I appreciate the thoughtful reply.
(1) I don’t think that the engineered pandemics argument is of the same type as the Flat Earther or Creationist arguments. And it’s not the kind of argument that requires a PhD in biochemistry to follow either. But I guess from your point of view there’s no reason to trust me on that? I’m not sure where to go from there.
I’ve got to with … not just vibes, exactly, but a kind of human approach to the numbers of people who believe things on both sides of the argument, how plausible they are and so on.
Maybe one question is: why do you think engineered pandemics are implausible?
(2) I agree that you should start from a position of skepticism when people say the End is Nigh. But I don’t think it should be a complete prohibition on considering those arguments.
And the fact that previous predictions have proven overblown is a pattern worth paying attention to (although as an aside: I think people were right to worry during the cold war — we really did come close to full nuclear exchange on more than 1 occasion! The fact that we got through it unscathed doesn’t mean they were wrong to worry. If somebody played Russian Roulette and survived you shouldn’t conclude “look, Russian Roulette is completely safe.”). Where I think the pattern of overblown predictions of doom has a risk of breaking down is when you introduce dangerous new technologies. I don’t expect technology to remain roughly at current levels. I expect technology to be very different in 25, 50, 100 years’ time. Previous centuries have been relatively stable because no new dangerous technologies were invented (nuclear weapons aside). You can’t extrapolate that pattern into the future if the future contains for example easily available machines that can print Covid-19 but with 10x transmissibility and a 50% mortality rate. Part of my brain wants to say “We will rise to the challenge! Some hero will emerge at the last moment and save the day” but then I remember the universe runs on science and not movie plot lines.
I’d be careful not to confuse polished presentation, eloquent speaking and fundraising ability with good epistemics.
I watched the linked video and honestly thought it was a car crash epistemically speaking.
The main issue is I don’t think any of her arguments would pass the ideological turing test. She says “Will MacAskill thinks X...” but if Will MacAskill was in the room he would obviously respond “Sorry no, that’s not what I think at all...”
A real low point is when she points at a picture of Nick Bostrom, Stuart Russell, Elon Musk, Jaan Tallinn etc. and suggests their motivation for working on AI is to prove that men are superior to women.