May 6 - Policy - Memos #17
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#framing #salience #climate #nuclear #solutions Ord takes a globalist view of humanity, emphasizing the shared potential futures of our species to argue for the importance of safeguarding our potential. This reminds me of Agarwal and Narain’s argument against one-worldism—is Ord’s philosophy of long-termism rooted in a form of colonialism, which ignores the disparate responsibilities of different countries? Going by Agarwal and Narain’s criterion of causal relationship, this seems plausible. Agarwal and Narain argued that global warming is caused by excessive (i.e. exceeding the ‘natural allocation’) carbon emission and only a handful countries—primarily in the Global North—are responsible for that. Thus, the responsibility (and corresponding sacrifices) to resolve global warming should fall mostly on them. Is it possible that only a handful of countries, too, are responsible for our current level of existential risk? This seems possible for nuclear threat, as Perry points out: “unlike all other nations, the United States bears the greatest global responsibility […] America brought the bomb into the world.” (206) It seems reasonable to assume that artificial intelligence development will be concentrated in the wealthiest nations, such as the United States, although it should be noted that China is a huge player in this space as well. Cyber disinformation seems to also primarily be facilitated through a few players (the United States, Russia, China, Iran) though cyber warfare seems increasingly widespread. Climate change, of course, has already been covered. Yet, even if Ord is perpetuating a colonialist mindset, I am not convinced that this affects his argument or its implications. Firstly, Ord’s recommendations are general, not focused on any single group or country. Though this might unwittingly ignore global injustice by not placing more responsibility on a specific group, Ord’s conclusion [that humanity must prioritize existential risks] would not change simply because the distribution of action changes. Secondly, Ord’s claim that “every single one of us can play a role” (216) accords with Agarwal and Narain’s point that countries that may not be responsible for global warming (e.g. India) still must act. Regardless of how we got to this state, it does not change that we are in our present situation and that our choices from hereon out are our responsibility. Even if, say, the just action for an Indian citizen to take is to press one’s electeds to hold another more responsible nation accountable, that is still an action that they must choose to take. Finally, if we are centering the conversation around justice, it is imperative to consider the issue of generational justice. Ord is motivated to safeguard the many future generations that could exist and that is a matter relevant for everyone regardless of their nationality. It might be that widespread public support will not manifest for interventions that are not considered fair given our history, but focusing on past injustice need not mean enacting injustice against future generations. There must be some way to balance present-day (intragenerational) justice with (intergenerational) justice for future humans.
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#salience #solutions The article The Psychology of Existential Risk: Moral Judgments about Human Extinction by Stefan Schuber, Lucius Caviola1 & Nadira S. Fabe alludes to the effects of hope in regards to all existential threats. As demonstrated through the many studies, most people consider human extinction to be uniquely bad when they are presented with hope that the future would be better. Telling participants that the future will be extraordinarily good makes them significantly more likely to find extinction uniquely bad. Which suggests that because people don’t have hope in regards to the future, they are not so distraught by the extinction of humanity as they are about 80% of the human population dying. Though I agree that as proven by the study’s results, some level of sympathy and concern played a role in why the study groups found it worse for 80% of the population compared to no one dying than the difference between 80 and 100% of the human population dying. However, I would say that people may lack hope about a better future which is why they aren’t so concerned about the future of humanity. Thus why it is so hard to think about most if not all existential threats. Furthermore, that could be a reason why there isn’t much policy response to threats like climate change because policy makers don’t believe that this is a fight that we can win. Specifically, more people in the study groups found human extinction uniquely bad after being sold this idea of a utopia in the future compared to a future similar to our current life or worse. Considering that human extinction is then deemed uniquely bad, “ we should arguably invest much more in making sure it does not happen”. However, I think often the positive effects of a societal change is downplayed and not talked about enough, thus why people might be hopeless against many if not all existential threats. This can also be related to a framing problem, considering the example of cyber security which is in most cases framed as a problem that affects mainly the government and private companies instead of a threat that also affects the every day person. We need to reconsider how these existential threats are framed, and put more emphasis on the positive effects of mitigating such risks. So that the every day person can more closely identify with the existential threats and feel somewhat responsible for being a part of the solution. |
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In this week’s readings, we examined policy responses to existential threats. The reading that I was most drawn to was The New Yorker’s “How Close is Humanity to the Edge” by Carinne Purtill. In this article, Purtill cites Toby Ord, a philosopher and researcher at Oxford University, as placing the odds “of our extinction during the twenty-first century at one in six” (Purtill). What really struck me was the mathematical approach that Ord brought throughout his analysis. That there is a way to quantify our risk of destroying ourselves, and there are statistical probabilities of this happening within our life time. Reading this paper helped add to the gravity of this course in two respects: (1) the odds of existential threat in our lifetime is higher than it appeared to me before, and (2) there is a way to mathematically approach these larger-than-life end-of-days philosophical questions. (1) Concerning our odds of having an existential threat, Ord places it and 1 in 6 by the end of the century, which, if my classmates and I are so lucky, will be approximately our life span. In addition, from our readings over the past few weeks, it appears that the propensity towards destruction has increased exponentially throughout recent decades. If this trend were to continue, the chances of existential crises could be even greater than 1 in 6. (2) I am completely amazed by Ord’s ability to apply mathematical principles to generate future-facing predictions to this level. With all of the hundreds and thousands of variables, Ord believe that he has isolated the right ones to understand the odds of our demise. Whether this figure is correct or not, however, is not why Ord’s paper reframed the way I now approach this course. It is the very nature of being able to quantify risk that can help move these conversations from the abstract to the practical. #risk #framing |
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#orgins #policy #solutions In the New Yorker profile of Ord, a line that stood out in particular to me was: “At the moment, it seems that we have to wait about forty years after a threat is scientifically recognized before culture gets to it. And I think that’s too slow.” I think that, clearly, over the past few weeks, we have seen numerous examples of how true this statement is. An example that immediately comes to mind is the continued denial of climate change despite evidence to the contrary existing for decades. Still, I am surprised that Ord did not comment on another phenomenon especially relevant in 2020 and beyond related to this discussion. It seems that in the present, we now also have to consider the issues that arise from misinformation on social media and how threats that are scientifically recognized may become lost to the public among the myriad pieces of misinformation regarding that threat. This is especially relevant to policymakers, given that their messaging about threats could be misquoted, misinterpreted, and even blatantly misrepresented, and in all cases, the public may lose trust in that messaging. Covid-19 brought the issue I have raised as an extension to Ord’s to the forefront of the public’s attention because of how widespread misinformation about the virus has been. We are all familiar with the various warning labels that social media companies have placed upon any social media post that contains keywords like Covid-19, vaccines, and more. What has made this recent wave of misinformation different than what we have seen in the past is its mass amplification on social media which means it is more visible to the mainstream than ever before. Researchers from Cambridge have tried to uncover the effects of misinformation surrounding the pandemic (Roozenbeek et al., 2020). The study found that susceptibility to misinformation has a significant effect on willingness to comply with public health guidance and vaccine hesitancy worldwide. The researchers emphasize the need for doctors, scientists, and public health officials to provide factual and reliable information, but I feel that this fails to address the problem that they have shown to exist. Policy will continue to be ineffective as long as misinformation continues to be amplified as it has been during the pandemic. Government officials will struggle to gain public trust if conflicting messages are being put out by what some believe are reliable sources. The issue is not a lack of factual information but misinformation that the public believes to be factual. Thus, building upon Ord’s point, society now faces a dual-threat of a lack of care and consideration for facts, and when people decide to care, social media and its amplification of misinformation have made it unclear what the correct facts are to care about. The solutions to this situation are tricky and complex. One change that needs to be made is our government adapting and building the tools necessary to govern in the age of social media. Simply put, the government today understands technology and social media to such an insufficient degree (see Big Tech hearings) that there is no real hope that they will enact effective policy while facing the threat of misinformation. Moreover, we as a society must decide what we expect from social media platforms. If we ask them to take responsibility for the information put on their platforms, are we willing to sacrifice some of our free speech rights? Finally, there must be some responsibility placed on us as individuals. We need to critically think about the information we see and read and do our best to find information directly from the source. If we can alleviate this issue of misinformation, policy around existential threats will be much more effective. Sources:
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In "How Close is Humanity to the Edge", author Corinne Purtill details expert Toby Ord's thoughts on our likelihood of reaching a doomsday scenario. Ord pegs our odds at demise at roughly one in six, and somewhat subtly issues a sort of ultimatum in the resolution of our current circumstances. He claims that our current tribulations will end either in a collective societal effort to rectify current global issues or a complete global breakdown. |
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#risk #salience #policy Political Complacency in the Face of Catastrophe: An Issue of Incentives As of today, 3.23 million people have died from COVID-19. This statistic is tragic and shocking. It also exposes a prevailing ineptitude to prepare for low probability, highly destructive events. Despite multiple warnings from public health officials and academics, countries around the world failed to establish effective risk-management processes- processes that, in retrospect, could have saved countless lives. This failure is further exacerbated when it comes to emerging and extreme existential threats. These include, but are not limited to: nuclear annihilation, environmental devastation, information chaos and the emergence of a “post-truth” society, cyber attacks, malicious AI, and the misuse of biotechnologies. According to Toby Ord, a senior research fellow at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute and author of The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, the odds of our extinction during the twenty-first century as a result of one (or more) of these threats are at one in six. If we “don’t get our act together,” Ord warns, the odds may be closer to two in six. Why then, are politicians and countries so complacent? One rationale: profoundly misaligned incentives. To put it simply, politicians are not incentivized to create policies that prevent against existential risks. The reasons for this are manifold. Firstly, existential risk reduction is an “intergenerational good”. This means that the gains from avoiding extinction are enjoyed by future generations rather than the present generation. The former, however, have no say or sway in the political process whereas the latter benefit from underinvesting in existential threats without ever suffering the cost. Consequently, politicians are incentivized to neglect long term risks which are low probability or whose catastrophic consequences lie beyond the next election cycle in favor of preparing for more immediate short term risks such as natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and war. These are familiar concrete threats and coping with them is more valuable to voters and re-election. Secondly, “safeguarding humanity is a global public good.” The consequences of existential events are not contained to a single country or continent. Rather, they threaten global prosperity, security, and societal structures. On the outset, one might think that this would encourage politicians to cooperate in order to prevent global catastrophe. However, if a nation invests in preventing an existential threat, its citizens reap relatively few benefits (compared to the whole world) but bear all the fiscal burden. As a result, “each nation is inadequately incentivized to take actions that reduce risk and to avoid actions the produce risk, preferring instead to free-ride on others.” This is especially true when solving the issue at hand (say climate change) demands tough trade-offs and day-to-day sacrifices. Ultimately, politicians are elected by us. Therefore, if we wish to change their incentives, we must first correct our own. This is no simple task. It requires a commitment to future generations and our fellow people across the globe.
