jackva

Karma: 4,080

jackva 5 Mar 2026 6:39 UTC
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on: What AI Governance Can Learn From Climate – And Why It Mostly Hasn’t
Working on climate with an interest in AI, I found this a fascinating read.

But I am a bit left wanting as to what the learnable lessons for the AI community are that will make the AI community act better than the climate community.

Could you articulate this?

(I think a lot of the parallels you cite are true, but I don’t think they offer a lot of actionable implications, they feel more like negative updates on the difficulty of acting wisely for fast-moving coordination problems with deep uncertainty and lots of politicization).

jackva 23 Jan 2026 18:03 UTC
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in reply to: Benevolent_Rain’s comment on: Ulrik Horn’s Quick takes
What I’m reacting to is more the “hot take” version that shows up in EA-adjacent podcasts — often as an analogy when people talk about AI policy: “look at nuclear, it got over-regulated and basically died, so don’t do that to AI.” In that context it’s not argued carefully, it’s just used as a rhetorical example, and (to me) it’s a pretty lossy / misleading compression of what’s going on.
I agree it’s a bit lossy and sometimes reflexive (this is what I meant with relying on libertarian priors), but I am still confused about your argument.

Because the argument you criticize is an historical one (“nuclear over regulation killed nuclear”) which is different from “now we need many steps and there are different strategies to make nuclear more competitive again”.

I think it is basically correct that over-regulation played a huge part in making nuclear uncompetitive and I don’t think that Isabelle or others knowing the history of nuclear energy would disagree with that, even if it might be a bit overglossed / stylized (obviously, it is not the only thing).

jackva 22 Jan 2026 19:34 UTC
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in reply to: Benevolent_Rain’s comment on: Ulrik Horn’s Quick takes
Out of curiosity: Where have EAs argued that “nuclear is overregulated” and, more specifically, where have EAs argued that over-regulation is the only or dominant driver of the cost problem?

It’s probably true that this sometimes happens—especially when EAs outside of climate/energy point to “nuclear is overregulated” as something in line with libertarian / abundance-y priors—but I think those in EA that have done work on nuclear would not subscribe to or spread the view that regulation is the only driver of nuclear problem.

That said, it seems clearly true—and I do think Isabelle agrees with that—that regulatory reform is a necessary component of making nuclear in the West buildable at scale again (alongside many other factors, such as sustained political will, technological progress, re-established supply chains, valuing clean firm power for its attributes, etc).

jackva 20 Jan 2026 17:05 UTC
12 points
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in reply to: huw’s comment on: Why Isn’t EA at the Table When $121 Billion Gets Allocated to Biodiversity Every Year?
Is it really?

jackva 11 Dec 2025 7:49 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: Most Externalities are Solved with Technology, Not Coordination
Thanks Vasco!

I agree that social dilemmata are not, by and large, solved through individuals spontaneously acting differently in isolation.

I think a fairer title of the piece could have been “economics needs more progress studies and more social science” given the vast differences in how well societies across time and space are solving coordination problems mediated (if not explained) by differences in institutions, norms, laws, etc.

The basic functioning of society—the most important coordination problem of all—varies widely across locales with the same technology.

jackva 10 Dec 2025 22:09 UTC
13 points
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on: Most Externalities are Solved with Technology, Not Coordination
Is there any justification of the “most”?

It’s easy to list many social dilemmata that have been transformed by technology, but it would probably be equally easy to come up with a list of social dilemmata that are primarily solved through non-technological means, first and foremost through social norms and laws successfully solving similar problems.

jackva 7 Oct 2025 16:20 UTC
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in reply to: Franziska Stärk’s comment on: False Twins: Intergenerational Injustice in Nuclear Deterrence and Climate Inaction
Thanks for the thorough reply!

jackva 7 Oct 2025 10:49 UTC
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on: False Twins: Intergenerational Injustice in Nuclear Deterrence and Climate Inaction
What’s the upshot of this? Do you see this as informing relative prioritization between the two causes?

jackva 9 Sep 2025 20:05 UTC
13 points
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on: When the world feels unstable...
This is a great post!

I wish there was more discussion like this and more appreciation for how challenging the current moment is, I think this would bring EA closer—in a good way—to where a lot of people concerned about the world are.

jackva 3 Sep 2025 10:22 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: FJehn’s comment on: Manipulating the global thermostat: Climate change, nuclear winter, and stratospheric aerosol injections
Yeah, I broadly agree with that.

