 UTC

34 points

0 comments4 min readEA link

(www.openphilanthropy.org)

On John Woolman (Thing of Things)

Aaron Gertler 🔸2 May 2024 1:36 UTC

46 points

4 comments1 min readEA link

(thingofthings.substack.com)

Epistemic Hell

rogersbacon127 Jan 2024 17:17 UTC

10 points

1 comment14 min readEA link

(www.secretorum.life)

Dispelling the Anthropic Shadow (Teruji Thomas)

Global Priorities Institute16 Oct 2024 13:25 UTC

11 points

1 comment3 min readEA link

(globalprioritiesinstitute.org)

Remembering Joseph Rotblat (born on this day in 1908)

Lizka5 Nov 2024 0:51 UTC

82 points

7 comments9 min readEA link

[Question] Anyone has a reference for “It’s estimated that abolition cost Britain 2% of its GDP for 50 years”?

Miquel Banchs-Piqué (prev. mikbp)16 Aug 2022 19:26 UTC

13 points

3 comments1 min readEA link

CNAS report: ‘Artificial Intelligence and Arms Control’

MMMaas13 Oct 2022 8:35 UTC

16 points

0 comments1 min readEA link

(www.cnas.org)

Toby Ord’s new report on lessons from the development of the atomic bomb

Ishan Mukherjee22 Nov 2022 10:37 UTC

65 points

3 comments1 min readEA link

(www.governance.ai)

I am working on a project to view sustainability and welfare in a new evolutionary light

Sherry 4 Jan 2023 22:11 UTC

7 points

3 comments2 min readEA link

Is Progress Real?

rogersbacon110 Jan 2023 17:45 UTC

7 points

0 comments14 min readEA link

(www.secretorum.life)

The Germy Paradox – The empty sky: A history of state biological weapons programs

eukaryote24 Sep 2019 5:26 UTC

24 points

0 comments1 min readEA link

(eukaryotewritesblog.com)

EA is too New & Important to Schism

Wil Perkins23 Feb 2023 14:56 UTC

59 points

68 comments2 min readEA link

How democracy ends: a review and reevaluation

richard_ngo24 Nov 2018 17:41 UTC

27 points

2 comments6 min readEA link

(thinkingcomplete.blogspot.com)

#168 – Whether deep history says we’re heading for an intelligence explosion (Ian Morris on the 80,000 Hours Podcast)

80000_Hours24 Oct 2023 15:24 UTC

11 points

2 comments18 min readEA link

Scaling and Sustaining Standards: A Case Study on the Basel Accords

Conrad K.16 Jul 2023 18:18 UTC

18 points

0 comments7 min readEA link

(docs.google.com)

O mundo é horrível. O mundo está muito melhor. O mundo pode ser muito melhor.

AE Brasil / EA Brazil19 Jul 2023 19:37 UTC

5 points

0 comments4 min readEA link

[Question] I’m interviewing historian Ian Morris on the intelligence explosion — what should I ask him this time?

Robert_Wiblin21 Jul 2023 12:33 UTC

12 points

1 comment1 min readEA link

Will the US Government Control the First AGI?—Finding Base Rates

Luise2 Sep 2024 11:11 UTC

20 points

5 comments14 min readEA link

A Narrative History of Environmentalism’s Partisanship

Jeffrey Heninger14 May 2024 16:51 UTC

16 points

1 comment1 min readEA link

(blog.aiimpacts.org)

[Linkpost] Francis at a Factory Farm – Francis of Assisi and animal welfare

EA for Christians13 Oct 2023 11:44 UTC

23 points

2 comments4 min readEA link

(christandcounterfactuals.substack.com)

The ‘Old AI’: Lessons for AI governance from early electricity regulation

Sam Clarke19 Dec 2022 2:46 UTC

58 points

1 comment13 min readEA link

The NPT: Learning from a Longtermist Success [Links!]

DannyBressler20 May 2021 0:39 UTC

66 points

6 comments2 min readEA link

History of the theory of well-being

davidhartsough22 Jun 2022 8:17 UTC

23 points

8 comments23 min readEA link

[Question] Which scientific discovery was most ahead of its time?

richard_ngo16 May 2019 12:28 UTC

34 points

17 comments1 min readEA link

[Question] Examples of self-governance to reduce technology risk?

jia25 Sep 2020 13:26 UTC

32 points

1 comment1 min readEA link

My notes on: A Very Rational End of the World | Thomas Moynihan

Vasco Grilo🔸20 Jun 2022 8:50 UTC

13 points

1 comment5 min readEA link

Dialectic of Enlightenment

TW12315 Jun 2022 4:58 UTC

5 points

1 comment2 min readEA link

(monoskop.org)

Smallpox eradication

Lizka9 Dec 2022 3:29 UTC

93 points

3 comments6 min readEA link

(ourworldindata.org)