Works Cited: Adam J. Liska, Tyler R. White, Eric R. Holley & Robert J. Oglesby (2017) Nuclear Weapons in a Changing Climate: Probability, Increasing Risks, and Perception, Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 59:4, 22-33, DOI: 10.1080/00139157.2017.1325300 Farquhar, Sebastian, et al. “Existential Risk Diplomacy and Governance.” Global Priorities Project 2017, Global Priorities Project, Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, & Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, 3 Feb. 2017, um.fi/documents/35732/48132/existential_risk_diplomacy_and_governance/6dcc5557-0a2d-709d-57a2-7e7784512115?t=1525645980997. “Governments Are Failing to Understand Global Catastrophic Risks and Need to Take Urgent Action, Says New Report.” University of Cambridge, University of Cambridge, 13 Aug. 2019, www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/governments-are-failing-to-understand-global-catastrophic-risks-and-need-to-take-urgent-action-says. Rees, Lord Martin. “Why a Flawed View of Existential Risk Must Change Radically.” News from Thinking the Unthinkable, 18 May 2020, www.thinkunthink.org/latest-unthinking/2020-05-18-why-a-flawed-view-of-existential-risk-must-change-radically. Todd, Benjamin. “The Case for Reducing Existential Risks.” 80,000 Hours, The Future of Humanity Institute and the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford & Centre for Effective Altruism, Oct. 2017, 80000hours.org/articles/existential-risks/. “The Risk Landscape” and “Saving Humanity.” The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, by Toby Ord, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021. |
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#origins #framing #policy The philosopher Toby Ord believes that the risk of human extinction during the 21st century is at one in six, which is not a comforting thought. However, Ord does provide some solutions: Firstly, Ord proposes that we “limit our access to deadly technologies until we acquire the maturity to use them safely”. However, as social media has shown us, the human race is not known for limiting our access to technology where the full extent of the consequences is unknown. Since social media’s inception, its number of users has grown exponentially, and the world has seen unforeseen consequences of these technologies surface: as a result of social media platforms, youth depression and suicide rates have increased, elections have been influenced and, through the use of AI, social media platforms have become addictive in the quest for profit (to name a few). During this process, world governments have seen these consequences arise and attempted to alleviate them. However, if one reads transcripts from tech hearings in Congress, the incompetence of world leaders regarding new technologies is evident. Moreover, lobbying and capitalism have left regulatory attempts on social media platforms futile. Therefore, given the ineffective governmental policy surrounding social media, it is a concern that, in the future, with new threats that require regulation like AI, governmental policies will fail to “limit our access to deadly technologies” as incompetency around new technologies and capitalism will reign supreme. Ord also recommends that our society define collective goals internationally to regulate existential threats. While this is extremely important, global inequality and political motivations will make this endeavor difficult to achieve. One existential threat that demonstrates these concerns is climate change. For years, various governments have been implementing processes and policies to alleviate climate change. As is evident in the below graphs, these have been effective in reducing emissions in developed countries like the U.S., but global emissions continue to rise. This is because countries like China and India cannot afford to curb emissions, as these emissions power their developing economies forward. Therefore, while it would be helpful to generate global goals for emission reduction, global inequality means that meeting these goals is unrealistic for certain countries. Moreover, political motivations make establishing global goals difficult. For example, during President Trump’s campaign, he questioned the existence of climate change, rolled back regulations surrounding the oil, gas, and coal industries, and pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord. As can be seen, Trump violated global goals relating to climate change to appease his supporters. Therefore, it seems that establishing international policies to curb existential crises will be more difficult than meets the eye. All in all, even though Ord presents methods to regulate the risk of an existential crisis, the threats of inequality, and political motivations seem to undermine his solution of international goals. Moreover, social media in today’s world has shown that government knowledge and policy in response to existential threats needs to be improved if it is to be at all successful in the future.
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#framing #risk “We’re almost like passengers on the Titanic…not seeing the iceberg up ahead but enjoying the elegant dining and the music” (Perry & Collina 2020, p. 206). The fact that this is how a former governor thinks of the United States’ nuclear policies is incredibly frightening, and we should take his words to heart when we’re trying to fix this problem. If we are the passengers on the Titanic and the iceberg ahead is a nuclear catastrophe, we must take that threat seriously and enact whatever policy is possible to try and avert the collision. To continue the analogy, we must make the passengers see the iceberg rather than allowing them to continue to turn their backs to it and insist it is not an issue. Perry and Collina suggest ten major policy recommendations to help create a safer world, many of which we discussed in the very first week of class when the topic was nuclear annihilation. Their top solution was to end sole nuclear authority and to get rid of the “nuclear football.” This was something we discussed back in week one, and I had grappled with in my memo. Having read even more on this subject I am more inclined to say that this is a policy that should be pushed, and I appreciated the level of detail these authors brought to their proposal. Allowing for multiple hands to be on the triggers of those weapons (so to speak) decreases the chance that they will be used in a manner that could pose an existential threat to humanity. The more I think on this, the more it baffles me that we have one man in charge of any use of all of the United States’ nuclear weapon. It doesn’t matter who the man is – that’s too much power to place in the hands of just one person. We have checks and balances in our government structure – why not in our nuclear policy? The final solution posed by the authors is to elect a president committed to changing nuclear policy and to decreasing the threat to humanity. This seems deceptively simple. Politicians of both political parties make campaign promises they have no intention of keeping, so how can we trust that a candidate is serious about changing these policies? If they are elected and then prioritize other things, what can the citizenry do? We can protest, make our voices heard, but ultimately no one can force the president to take up a policy initiative that is deemed to be of lesser importance. “Each president sought to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, but none set a new course away from the icebergs” (Perry & Collina 2020, p. 206). If we accept what these authors and former Governor Brown have set forth, we must set a new course away from the iceberg – we cannot continue to turn our backs on it, or we will only have ourselves to blame when the ship goes down. |
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#nuclear #salience #solutions This week, I felt particularly drawn to Jerry Brown's review of former US Secretary of Defense, William J. Perry's, "My Journey at the Nuclear Brink." Throughout this course and the many readings and discussions that we've had, it has become clear that although nuclear might not be the most immediately obvious existential threat to the human species, it may very well be the most pressing. I still have a difficult time conceptualizing this threat, but Brown's review did an excellent job at conveying the prescience and scale of the threat. |
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#policy #salience #climate/environment For how much longer can we keep neglecting the oceans or are we too late? After completing the readings and seeing all of the problems that are being heavily avoided by politicians, I continued to think about the term scope neglect and how it is applicable in many areas of policy. I remembered that I recently saw a movie called "Seaspiracy" that really made me realize what a problem there is going on in the oceans and close to no one is doing anything about it. This movie has been criticized for being misleading about certain topics, which I can understand. However, what it does do right is bring to light many of the problems with the fishing industry and how those tie in with the environment today. We are drastically overfishing the oceans and polluting them. An example of scope neglect within this problem is the focus on plastic straws. As a society, we constantly hear about our need to reduce the use of plastic straws and how bad they are for the environment. According to the documentary, the plastic straws only account for 3% of the waste in the oceans. As a society, we have been neglecting to realize that plastic straws are an example of scope neglect. We really need to be focusing on reducing our own waste, but also targeting policy towards these large corporations that are polluting the oceans. Additionally, the fishing techniques being used today have brought forth modern day slavery, destroy the ocean floors, and kill countless fish that will never be consumed. Another example of scope neglect, is the countless lives that are being lost due to fishing. Many people choose to consume protein by eating fish, which is still ending a life but it is not wasting the fish. What the animal ethics article I read talks about is how we don't even know how many lives of fish are lost every year. Depending on your opinion, killing fish for consumption can be ethical or not. But I feel that both parties would agree that wasting fish and killing them for no reason is unethical. The current fishing practices aim for one specific species but usually catch much more than just that. These other fish that are caught are usually killed anyway but never used for any practical purpose. This is massive scope neglect because these fish keep our ocean ecosystem healthy. Potential solutions for this are very complex. This is because fish is a staple food all around the world. The simplest one is to stop eating fish, but for many, this is not an option. Additionally, just one person foregoing fish consumption will not change an entire industry. What needs to happen is fishing practices that are actually ethical. Although they are made seem unethical in the documentary, many indigenous groups practice whale hunts that are actually significantly better for the environment. One example is in northwestern Washington, the Makah tribe (when legally allowed) will hunt one whale and use all of it to feed the entire town. Also, all parts of the whale are used and none of it goes to waste. Moreover, there needs to be government policy and action. The changes to the industry need to not only come from one government but from governments around the world teaming up and actually caring for the oceans and fish. Source: Seaspiracy
