Thanks again for your time, comments and being a nucleation point for conversation!
Randomized, Controlled
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For what it’s worth, I became a (bad) vegan/vegetarian because at its worst, industrial animal husbandry seems to do some truly terrible things. And sorting out the provenance of animal products is just a major PITA, fraught with all sorts of uncertainly and awkward social moments, such as being the doof at the restaurant who needs to ask five different questions about where/how/when the cow got turned into the steak. It’s just easier for me to order the salad.
My interest in x-risk comes from wanting to work on big/serious problems. I can’t think of a bigger one than x-risk.
First, I commend you for thinking in terms of deconstructed narratives and narratives as tools. I’m curious as to your background. Most people I know who self-identify as ‘technically inclined’ cannot speak coherently about narrative construction.
I took an honors BA which included a pretty healthy dose of post-structuralist inflected literary theory, along with math and fine arts. I did a masters in architecture, worked in that field for a time, then as a ‘creative technologist’ and now I’m very happy as a programmer, trying to learn as much math as I can in my free time.
It looks like a good part of the conversation is starting to revolve around influencing policy. I think there’s some big macro social/cultural forces that have been pushing people to be apolitical for a while now. The most interesting reform effort I’ve heard about lately is Lawrence Lessig’s anti-PAC in the US.
How can we effectively level our political games up?
Hi Seth. I’m just finishing up work and am going to dump a bunch of questions here, then run home. Sorry for the firehose, and thank you for your time and work!
If I wanted to work at GCRI or a similar think-tank/institution, what skills would make me most valuable?
What are your suggestions for someone who’s technically inclined and interested in directly working on existential risk issues?
I’m particularly worried about the risks of totalitarianism, potentially leading to a what, IIRC, Bostrom calls a ‘whimper’: just a generally shitty future in which most people don’t have a chance to achieve their potential. To me this seems as likely if not more so than AI risk. What are your thoughts?
Over the twentieth century we sort of systematically deconstructed a lot of our grand narratives, like ‘progress’. Throwing out the narratives that supported colonialism was probably a net win, but it seems like we’re now at a point where we really need some new stories for thinking about the dangerous place we are in, and the actions that we might need to take. Do you have any thoughts on narratives as a tool for dealing with x-risks?
How can we make our societies generally resilient to threats? Once we have some idea of how to make ourselves more resilient, how can we enact these ideas?
I think that a really robust space program could be very important for x-risk mitigation. What are your thoughts? Do you see space-policy advocacy as an x-risk related activity?
I just finished reading David Owen’s book ‘The Conundrum’ which is a exploration of unintended consequences and macroeconomic effects of Jevon’s Paradox. It’s too long for me to properly summarize right now, but he makes what seemed to me strong arguments that: there are many situations where efficiency gains open up technology frontiers which lead to more consumption (transistors were not just “much more efficient vacuum tubes”); and that automobile consumption has been one of the most damaging technologies of the 20th century, leading to vast sprawl in N America, with all it’s environmental issues.
Certainly it’s possible that automated cars may have their own frontier effect (decentralized fleets of micro cars allowing people to more easily live in dense urban areas?) but a very obvious effect of auto-autos is that they’ll basically be “cheaper” to own in many ways, which means there will be more of them consumed and potentially a lot more environmental impact from them.
I think the argument that robo-cars represents a test bed for dealing with widespread automation is a pretty interesting one, but it’s not clear at all to me that robotic cars are a technology that, on balance is going to make things better in the short/medium term.
Anyway, you’ll probably find The Conundrum interesting. I found it via Russ Robert’s excellent Econtalk podcast, where he had a discussion with Owen a couple of years ago
I just signed up in order to take part in the AMA. Really looking forward to it! Is it happening on this forum or on Reddit?
I know for a fact that there are intelligent and thoughtful people who argue that foreign aid spending has not been effective, and in some cases has actually been harmful. And there are other people who are convinced that we need to increase it. So, so much for ‘obvious’. : )