Book Review: Churchill and Orwell

SammyDMartin10 Oct 2021 11:06 UTC

28 points

0 comments11 min readEA link

Popular education in Sweden: much more than you wanted to know

Henrik Karlsson11 Sep 2022 22:04 UTC

9 points

0 comments10 min readEA link

Past and Future Trajectory Changes

N N28 Mar 2022 20:04 UTC

32 points

5 comments12 min readEA link

(goodoptics.wordpress.com)

Poverty in Depression-era England: Excerpts from Orwell’s “Wigan Pier”

Aaron Gertler 🔸12 Feb 2020 1:01 UTC

16 points

2 comments3 min readEA link

The Cult Deficit: Analysis and Speculation (v2.0)

rogersbacon114 Jun 2022 4:14 UTC

3 points

0 comments14 min readEA link

(rogersbacon.substack.com)

The Germy Paradox – The empty sky: How close did we get to BW usage?

eukaryote27 Sep 2019 3:56 UTC

22 points

5 comments6 min readEA link

(eukaryotewritesblog.com)

Cortés, Pizarro, and Afonso as Precedents for Takeover

AI Impacts2 Mar 2020 12:25 UTC

27 points

17 comments11 min readEA link

(aiimpacts.org)

Book review: The Doomsday Machine

L Rudolf L18 Aug 2021 22:15 UTC

21 points

0 comments16 min readEA link

(strataoftheworld.blogspot.com)

[Question] Does anyone have a list of historical examples of societies seeking to make things better for their descendants?

freedomandutility15 Aug 2022 13:13 UTC

6 points

6 comments1 min readEA link

Who ordered alignment’s apple?

Eleni_A28 Aug 2022 14:24 UTC

5 points

0 comments3 min readEA link

Nuclear Espionage and AI Governance

GAA4 Oct 2021 18:21 UTC

32 points

3 comments24 min readEA link

FTX’s collapse mirrors an infamous 18th century British financial scandal

Michael Huang22 Dec 2022 6:58 UTC

34 points

0 comments1 min readEA link

(theconversation.com)

Religious Texts and EA: What Can We Learn and What Can We Inform?

Tony.Sena30 Jan 2021 12:04 UTC

29 points

11 comments5 min readEA link

[Question] Books on social movements?

michel17 Sep 2022 6:27 UTC

9 points

5 comments1 min readEA link

Andrew Carnegie and Public Libraries: A Model of Effective Altruism

Sue Lyons21 Aug 2022 4:24 UTC

18 points

2 comments3 min readEA link

How to Become a World Historical Figure (Péladan’s Dream)

rogersbacon17 Jul 2022 22:41 UTC

−4 points

2 comments30 min readEA link

List of past fraudsters similar to SBF

NunoSempere28 Nov 2022 18:31 UTC

114 points

11 comments7 min readEA link

[Question] Book recommendations for the history of ML?

Eleni_A28 Dec 2022 23:45 UTC

10 points

4 comments1 min readEA link

Announcing the first issue of Asterisk

Clara Collier21 Nov 2022 18:51 UTC

275 points

47 comments1 min readEA link

The History, Epistemology and Strategy of Technological Restraint, and lessons for AI (short essay)

MMMaas10 Aug 2022 11:00 UTC

90 points

6 comments9 min readEA link

(verfassungsblog.de)

[Question] What are some moral catastrophes events in history?

Adriana Arauzo22 Jun 2021 6:37 UTC

29 points

11 comments1 min readEA link

[Question] Best time-travel intervention?

abramdemski27 Oct 2020 14:24 UTC

22 points

3 comments1 min readEA link

Tainted donations: the Presidents Club dinner – a case study

Sanjay15 Nov 2022 3:45 UTC

15 points

0 comments4 min readEA link

[Video] How having Fast Fourier Transforms sooner could have helped with Nuclear Disarmament—Veritasium

mako yass3 Nov 2022 20:52 UTC

12 points

1 comment1 min readEA link

(www.youtube.com)

Lessons from the past for our global civilization

FJehn10 Aug 2023 9:54 UTC

4 points

0 comments7 min readEA link

(existentialcrunch.substack.com)

[Question] Was central place food sharing the original effective altruism?

Lee Cronk27 Aug 2022 8:27 UTC

10 points

1 comment1 min readEA link

Wrong by Induction

Ales_Flidr6 Sep 2018 22:00 UTC

20 points

2 comments6 min readEA link

Romae Industriae

Maxwell Tabarrok19 Jul 2024 13:04 UTC

4 points

1 comment7 min readEA link

(www.maximum-progress.com)

[Question] What are some historical examples of people and organizations who’ve influenced people to do more good?

Marisa11 Apr 2020 21:44 UTC

8 points

9 comments1 min readEA link

Advice for Activists from the History of Environmentalism

Jeffrey Heninger16 May 2024 20:36 UTC

48 points

2 comments1 min readEA link

(blog.aiimpacts.org)

‘Surveillance Capitalism’ & AI Governance: Slippery Business Models, Securitisation, and Self-Regulation

Charlie Harrison29 Feb 2024 15:47 UTC

19 points

2 comments12 min readEA link

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History

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