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#framing As I read through Ord's text this week, I couldn't help but bristle. A part of that is about how my brain is wired. Like Jack Atkins wrote above, I just don't really believe that the future of humanity is at as high of a risk as 1/6 of self-destruction. Now, I say that without any real grounds, but just a huge amount of faith in our species. We have shown a propensity for adaptation that I think doesn't align with the possibility of devastation Ord delineates. That said, as I mentioned, this is more of a feeling than a fact. So maybe Ord is right. But the second part of it is larger than that. Even if Ord is right, what is the function of texts like this? It made me think of an organisation called Global Optimism, set up by Christiana Figueres - the architect of the Paris Climate Accord. Figueres is obviously highly attuned to the stakes at play. She knows the extent of the risk climate change poses. And yet, she has decided to tackle that risk through optimism. Her organisation made up of "stubborn optimists" aims to reposition climate change as not just our greatest threat, but also our greatest opportunity. Now, I don't know about you, but I find arguments like Figueres' far more powerful than I do texts like Ord's. Maybe they are equally true, and maybe there's something to be said for brutal honesty. But I can't help but wonder if we need to be more thoughtful about how we best catalyse action. I suspect far too many people would have the same knee-jerk reaction I did to Ord's argument. And that's not helpful as we think about generating rapid and meaningful change. Check out some of what Global Optimism is up to below (there are some really cool videos and podcasts):
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The Honorable Jerry Brown recounts narratives of caution and complicity and appeals for control of nuclear arms and the grave risks they pose. In his book Toby Ord implores us further to address this nuclear risk, and all other existential threats, known or as yet unrevealed to us.1Within the structure of contemporary society, it’s fairly safe to say that our best approach to mitigating global catastrophe will be shaped largely, and crucially, by policy, be it regional, national, international or global. Regardless of which regulatory bodies involved, there will be a cost to align objectives and develop strategies, facilitate programs, further causes, and enact safeguards, this in the currency of discovery, knowledge, time, and, to back it all up, money. In order to save our human potential Ord puts forward that right now we are the only ones in the position to pay this price. As civil society in pursuit of the continuation of the potential of our species we are responsible, and he, along with a growing group of insightful and judicious benefactors, proposes that this can be achieved through our “80,000 hours”.2 80,000 hours refers to the time we spend in our careers “devoted to solving some kind of problems, big or small.”3 It is also the name of the nonprofit organization4 that is dedicated to research on “how (we) can... best use them to help solve the world’s most pressing problems”.5 The crux of 80,000 hours is the Effective Altruism (EA) concept of “using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis.”.6 This read on patronage invigorates traditional charity, emphasizing a direct application of human resources, knowledge and skills towards carefully selected goals. Not to say conventional philanthropy is eschewed; in instances of irrelevant or differing skill sets, opportunities, or even simply individual desires, good old cold cash is still welcome. The overarching objectives are research, contemplation and responsibility. There is no “should”. EA instills no moral obligation. Consideration is on how to do the “most” effectively, no one has to give it all away, but all are invited to think about their own personal role in engagement.7 While the notion of charity is by no means new, this intellectual approach of EA takes it from a different angle. Proponents of EA are not lured by causes tugging at their heartstrings, but rather follow a clinical approach that calculates and weighs out what, and who, is capable of the most constructive path to common good.8 Another novel and insightful aspect of EA is the focus lent to long term goals, in particular existential threats. Characteristically, EA is motivated by risk awareness and aversion, benefits, and a view to the future.9 Established venues of giving will continue to hold a place in our society, we need to take care of one another today if we have any expectation for a tomorrow, and it would be inhumane to ignore the pressing needs that we are acutely reminded of on a daily basis. Nonetheless an eye towards preemptive action and far-reaching results satisfies the demand that existential threats, both current and forthcoming, will require. Though, or perhaps because, they are more obscure, they are no less compelling. We have seen evidence of the potential that threats hold and 80,000 hours is a lot of work, and there’s a lot of work to do. Whatever shape our approaches to this undertaking, and the solutions we come up with, will take, policy types, rigors, adjudicators, the fact remains that action is required now. And action will cost us. The spirit of Effective Altruism behooves us to at least examine how we may be obliged, willing, or able, somehow or other, to pay. #framing #risk #salience #EA #solutions #personalresponsibility Ord, Toby. The Precipice, Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. 2020. Hachette Books. New York. You have 80,000 hours in your career. 80,000 HOURS. 2021. 80,000hours.org. https://80000hours.org Matthews, Dylan. Future Perfect, explained. Vox. Oct.25, 2018. Vox.com. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect Koehler, Arden, Todd, B., Wiblin, R., Harris, K., Benjamin Todd on the core of effective altruism and how to argue for it. 80,000 Davies, Rhodri. Philanthropy is at a turning point. Here are 6 ways it could go. World Economic Forum. Apr 29, 2019. weforum.org. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/04/philanthropy-turning. |
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#solutions #academia #policy Ord’s cry for humanity “to increase our wisdom” relative to our power, and “to better understand the existential risks- how likely they are, their mechanisms, and how to reduce them” is targeted in particular at academics [1]. He explains how “analytical mind[s] looking for patterns, tools, and explanations” [1], such as those at the CSER and FHI, can provide actionable insights and solutions for existential threats. Individuals such as Ord, who transitioned from computer science to ethics, Benjamin Todd, who left investing to found the effective altruism organization 80,000 Hours, and Hillary Greaves, a tenured philosopher at Oxford who transitioned from the philosophy of physics to existential ethics and work at the Global Priorities Institute, are outliers who made drastic career changes and landed on their feet. In a 2018 interview for 80,000 Hours, Greaves bemoans the academic “fallow period” that followed when she transitioned to ethics. She suffered 2-3 years without publications, was “reduced to the status of a first year graduate student again,” and felt ashamed to share her career transition [2]. Even now, she grapples with encouraging academics to transition to the big problems they are most passionate about, while still thinking it “a bit inappropriate” to advise those without tenure to risk their own careers to engage with new issues [2]. The oversaturation of the academic job market has made peer-reviewed publications the sole (and highly inflated!) currency of success. Many PhD programs in the natural sciences require at least 2-3 publications in peer-reviewed journals, and a minimum of one first-authored work, to earn one’s degree. Furthermore, an article on publishing to achieve tenure suggests that postdocs and assistant professors should “establish a publishing cycle in which you always have two manuscripts under review, are actively working on another manuscript or two, and are proposing/brainstorming a separate manuscript” [3]. This is not feasible for academics navigating a career change. Humanity’s long term future requires legions of great minds, and so academia must stop forcing individuals contemplating a shift towards more recently publicized existential threats to choose between their own financial security, and humanity’s existential security. While organizations such as CSER, FHI, and 80,000 Hours have spearheaded the effort, only the full engagement of prominent research institutions can foster this movement. Early examples of such interdisciplinary, humanity-focused efforts include UChicago’s own Stevanovich Institution on the Formation of Knowledge, Stanford’s Existential Risks Initiative, and this class itself! By encouraging academics to apply their expertise to new, existential threats, prominent research institutions might provide sufficient manpower, resources, publicity, and societal initiative to address these existential threats more fully. References |
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#origin This week’s readings focused on policy solutions to existential threats. The lead up to these articles was a piece by former California governor Jerry Brown, where he discussed the need for more people to care about nuclear proliferation. In the article, Brown discussed William Perry, a brilliant scientist who had been working on nuclear nonproliferation for decades. For some reason, Brown could not comprehend why more people didn’t care about nuclear war, as it is one of the biggest threats facing humanity and all of civilization. More specifically, he did not know why less people care about the potential for nuclear war today, especially as the probability of “greater than it was during the Cold War”? Perry gave a bunch of solutions to galvanizing a movement around nuclear nonproliferation, but I didn’t feel he got to the root of the problem: a lack of direct exposure to the issue. The result has allowed nuclear warheads to grow over time with little notice or concern. Before I explain this, let me just note that intransigence around the movement against nuclear proliferation is similar to not-yet-developed movements on other existential issues that we face, including climate change and (possibly) news deserts. In each case, the problem is hidden away from public view, or so difficult to interpret because it’s something that steadily grows worse overtime. The combination of these two things makes it difficult to even recognize the problem because of human adaptability. The best example here may not be nuclear energy, but journalism. Just decades ago, local journalism in the U.S. was booming. A newspaper existed in almost every city in the U.S., including many rural areas. But, slowly, over time, that began to change. A combination of the internet’s rise, a crumbling local advertising industry, and the proliferation of national (often free) news helped collapse an industry. But what’s worse: almost no one noticed. Big news stories did not highlight the problem, nor did people didn’t protest on the streets outside their favorite paper. Mostly, no one cared. Climate change and confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have worked in similar fashion. (In the latter case, more animals suffer and are slaughtered in industrialized agriculture than ever before.) Slowly, over time, problems associated with these things have grown worse. But developments have been so slow that no one has really noticed, allowing the problem to worsen without protest. Today, burning forests are destroying California and Australia; industrial agriculture is worsening the lives of animals and making pandemics more likely; and, in the case of nuclear energy, a nuclear blast going off is much more likely today than it was during the 1970s. In all of these cases, the issues are difficult to physically see: most don’t watch sea-level rise or notice burning forests across the country and the world; most don’t witness incredible levels of animal suffering; and the majority is not aware of a growing nuclear arsenal around the world. In order to galvanize enough people to react against these problems and ameliorate them, more people need to be made immediately aware in their lives. Building that hold murdered animals need see-through glass. Public trackers of sea-level rise and forest depletion have to be easily accessible for students in grade school. The uptick of nuclear warheads needs to be made known to vastly more people.