I am worried that the public at large, not you, does massively under appreciate nuclear risk in the short term, this at least seems to be true in philanthropy (climate 100x larger than nuclear risk reduction).

jackva 3 Sep 2025 10:03 UTC
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on: Manipulating the global thermostat: Climate change, nuclear winter, and stratospheric aerosol injections
Climate action is the most important thing, because it allows us to avoid the others.

(Working on climate)

Nuclear war seems by far the most consequential threat of those you mention here and the contribution of climate to nuclear war risk would need to be quite high to prioritize this over nuclear risk reduction (or climate and SAI together would need to be similarly important as nuclear war).

Do you think that climate change contributes more than, say, 10-20% to nuclear risk?

jackva 25 Aug 2025 21:16 UTC
19 points
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on: Politics is an EA blindspot
This aspect of EA is massively alienating to me in this moment and I would be curious how common this experience is.

jackva 8 Aug 2025 10:35 UTC
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in reply to: defun 🔸’s comment on: defun’s Quick takes
Really great resource!

Lewis’s vivid descriptions of how neglected this space is and how that led to a lot of picking of low-hanging fruit of really high impact things to do seemed like a super useful general EA messaging resource to me.

jackva 9 Jul 2025 6:52 UTC
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in reply to: aderonke’s comment on: Flooding in Lagos: Climate Change or Governance Failure?
Thanks for writing this! Have you considered sharing this with non-EA audiences?

jackva 28 Jun 2025 10:33 UTC
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on: Should EAs pay more attention to Climate Tipping Points? AMOC Collapse as a Case Study
Thanks for this, would be happy to have a call about it!

One question: how did you source materials for this? E.g. I notice that this does not include probably the most prominent paper skeptical of tipping point risks, so I am a bit worried that this is selecting on the studies that show most concern, rather than a balanced assessment of risk.

In that sense, the tipping point literature to me appears like the nuclear winter literature—huge uncertainties, huge disagreements, and a big resultant risk from over- or understating the risk when wanting to make a case for either high or low risk.

jackva 26 Jun 2025 17:46 UTC
7 points
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on: Summary of John Halstead’s Book-Length Report on Existential Risks From Climate Change
There’s obvious blaming to be done for some Democrats exaggerating the science of climate change rhetorically, but the intro here still strikes me as quite uncharitable.

In common discourse “existential” is often used in a very loose fashion and hyperbole is par for the course in political rhetoric.

jackva 26 Jun 2025 17:41 UTC
4 points
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on: Buy and Retire Polluters’ Rights to Emit CO2
I don’t think you are discounting here for the cap not being effectively binding (in the RGGI example) and also, last time I looked into this in depth (I used to work on RGGI at ICAP, which you cite), it was not true that additionality would always be 1.

jackva 19 May 2025 16:23 UTC
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in reply to: Tristan Katz’s comment on: The Daily Show did a segment on EA and Shrimp Welfare Project
It could easily happen that based on this video several millions are raised, just based on increasing salience and the framing being largely positive and this resonating with a couple of donors with significant capital.

jackva 28 Apr 2025 20:03 UTC
2 points
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on: Poll: Should people with more forum karma have more powerful votes?
Vote power should scale with karma
What links here?
- Will Aldred's comment on Will Aldred’s Quick takes by Will Aldred (29 Apr 2025 6:40 UTC; 9 points)

jackva 8 Apr 2025 20:03 UTC
8 points
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in reply to: Marcus Abramovitch 🔸’s comment on: SiebeRozendal’s Shortform
I was mostly objecting to your statement of “seeing no sign of authoritarian takeover”, I do agree and mentioned in my comment that Siebe’s statement was possibly too definite.
But I don’t think it is hyperbolic to say that there are many signs of Trump’s authoritarianism and signs consistent with an attempted authoritarian takeover and that this is qualitatively different than what we have seen from any other President in recent history, one has to go back to at least Nixon to get things in the same ballpark (and Nixon was arguably a lot more constrained by his own party than Trump is right now).

The examples you are citing “Presidents doing things that should be done through Congress” are not examples of authoritarian behavior and pretending that what Trump is doing is part of the regular testing of executive authority is also quite misleading.

Which other recent Administration was headed by someone denying a legitimate election result? Which other recent Administration had a VP flirting with the idea of not honoring Supreme Court rulings? Which other recent Administration was systematically invested in fighting against civil society institutions and law firms? Which other Administration has had so many people warning about authoritarian tendencies, both from their own party and from key senior staff from their own first administration?