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#framing An existential threat that I feel like we hear so often from both American press and politicians is the rise of China. This wasn’t directly addressed in the readings for class, but I feel like it’s an interesting question to explore as it reveals fears about the United States no longer being a global hegemon and the consequences of a shift in the global balance of power. There are a number of competing framings disseminated about what it would mean to us––as Americans––if we were to be outpaced and surpassed by China. We witnessed the Trump administration attempt to shape a narrative that China is malicious, aggressive, and predatory. In a number of ways, it seems the Biden administration is continuing to perpetuate this narrative. On March 19th, 2021 during a talk with Chinese officials, Antony Blinken stated that China’s actions, “threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability.” This type of discourse ensnares the United States in an unending struggle with China to achieve dominance––and more importantly––fails to address the more salient, tangible threats that lurk in the background. To truly measure the risk that China poses to the United States, we must think about what the effect of China’s growth will be on our own future. At this current point in time, it feels impossible to rationalize following Cold War-like tactics in our approach to China––as if we are predicting the end before we have even arrived there, and thus consequently, bringing it about ourselves by the course of actions we choose to follow. We have very little proof to uphold the claim that China poses the greatest existential threat to the United States. As these readings have highlighted, an existential threat is a threat to the very livelihood of our nation that leads to mass extermination of Americans. China cannot achieve this without doing the same to itself. Thus, we can understand the rise of China more so through the framing of China as an ideological threat to the United States and its economic and political ideologies of freedom. If this is then the case, can we continue to justify such substantial increases in military defense.
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#risk #policy In The Precipice, Ord’s quantitative estimate of the likelihood of existential threats piqued my interest. I was primarily curious about his reasoning for the likelihood estimates given for each individual threat, as Ord does not speak in length about the factors or sources used to provide these estimates. So, I decided to pick a couple of the threats he mentioned, do a bit of my own research, and test if his estimates line up with those of expert reports on each threat. I’ll focus on anthropogenic threats, as it is likely that these threats do in fact make up the bulk of the existential risk for humanity. Nuclear: Ord’s estimate for the existential risk of nuclear annihilation was 1 in 1000 in the next 100 years. In an article published recently by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Professor Martin E. Hellman of Stanford University proposes an analysis of Nuclear threat that pins the likelihood much closer to the range of 1 in 100 per year, making it much likelier than Ord’s estimate-- one could expect nuclear annihilation to occur once every 100 years. Although the methods Hellman uses are not airtight by any means, they seem to be more directly informed and thoughtfully reasoned than the somewhat handwave-y estimate Ord provides. Climate: While slightly outside the scope of the 100-year timeline discussed by Ord, I feel that his listed 1 in 1000 existential threat of climate change is slightly misleading. While the definition of “existential threat” is up for debate, and it is not guaranteed that climate change will entirely eradicate humanity, current science indicates a strong possibility of reaching a “point of no return” within the next 100 years. Reaching this point is nearly guaranteed if current policy is not changed. When this point is reached, the damage to our climate will be functionally irreversible, and it is fairly likely that human civilization will proceed on a path of destruction given the massive swings in global temperatures and weather patterns. Because of this, I feel that the 1 in 1000 figure provided by Ord is not the most useful description of the risk of climate change to human civilization. All in all, Ord’s 1-in-6 estimation of existential risk within 100 years does what it needs to do-- it provides a terrifyingly large chance of annihilation. However, according to experts in some of these fields, it seems that the risk is significantly larger, and in some cases all-but-guaranteed if current policies are not changed. Sources: “An existential discussion: What is the probability of nuclear war?” by Martin E. Hellman and Vinton G. Cerf. https://thebulletin.org/2021/03/an-existential-discussion-what-is-the-probability-of-nuclear-war/ “Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach” by David Spratt and Ian Dunlop. https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/148cb0_a1406e0143ac4c469196d3003bc1e687.pdf
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#Framing #Policy My Memo for this week is going to talk about Chapter 10 from the reading The Button by William J Perry. One of the the more striking observations I made about the reading in the first few pages, was the almost certain tone from the author regarding the inevitable use of Nuclear Weapons as well as comparing the use of Nukes to that of the Titanic sinking back in 1912. It makes quite of a stretch for an argument when the author said that this complacency regarding the Titanic due to it having the nickname "Unsinkable" is comparable to people in the United States saying "We have had nukes this long and all is well, so what's the problem?" Perry then claims that past presidents have done nothing to combat this danger, and that there is a high probability of a nuclear incident happening, killing billions. Although this is all relevant information and hypothesis(s), i fail to recognize and agree with the author in the first half of this chapter. It seems as though he claims these arguments without rational facts and information to support himself, and I feel as though his argument was quite lackluster. Although i disagree with much of what the author said in the beginning of Chapter 10, I agree with most of his list on the "Top Ten recommendations to have a safer world". I think this Author has made great points regarding what US Nuclear Policy should push for. I agree with his statements regarding "Eliminating the Football" but i feel as though this authority should not be given to congress. As many of us know today, Congress is quite split in their thinking, mostly based upon party lines. I think a great idea would have cohort consisting of around 9 people to vote on the use of Nuclear Weapons. I feel as though we should still have no first use policy, but these 9 people would be the most educated on the matters of Nuclear weapons, and would be able to make the EDUCATED decision. Overall, I liked the second half of this article regarding the rules of engagement and use, but i feel as though some of the points are less detailed and stretched to an extent.
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The more bystanders there are in any given situation of adversity, the less individual people feel pressure or responsibility to take action and help out themselves. The very presence of other people deters individuals from intervening in whatever harmful situation may be occurring in their presence. This social phenomenon is called the bystander effect, and I believe it is the greatest challenge society faces in the context of existential threats. For example, because individuals collectively exonerate themselves from being culpable for climate change, individuals feel less inclined to take action because they feel like there are so many other people who can and will deal with the problems we face. People don’t feel incentivized to reduce personal emissions because it seems like a minuscule difference in the greater scheme of all the people in the world. In reality, if every individual citizen was making an effort to decrease personal emissions and make climate-conscious decisions, this would have a large impact on the overall wellbeing of the atmosphere. In “How Close Is Humanity to the Edge”, Corinne Purtill examines Toby Ord’s outlook on the future of humanity and the existential threats that pose grave dangers to civilization. Ord makes the point that if we are able to learn how to value the lives of people who live in the other locations with different lifestyles and backgrounds than our own, then we must also be able to value human lives in a broader temporal framework than the present moment. The lives of future generations will be affected greatly by the decisions we make today. However, the future seems distant and unrelated to our present state and quality of life. In addition, we are the first species to create the power to destroy ourselves through conscious action. Purtill points out that for many people, the idea of all of humanity perishing one day in the distant future—when no one we know or love is still around—doesn’t seem as alarming as the prospect of humans suffering in our present-day world. Specifically, Purtill says, “As individuals, we can do our part by giving to causes that support humanity’s survival, and by having the conversations that coalesce, over time, into collective action. I think this connects back to the bystander effect. If we perceived existential threats—not as some distant and unrealistic danger that future generations can deal with—but rather as something every individual could actively combat, there would be much more tangible change. Fear must be a motivator. In addition, In “The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump”, Tom Collina examines the existential threat that nuclear weapons pose to civilization and argues that significant changes in policy surrounding nuclear defense cannot happen without broad public awareness and support. Collina specifically focuses on the importance of ending the presidential sole authority to launch the US into a nuclear war. He believes that public education plays a crucial role in changing people’s minds about national defense and the unnecessary stockpiling of nuclear weapons. If people focused a little more on extending empathy to future generations, perhaps we could more clearly see that drastic action must be taken in order to prevent these existential threats from becoming realities. |
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Our government has always been designed to move slowly. It’s entire purpose is to safeguard institutions and prevent rapid change or destabilization of our society. But what happens when society advances too fast for the government to keep up? This seems to be what happened with Nuclear weapons. In his book, The Button, William J Perry argues that we need to learn the right lessons from the Cold War, which we have failed to do. During the cold war we were terrified of the other country choosing to launch nuclear weapons at the other, yet we then came to realize that because of Nuclear deterrence, the risk of one consciously bombing the other is quite low. But we failed to reflect on what happened when we came close to launching Nuclear Weapons. As it turns out, the risk from failures in nuclear alarms and warnings or basic communication presents much higher risks, and this is before we consider the risks of cyber threats or terrorist threats. Furthermore, according to the Arms Control Association, there are over thirteen thousand nuclear warheads. Keeping track of 13,000 items any of which can cause tremendous human pain and death is a very difficult logistic problem.
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#origin #solution #policy A large factor in the addiction to arsenal expansion is the mind’s inability to imagine the magnitude of destruction nuclear war will cause. Corinne Purtill refers to “‘scope neglect,’ the cognitive bias that makes it harder to understand the full scale of problems the larger those problems get,” (4). This is similarly the case in a study that showed that many people found it difficult to imagine the consequences of the extinction of humankind (Purtill 4). This can be compared to humanity’s reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many people, especially in middle and upper classes, aren’t directly experiencing the effects of the pandemic, making it harder for them to imagine the scale of the disease’s toll. As a result, even though they constantly hear of the high numbers of COVID cases and deaths, many continue on with their lives as though nothing were going on. In all, because they lack the ability to wrap their heads around the consequences of nuclear war, nation leaders continue producing weapons, believing this will resolve the issue. Some suggest that the best solution is a nonnuclear defense, because the only plausible event in which the US would launch nuclear weapons is in response to an attack, guaranteeing our and our opponent’s destruction (Brown 13). It makes more sense to abandon the nuclear defense, as this would inevitably save countless lives and whole civilizations.
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#solutions #risk #nuclear |
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#policy #risk Could this be how governments threaten their populace in the near future?! |
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#risk #solutions In the Ord reading for this week, I found it incredibly fascinating that the author was able to illustrate and not shy away from the fact that all existential threats currently possess varying levels of risk, yet we should not focus solely on the ones with “the most risk” because in doing so we may lose perspective and allow new threats to formulate. This belief derives from Ord’s understanding that all existential risks are connected to one another due in part to a potential domino effect that could occur if a smaller threat transpires. In this case, a threat would not need to wipe out an entire population by itself, but it would expose vulnerabilities in other threats allowing them to transpire. This connection requires both politicians and private citizens to treat all threats that we face with the same level of caution and concern. The idea that these threats are somehow intertwined with one another is frightening, yet their relationship to one another is not as unrealistic as some would hope. The relationship that many of the current threats to civilization share is already in front of us. At the start of 2020, I witnessed for the first time in my life global incapacitation in response to a threat that was largely unknown at the time. Although the true origins of the coronavirus disease were unknown, this did not stop global division or the spread of nationalistic slogans to further widen the divide (i.e “Chinavirus). At the time, then President Donald Trump’s provocative language served as a reminder of how the rift between the United States and China was now greater than ever and could have led to the transpiring of cyber or even nuclear war. The gap between these two threats might seem like an over exaggeration at face value; however, with leaders in charge whom many deem as unstable, anything is possible. Many other examples over the past few years can be seen to show the links of such threats. Russia’s cyber-attacks during the 2016 election served as a reminder that the U.S. and Russia were still adversaries, and the continual deterioration of our climate seems to be reaching a boiling point amongst nations regarding who will pay for what. All together, these threats we face work to show that their connections to one another continue to expose an even further divided world. If one of these threats gets exponentially worse, it should not be a surprise to anyone that the repercussions will reach levels previously unseen. Therefore, like Ord said, “Our ultimate aim is to spend the resources allocated to existential risk in such a way as to reduce total risk by the greatest amount.”
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#policy #existentialthreats One aspect of the readings that struck me was the cognitive limitations faced by humans in their attempt to comprehend and acknowledge existential threats. While Perry spoke of passivity, defeatism, and even primal fear as obstacles, Ord identified the issue of scope neglect: people do not care ten times as much about things that are ten times more dangerous. Our sense of importance - and therefore our allocation of resources - is all disproportionate. This makes wonder how we ought to bring people to fully grasp the importance of existential threats in proportion to their danger. I have two comments or suggestions:
In conclusion, the problem of scope neglect in individuals, and the governments they elect, is a significant one for existential risk policy. We should find active ways to close this gap. |
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#risk #policy #hopeforthefuture The relationship between good policy and the risk of an existential world crisis is commonsensical and the abundance of the former would lead to a larger decrease in the latter. Throughout the readings of Toby Ord's Precipice and Corinne Purtill's How Close is Humanity to the Edge I could not stop thinking about the very high likelihood that there is a 1-in-6 risk of our extinction during this century. While that is a number much higher than the average person would guess, I think that is a fair number given all of the threats we have encountered so far in this class that our society faces. What struck me as most surprising however, is that Ord believes there is a significantly larger risk of 21st century extinction as a result of pandemics or unaligned artificial intelligence than nuclear war as the main cause. I am not including climate change for the argument that will follow as I believe climate change presents the largest risk to human extinction however not in the 21st century. Throughout the last six weeks of this course, it seemed to me that nuclear war and a nuclear holocaust is by far the biggest risk that we face as a society. Weapons of mass destructions could easily wipe out a huge chunk of the planet with the authorization of a nation's leader and the simple click of a button. Something that is definitely in the control of humans can so easily lead to the "end of the world" whereas pandemics and unaligned AI can be seen as outside of the control of humans. Why is it then that nuclear war only carries a 1-1000 risk of wiping out humanity? On a larger scale this led me to think about policy and how these sort of risks are mitigated because of policy. As we have seen in the last year and a half, not all nations are capable of creating good enough policy to prevent a threat such as a pandemic from ravaging an entire nation. While the Covid-19 pandemic does seem to be heading in the right direction with vaccine policy and social distancing policy, it could've been much worse if the virus was much more severe. Nonetheless, the room for error in the response to this pandemic with policy was very small however millions of people have died and economies plundered because of poor policy. With relation to nuclear war, which can destroy the world much quicker, does that mean that we currently have good enough policy in place to prevent it from happening? All of the nuclear powerhouses currently have enough missiles and nukes to wipe off the entire planet and only one button is stopping that. Something that is in the control of humans can become much less of a threat than normal with effective policy and cooperation between powerful countries. I think the fact that there has not been a nuclear holocaust is an example of good policy (i.e. no first use nuclear policy). The Covid-19 pandemic could also have been much less of a threat to our existence if better policy was in place. This reading really left me wondering as to whether any sort of existential threat can really be prevented by good policy or is it inevitable that humanity does not survive. We know that pandemics are deadly and history has taught us that the current pandemic won't be the last one humanity sees. By creating institutions, as Ord says, and putting emphasis on good policy, can we truly eliminate existential threats? I believe so, however humanity must come together. If we do that, I agree with Ord that humanity can reach a place in society that is much greater than where we are now.
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#policy #carbonfarming #climate Looking toward the future, there are a number of circulating ideas to protect us from our demise. One of these proposed policies is carbon farming. Carbon farming is climate-smart agricultural practices that will help in aiding our reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through storing carbon in the soil. Agriculture is one of our main greenhouse gas emission sources. Additionally, placing carbon in the soil will benefit the health of the soil itself. Carbon will help in plant health and therefore would contribute to removing atmospheric carbon. It is simple to say that we need to implement carbon farming and store carbon in the soil, but how will that be done? One of the proposed methods is Blue Carbon. This refers to taking carbon dioxide out of marine environments. As a society, we need to implement and, more importantly, protect blue carbon environments. An example of one of these environments is mangroves. They are flooded by tidal water and are extremely rich in carbon. The sequestration rate for mangroves is between 6 and 8 tons of CO2 per hectare. If you compare that to a normal forest, it is about 4 times as efficient. However, 30-50% of mangroves globally have been lost in the past 50 years as humans continue deforestation practices and other unsustainable coastal development projects. Moving forward, we absolutely have to implement policies to protect these environments, as if we get rid of them, we are only hurting ourselves even more. |
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#origin #solutions #nuclear In the polls conducted in this class, we often choose climate change as the issue that will cause the end of the world. In the article “How Close is Humanity to the Edge?” by Corinne Purtill, the author mentions Toby Ord, a philosopher who studies the existential risk of humanity, and his views on the end of the world. The author states that Ord believes the biggest concerns about the end of humanity are “empowered artificial intelligence unaligned with human values and engineered pandemics.” This idea is very relevant to today’s times with the current COVID-19 pandemic. In the earliest recorded pandemic, occurring in 430 B.C., almost 2/3 of the population died. In today’s age, if the whole world was affected, that would add up to about 5.2 billion deaths. Even with current advancements in technology with vaccines and medicine, it is important to understand how deadly pandemics are and their ability to wipe out large portions of the population. In the same article by Purtill, the author mentions that Ord has given the name “The Precipice” to our current phase of history which began on July 16th, 1945. This marks the moment of the Trinity test, which is the first-ever nuclear bomb detonation. The bomb was nicknamed the “gadget”, which was a plutonium-based implosion-type device that yielded 19 kilotons and created a crater over 300 meters wide. This explosion demonstrated the true impact of nuclear weaponry and highlighted the damage that humans are capable of creating. Therefore, how do we prevent this disaster from occurring? In The Atomic Titanic by William Perry, the author provides his top ten recommendations for a safer world. The number one recommendation is to “end presidential sole nuclear authority”, which would force Congress to share authority amongst other branches of the government. I believe that spreading authority across more individuals can result in a lower risk of nuclear war, but how should we respond in situations where immediate response is required, such as an incoming attack? One possible solution is to focus less on retaliation through nuclear weaponry and focus more on electronic countermeasures. Electronic countermeasures are capable of tricking or deceiving radar, sonar, and other detection systems. In today’s age, air forces use these devices to protect their aircrafts from external attacks. By focusing strongly on defense during nuclear attacks, we can save many lives, rather than ending more lives through retaliation. The picture below explains how electronic countermeasures work in aircrafts.
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#framing #solutions #existentialthreats There is a bigger problem with these numbers than is what meets the eye. One can see Ord is very optimistic for the potential of humanity, giving us an 83% chance of no long term damage. He very well may be true, but this approximation is damaging. It can be interpreted to mean that with no action, humans right now will be able to live their lives without seeing the long term consequences of these actions. One of my greatest points of argument with parents and friends of parents is the fact that they say “they will die before this will ever affect them”, so why would they care? They can live the next century without concern, for a decent percent of people don’t have Ord’s beautiful belief of the sheer potential of the human species, and that being something worth sacrificing for. He adjusts for this by adding another bullet in the chamber for Russian roulette, saying if we don’t try it's 2 in 6. That’s too kind. It enables the worst parts of our society, laziness and procrastination to say we are more likely to survive then perish if we don’t act. Our culture has already kicked the bucket down the road for decades, policies being made for short term cash instead of long term survival. The number needs to be worse than 3 bullets in. The framing needs to be harsh, to make it impossible to simply ignore. We need to act, and act soon to push past that miasma of focusing on the small tasks of a lifetime rather than focusing on the bigger picture. The human species is making up for lost time, and if we work hard, it won’t be a fully loaded gun by the end of the century. |
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#salience # origin Tribalism: A Hurdle in Protecting Our Future In the Precipice, Ord provides suggestions as to what we should not be doing if we want to protect our future. These suggestions include: "don't spread dangerous information," "don't act without integrity", "don't be fanatical," to name a few. The most important one, in my opinion, would be the suggestion not to be tribal. He states, "[s]afeguarding our future is not left or right, not eastern or western, not owned by the rich or the poor. It is not partisan. Framing it as a political issue on one side of a contentious divide would be a disaster. Everyone has a stake in our future and we must work together to protect it" [1]. It seems that for every major disaster that could lead to our destruction: nuclear war, global warming, and pandemics, we face a strong tribal divide. Protecting our future, therefore, has become very political. This political divide poses a significant risk since policy changes will be much slower to be implemented if we cannot even agree on the existence of certain disasters or the extent to which they pose a threat to humanity. Even if laws are implemented that try to slow down these potential disasters, who is to say that society will be receptive to these new laws? In this pandemic, we have clearly seen that both vaccines and masks have become politicized issues. Implementation of wearing masks was the earliest form of policy that was put in place to limit the spread of the pandemic. Ideally, swift action by all individuals to wear masks could have helped slow down the pandemic. Yet, we have see masks become politicized by both democrats and republicans. No longer do they serve as representations of safety. Rather, wearing or failing to wear masks becomes a political symbol. Just recently, Tucker Carlson has stated that wearing masks was a "sign of political obedience," and those that do wear masks are "zealots and neurotics" [2]. If regulations as simple as wearing masks has strongly divided America, what is the chance that in the future, when we face graver threats to our world, we will be more bipartisan. It seems like no matter the issues we face today there is little to no bipartisanship. In contrast to the world Ord ideally imagines, in the present day our future safety is rooted in tribalism, and little is being done to cross political lines. Before even thinking about the policies that need to be implemented, we need to be more careful in choosing who we want to serve as our representatives. In reality, even if lawmakers can pass policies that may help protect our future, who is to say that state governments, industries, and American citizens will actually be receptive. Let us begin by trying to bring bipartisanship back to the government, through better elections of representatives who are less tied down to a political party. Additionally, the way in which media sources have functioned as a way to spread biases of different political groups must be reduced. Making news independent from political parties can certainly help citizens begin to depart from such a depolarized society. Only then will any policies be able to be implemented and well received by the general public.
[1] Ord, Toby. The Precipice. Hachette Books 2021. |
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#framing In our AI week, the discussion of alignment–aligning AI with human values–centered on what laws could guide AI to act within the bounds of what's "moral". I think that's an apt way of summarizing the alignment issue: how do we give AI morality? This conversation was motivated by the fear of instrumental convergence, commonly illustrated by the paperclip maximizer scenario in which an AI program inadvertently decimates mankind so as to maximize paperclip production. It is worth noting here that mankind's decimation is not inadvertent to the AI, rather it is inadvertent to the AI's designer. Or is it? This scenario is seen as an absurd and extreme doomsday warning of the dangers of AI, even though the sentiment should be taken seriously. However, this week's readings on policy in the face of existential crisis had me thinking. What if we alter the scenario a bit? For example, switch out paperclips for oil and AI for the Bush presidency circa the Iraq invasion? The scenario certainly seems less farfetched now. It makes me wonder if the fundamental flaws in hypothetical AI thinking, something we view as a result of primitive coding lacking human intuition, is in fact human intuition. Do we already prioritize the present at the expense of the future? The way we deplete natural resources certainly seems to suggest so. During that AI week, I pondered what laws of morality could be programmed into AI so as to thwart a paperclip maximizing scenario. At the time, I was patting myself on the back for thinking of something that had not come up in the reading, a weight function that priorities future generations over the current one. The AI would understand that the existence of future generations biologically relies on the survival of the current generation, but the AI also knows that any action it takes must consider the well-being of those down the road. Yet, in this week's reading, I've heard this same sentiment echoed twice. By this same sentiment, I mean that a fundamental aspect of morality is protecting the next generation. However, the two instances of this were used with completely opposite intentions. In the first, Toby Ord employs this argument as a way of convincing readers to curb their development and use of deadly technologies for the sake of future generations. For comparison's sake, I will include both quotes, so here's Toby's:
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#risk #framing #salience #nuclear #climate #policy
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This is a thought I’ve had throughout this class, but I’ve thought consistently that a lot of the threats that the world faces would be faced better if these very nation-wide threats or threats that we dealt with on a national scale. Specifically, it feels like it would be easier to mobilize populations of countries around fighting off national threats, rather than mobilizing the world’s population around fighting off a threat of a global scale. People’s patriotism and national pride seems to inspire more of a desire to fix/change/improve rather than any collective pride over ‘being human’. This reminds me of an idea that a German philosopher - who’s name escapes me – proposed. (I think the guy was also a Nazi and a fascist, so I’m not endorsing anything he says, but I do think this idea is interesting.) But the idea is that there will always be internal class strife and inter-group conflict in any society/country. So, the way to actually achieve peace and a thriving nation is to focus all concerns at an external threat, tapping into every citizen’s nationalism and national pride to fight off this constant, but unifying risk of apocalypse. That way, a country will not have to deal with any internal strife and infighting but will only have to facilitate the unified nation’s fight against these world-ending threats. As per this philosophy, it is even beneficial for the unity of a nation for there to always be an external threat that must be fought and defeated (but only temporarily, until it returns again). Any loss of quality in life from these threats will be more than made up for by the strength and force of the unified nation. This is a very interesting idea to me (even if I don’t necessarily agree with the whole idea) and does highlight how patriotism over (more or less) arbitrary borders and imaginary lines can be such a powerful source of change, but the same does not apply to the collective globe when it comes to issues that we face as a planet. It feels weird that one might care about fighting for Americans or Indians or Germans or Australians but not for ‘humans’. In the context of this week in the course, I wonder if there is a way through policy that we would be able to incentivize thinking about the whole globe in the same way that one might think about one’s own countries. Despite there being a shared common threat, we are still a divided planet and for some reason, it seems hard to unify around the banner of ‘human’. Maybe the unity comes not from inside but a fear of the other. In that case, our unity may only come around when we’re faced with aliens. But here’s hoping we figure it out before then.
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#risk Centralized Policy vs. Decentralized TechnologyPictured above is the BioXp™ 3250, a machine which “provides hands-free, end-to-end automation of DNA assembly, cloning, amplification, and mRNA synthesis in a single overnight run” [1]. At a hefty price of $50,000 per machine, it’s not cheap. Yet considering that the entire field of synthetic biology 15 years ago did not possess the capabilities of this single machine today, we can begin to contextualize the rate of technological development on the cutting edge of this discipline. Breakneck technological progress carries with it many benefits: our devices are simultaneously becoming exponentially cheaper, faster, smaller, and smarter. Whereas personal computing was a pipe dream in the 70s, its saturation into every facet of our lives makes it laughably obvious in retrospect. Once employed and developed strictly by academics and experts, technology trickles out into increasingly uninformed and uneducated hands. Mostly, this is an awesome phenomena. But in some cases, this democratization can introduce externalities. In the case of the BioXp 3250, many researchers fear the increasing possibility of manufactured super pathogens: the cost of technologies like the BioXp will continue to fall precipitously, thus giving access to an exponentially increasing audience. Such an audience may at some distant point include groups like Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese doomsday cult responsible for the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attacks. In short, while we can be reasonably confident that researchers working on cutting edge technologies do not wish doomsday upon the world, as those technologies become distributed throughout the world, it becomes increasingly difficult to remain confident that those technologies will not be utilized in the production of great harm. Furthermore, such decentralization is extremely difficult to regulate effectively. Take, for example, the case of ghost guns: whether 3D printed, or assembled from a variety of independent pieces, ghost guns are exceptionally hard to track and/or confiscate. As 3D printing technology becomes ever more ubiquitous and effective, it seems undoubtable that the number of ghost guns will grow. There are certainly methods by which we can begin to address these kinds of decentralized issues, however they aren’t cheap or easy. [1] https://codexdna.com/products/bioxp-system/ Some ghost gun links: |
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#policy #framing This week's set of readings were surprisingly motivational and I appreciated the various sentiments surrounding saving humanity. While I agree with ideas of bettering policy responses to risks instead of just statistically accepting our doom, I do see flaws in overly optimistic framings. In “How Close is Humanity to the Edge?” by Corinne Purtill, I found her expansion and reflections of Toby Ord’s “The Precipice” interesting with applications to COVID-19. The positive-twist on framing the pandemic by Ord and Purtill is different from what I’ve considered; they argue that despite all the grief and pain that COVID-19 has brought, it has the potentiality to serve as a great wake up call. This sentiment follows the idea that a “small-scale catastrophe may be good in preventing disasters of greater magnitude in the future” (Purtill). Though I do see how reflections on current handlings of the virus could be used to craft better response policy plans for the future, I think this framing alone may be a little too optimistic considering the US government and citizens' disunited response towards COVID-19. One reason that I argue coronavirus's 'small-scale catastrophe’ won’t itself necessarily result in better equipped policy responses the next time around is because of the partisan responses to the pandemic. The Trump Administration played their fair share in making the pandemic mobilization fall on party lines (Altman). It was not long after politicians started using the rhetoric ‘Democrats and their masks’ or ‘Republicans and their anti-science’ that there started being a sharper divide in how people were considering the severity and urgency of the virus. A CBS and YouGov poll exemplified this divide; it found that 57% of Republicans thought the number of coronavirus deaths were acceptable because they believed the death toll was exaggerated, while 90% of Democrats said the deaths were unacceptable (Altman). This has a lot to do with our current state of affairs and the increasing polarization in government, which make collaboration and unified action to such threats nearly impossible. In addition to political polarization, there is reason to believe that the inefficient response was not only due to the partisan nature of the pandemic. The failed response may truly have a lot to do with human nature and the inability or unwillingness to think of these threats as potentially existential. This argument can be supported by the psychology experiment at Oxford University, which found that people consider human extinction just slightly worse than an event which would wipe out 80% of the human population (Purtill). The thought of humanity’s existence being wiped out for eternity is something so incomprehensible that it is difficult to mobilize, but such apathy and lack of foresight is making responses even more difficult to improve. With all this in mind, it is evident that it is time to take efforts in improving our responses to existential threats with better policy implementation. However, considering our current state of affairs, marked with apathy, increasing polarization, and little to no progress or consensus, the question that remains is how?
Works Cited: Altman, Drew. “Understanding the US failure on coronavirus—an essay by Drew Altman.” BMJ, 14 Sep 2020, doi:10.1136/bmj.m3417. Accessed 5 May 2021. |
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#policy #framing Looking back on our first week of the class, in the reading "Why is America Getting a New $100 Billion Nuclear Weapon" the author points out how US defense contractors like Northrop Grumman make outrageous campaign contributions to politicians in states where nuclear weapons are currently housed in underground missile silos. This plays on a prominent question of the first reading from Thought Magazine, where the author ponders whether a $220 billion Reagan era plan to add 7000 new nukes to our arsenal was the “promise of life or a curse that speeds us along a course that risks the extinction of our civilization” (1). Therein we can see that corporate interests will always take precedence over that which is truly best for the country, for national defense. By couching the expansion of our nuclear arsenal in the fluffy language of “ the blessing of national defense”, these companies pocket our tax dollars, funneling just enough into the hands of politicians to keep them sympathetic. What has changed between now and then, however is the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United vs. the FEC, wherein it was decided that corporations are allowed to make unlimited campaign contributions to political campaigns. Not only has this resulted in the further expansion of our nuclear arsenal, but it also allows for even more greed to supplant our democracy, tainting policy to fit their agenda. This leaves precious little space for efforts at deescalation, particularly in a time following the so-called “War on Terror” (which began in 2001 after 9/11) through which we saw the rapid escalation of the military budget in the United States. So now more than ever the idea of our nuclear arsenal’s position as a deterrent, a necessary evil in promoting national defense is seen as moral, as just. Thinking as many of the readings do, then, of nuclear armageddon playing out like a game of Russian Roulette -- if nuclear armageddon is the bullet, then defense contractors are the hand which loads the revolver, greed the hand that spins the cylinder, and policy that pulls the trigger. At this point, the gun is loaded, poised to go off any minute now.
(Just as an aside I also think couching the United States' military budget as "defense spending" serves to de-fang the issues surrounding our military in general and the ludicrous amounts of tax dollars being spent on what essentially have amounted to the escalation of our policies surrounding war to the extent that the extrajudicial murder of people halfway across the world on the basis of "defense" is now legalized and excused by our leaders) |
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#solutions #risk #framing |
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#risk #salience #solutions! |
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#origin #policy #climate Something that stuck in my head was from the How Close is Humanity to the Edge piece, which states that "the challenge is to adopt a new frame of mind in which distant threats aren’t confused with impossible ones." This got me thinking about when I went to a talk at the Law School with Professor Carlson from UCLA, where she discussed the Clean Air Act of 1980 in comparison to the Green New Deal, discussing achieving the perceived impossible. |
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#nuclear #policy #solutions Policy responses to existential risks should aim to do two things: they obviously need to attempt to reduce a risk in some meaningful way, but they also need to be politically viable/ realistically achievable. Using the suggestions laid out by William Perry and Tom Collina in chapter 10 of “The Button”, we can assess the realistic odds of some of them being adopted and whether such policies would plausibly reduce nuclear risks. Some policy changes can be done unilaterally by heads of state: for example, the U.S. president possesses “sole authority” over decisions to launch nuclear weapons, which s/he could disavow or be forced to give up as a result of legislation by the Congress. Based on the fact that a) having one person in the U.S. government responsible for all nuclear launch decisions is not particularly democratic nor safe and b) the American public would hardly notice such a change in the nuclear decision-making chain of command, this policy response seems reasonable. However, policymakers rarely consent to reducing their own authority regardless of the issue, and Congress has so far been unwilling to demand changes to the process already in place, citing things like time constraints during emergencies, difficulties determining who would be an appropriate check on a president’s power (vice president, speaker of the house, etc), and other considerations. Taking these difficulties into consideration, changing “sole authority” policy would likely reduce nuclear risks but seems politically dubious given the structure of the American political system. Another suggestion by Perry and Collina is “retire all ICBMs”. This policy change could arguably result in reducing nuclear risks as well: U.S. ICBMs are often considered “use ‘em or lose ‘em” weapons as they are fixed targets that can be destroyed if attacked during a first strike, incentivizing launching said weapons after detecting an incoming volley but before detonation. ICBMs are also the leg of the nuclear triad most prone to mistakes or miscalculation: numerous examples throughout history show how computer errors, human misjudgements, radar malfunctions, and other unforeseen circumstances led both the United States and the Soviet Union to occasionally believe a nuclear strike was imminent, resulting in close-calls and near-catastrophes. Finally, ICBM’s can’t be recalled unlike ballistic missile submarines and strategic bombers, meaning once a missile is launched it will detonate at its predetermined location. Based on these facts, it seems reasonable that eliminating ICBMs while maintaining the other two legs of the triad would reduce nuclear risks, but it remains to be seen whether such a move would be politically viable. That uncertainty stems from the fact that ICBMs are based in only a handful of Midwestern states, meaning there exists strong opposition from those states’ senators and representatives who fear job losses and economic decline in those communities that maintain ICBM forces. Additionally, significantly cutting the nuclear modernization budget (which includes the new GBSD ICBM) would require opposing defense firms like Northrop Grumman, which have considerable influence in Washington DC. Similar to the policy proposals for changing “sole authority”, eliminating ICBMs seems politically difficult but not impossible. Taking these two policy responses and others into consideration, what method seems most reasonable for reducing nuclear risks? Research by some political scientists has shown so-called “elite theory” is more effective at policy change than grassroots organizing: convincing policy elites to change their minds eventually “trickles down” to the general population. Under this framework, enacting some of these changes may depend on foreign policy specialists in government and academia to come to a consensus on reasonable steps to take to reduce nuclear risks.
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#solutions #nuclear #policy #salience After reading Edmund Brown's work Nuclear Addiction: A Response I began thinking about the problem of nuclear weapons in the context of probability theory. If we think about every possible set of actions that can occur at this point in time, and every action that could potentially follow from that action, and all the actions that can follow from those, and narrow them by likelihood, we create a tree starting from this very moment and leading to every possible outcome. The higher the likelihood of a particular outcome to occur, the more paths will lead to it. This is similar to the way that Chess robots used to be structured according to difficulty. The easier robots would select moves that had less potential ways of winning than the more difficult robots. The best robots can select the option with the most potential outcomes for winning at every move, almost ensuring a victory, and creating the "behavior" that many chess players hate. We learned in our AI class that they find traditional robots too robotic. More modern chess robots use AI to seem more human like. If we think about probability trees in the terms of nuclear acceleration we must think about all the possible outcomes that can lead to nuclear annihilation. If we are hoping to prevent nuclear war, like a chess robot trying to win, we must think about what actions we can take to reduce the number of potential paths, weighted by likelihood, that lead to nuclear war. Statisticians have often tried to predict the likelihood of nuclear war, some even predicting the current likelihood is upwards of 93% (Bertschler), but how can we bring that down? There are many possible ways that nuclear weapons in existence can reduce the likelihood of nuclear war, this is why the nuclear arms race occured. It was treated as a problem of game theory, of two side. How do I react to the actions of the other party, and spur their action? It should instead be treated as a problem of statistics. As a world, what reduces the likelihood of the usage of nuclear weapons? Not having them in the first place. The absolute removal of nuclear weapons is the most desirable solution, albeit the most difficult one, to prevent a nuclear war because it reduces the paths towards a nuclear war the most considerably. This brings in Brown's comments about the ability of competition between hostile nations to breed distrust. It is impossible for us to act in the statistically optimal way because nations still see each other on opposing sides, and that brings us to where we should then focus our energy. Instead of focusing on beating the other party, we need to realize that in most of our greatest looming catastrophes, we are on the same team. Easier said than done, obviously, but changing the narrative would most definitely be helpful. Lets not beat Russian, lets beat the threat, the true problem, of which we are a contributing party.
https://medium.com/dataseries/likelihood-of-nuclear-war-we-have-no-idea-fb38d812912d |
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#policy #salience A few weeks ago, I posted a memo that referenced the accelerated passage of the Patriot Act following intense nationalism and fear surrounding 9/11. In this week's readings from guest speaker and former governor Jerry Brown, he makes references multiple times to the idea that politicians may be incentivized to pursue conflict because of the bump it will give to their public support: "[Perry] observes that political leaders seemed to gain approval with the public based on their willingness to initiate a war" (A Stark Nuclear Warning, P.3) "Although he didn't believe that nuclear deterrence required that we match our adversary weapon for weapon, he acceded to the political pressure to keep up with the other guy" (P.5) In his article in Thought Magazine, he alludes to the concept that the arms race is politically motivated and supported, which rings to the same tune. Taking this all together, it reminded me of the "Rally Around The Flag" effect whereby elected officials' approval ratings tend upward during times of international crisis. I'm writing to elaborate on this phenomenon--particularly, the factors that determine the magnitude and direction of the approval shift spell trouble for policy-making in times of crisis or potential world-ending nuclear war against foreign powers. As the images below the post show, here are a few notable spikes in approval for U.S. presidencies:
Before doing a bit of research, I didn't realize that studies had been done linking the nature of the conflict to the bump or dip in approval. Shoon Murray found that positive bumps in approval rating are associated with media coverage of the crisis event, the White House's framing of the issue, the amount of criticism from opposing politicians, and the time since the last concluded war. Furthermore, approval bumps have been smaller for simple deployments of force/troops than they have been for all-out warfare. It remains to be seen whether increasing polarization in the U.S. will work to dampen this phenomenon. What we can all agree on is that the ingrouping and impulse policy decision-making is problematic for the future with a bevy of nuclear weapons and cyber capabilities.
Image + Info Sources on approval rating: The Guardian: Rally round the flag: do wars boost presidential popularity? David Coleman: JFK's Presidential Approval Ratings Visualize Curiosity: A Short Stroll with Historical Presidential Approval Ratings |
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#Risk #Policy #Salience While this week’s readings did a great job outlining the extreme and constant risk of nuclear conflict, I still do not see any practical solutions to prevent such an extreme event from happening. There is much to be said about the risk the United State’s first use policy in terms of starting a nuclear war, but the issue the U.S. faces is that if we stop providing nuclear protection for our allies they will be heavily incentivized to pursue building their own nuclear arsenal. Nuclear weapons can essentially indefinitely ensure the survival of a state faced with any external threat. These weapons furthermore allow states to negotiate with other nuclear powers on more equal terms as very few states are willing to engage in a nuclear conflict except for the most extreme circumstances. It is because of our first strike policy and extension of nuclear protection to our allies around the world that many of these allies don’t feel intense pressure to develop a nuclear arsenal of their own. Our nuclear protection means that these states already receive many of the benefits of having nuclear weapons without needing to develop their own and face the international political consequences of pursuing a nuclear program. As long as these states feel that the United States will use its nuclear weapons to ensure their survival and ability to negotiate on relatively equal terms they are under no immediate pressure to acquire their own. However, should the United States withdraw its nuclear support for its allies, they would immediately face an entirely different situation and feel intense pressure to find a new way to give their governments nuclear backing. This would inevitably result in rapid nuclear proliferation as all of the United States’ allies who were previously protected implement their own nuclear programs. While the United States’ maintenance of a massive nuclear arsenal and use of a first strike policy is certainly dangerous, is it really more dangerous than at least dozens of other states around the world also having their own nuclear arsenal? Although increasing the number of nuclear weapons in one nation’s arsenal certainly increases the risk of a nuclear accident, it seems that allowing several other nations to acquire nuclear weapons would increase the risk of an accident to a much greater extent. If more international actors have direct access to nuclear weapons then these weapons will inevitably be involved in more international conflicts, drastically increasing the opportunities for these weapons to be used accidentally or irresponsibly. When merely protected by another nation’s first strike policy these nations will at least have to gain the approval of a second, and very hesitant power, before they would actually be able to use any nuclear weapons.
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#risks #framing #solution When I was reading chapter 6 of the book, “The Risk Landscape” and “Saving Humanity” by Toby Ord, the author ranked the chance of each existential catastrophe occurring at some point in the next 100 years. One of the existential catastrophes listed there is climate change, and it has the chance of happening of 1 in 1,000 within the next 100 years. I disagree with the way Toby Ord categorized it. First of all, climate change is not something that will happen in the future but already happening now. Climate change naturally includes warming and cooling. Scientific research has found that the average temperature of the earth has an abnormally rising trend in the past 100 years since the industrial revolution, which is called global warming. In other words, the global abnormal temperature rise in the past 100 years is higher than that in the past 1,000 years or even longer. The climate change we generally discuss refers to this phenomenon. More and more studies have shown that in addition to the abnormal temperature rise, there are more frequent extreme weathers and Etc. These abnormal phenomena are collectively referred to as climate change. Therefore, I can't agree with the author that climate change will happen in the next 100 years because it is happening right now. On the other hand, the author included 'asteroid or comet impact', 'supervolcanic eruption', and 'stellar explosion' as natural risks. But he didn't give any solutions to overcome these potential risks. As an astronomy major student, I think one possible solution is to migrate to another planet before the appearance of these risks. Given that the chances of these risks occur in the next 100 years are extremely low, we still have enough time to prepare for interstellar travels. If we are able to foresee a lethal asteroid heading to us or predict a supervolcanic eruption, then the best place we can go is Mars, which is the most habitable planet in our solar system. However, migrating to Mars does not overcome the risks of 'stellar explosion'. When it occurs, the entire solar system would become inhabitable. The only chance to sustain human civilization is to migrate to a habitable planet outside the solar system. Given the limited technologies, the chance of bringing humans on Mars in 50 years is high. But the chance of bringing humans on a planet outside the solar system is nearly zero in the next 100 years. I suggest that people should pay more attention to natural risks because these risks are not something that can be easily overcome. Without long-term preparation, the chance of survival of humans would be extremely low when one of the natural risks happens. |
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#framing #salience In the past years, many foreign policies have been used by powerful countries to benefit themselves. The so-called social justice has been defined differently while facing regional crises on one side and dealing with foreigners on the other. Two great instances are how the western world keeps criticizing Chinese human rights and how they created wars in the Middle East. Government-supported organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Better Cotton Initiative focused on their attacks on internet speaking, Hong Kong independence, and Xinjiang human rights. However, while some of those Chinese writers have defected for many years, few other writers have visited China and check the situations themselves. Many western media or researchers criticized the censorship and filters of Chinese social media platforms, but none supported former President Trump to continue tweeting and speaking online. While the US government supported Hong Kong to "free themselves", they chose to ignore how those terrorists burned shops, people, and civil facilities. When the BLM paraders came to cities, the government called National Guard to dismiss them. While the US and China negotiating on trade terms, the U.S. Department of State's 2020 human rights report classified China's actions in Xinjiang as "genocide and crimes against humanity". The US government and many politicians believe that American Exceptionalism would always be correct no matter the world comes to a union or not. Those policies have led to the Cold War against Russia once, and they now seek to use the same ideology against China. In 2020, the pandemic has proven that humans cannot face catastrophes as individuals, and countries have to help each other achieve common goals. People do not want wars as they do not want to be treated like fools. It is the duty of the governments to stop disseminating fake news and bring equality to the table for diplomacy. If they keep using foreign policies to divide other countries or destroy an industry of others, it would be the shame of humanity and the risk for the whole planet. |
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#Salience #Policy #Solutions
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#risk #salience #solutions |
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#nuclear The readings of this week (Brown 1984; 2016; Perry 2020) provide insight into the trajectory of the controversies vis-à-vis changes of the US nuclear arms policy. Both the US and the USSR massively expanded their nuclear arsenals during the Cold War until the ratification of START I and the INF Treaty. Perry points out that the fact that Reagan and Gorbachev came to realize that the vast nuclear arsenals were not necessary for the national security and not in the interest of both sides’ existentially, led to the later nuclear disarmament. The argument could be oversimplified. In fact, it remains a puzzle to me why the leaderships of the two states, at that very moment – neither in the 60s when the juncture was more critical and the complete human annihilation was imminent (in the Cuban Missile Crisis), nor in the 70s when the US was retreating globally and the US-Soviet relation was in a period of détente – decided to get back to the negotiation table with mutual trust and eventually signed the START I and the INF Treaty. Particularly, the 80s witnessed the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan and consequentially the end of the period of détente, the general rearmament policy of the Reagan administration, the Excise Zapad-81 of the USSR and the Able Archer 83 Excise of the NATO (which greatly intensified the confrontation between the two blocs), the Star Wars Program and the missile crisis in Western Europe. Nonetheless, the only meaningful and conducted consensus about the limitation on nuclear weapons was achieved in this very time period. My questions can be unfolded as: (a) why the consensus and action didn’t happen at a more existentially critical moment (the 60s) or during a relatively peaceful time of de-escalation (the 70s); and (b) if we regarded the 80s as another critical moment similar to the 60s according to the military escalation in Europe and Asia, why the 80s, not the 60s witnessed the nuclear détente – the variation of temporality still retains. I think that the answer to the questions is not moral or subjective, but realistic and processual. It is not based on the good will of the state leaderships or the peoples – I don’t question the sincere hope for peace and nuclear disarmament of the peoples and their trans-Atlantic collective action for the existence of human being, but I seriously doubted the capability of the both blocs to learn “the right lessons” from the previous nuclear arms race, especially in a re-intensified situation. I think we should probe into the economic depression and political unrest in the Eastern Bloc, the changed military balance of conventional forces on the frontline in Europe as well as the leaderships’ pessimistic prediction of an all-out nuclear war, in order to unpack the explanation to the nuclear disarmament in the 80s. I argue that the disarmament is enabled precisely by the interactional relation between the existential problem of the human race and the existential problem (regime crises) faced by the states at that time - they intersected at the nuclear issue which facilitated the solution more than ever. Given the increasing nuclear proliferation and the crumbling disarmament consensus among the US, Russia and China, it is particularly important for us to reconsider and learn lessons from what led to our last success (relatively speaking) of nuclear weapon limitation.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/04/08/nuclear-arms-control-in-the-2020s/ |
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#risk #salience In early Spring of last year, 23 different government entities reached multi-million dollar deals with Blue Flame Medical, a company which promised to supply medical devices and PPE in a time when nobody seemed to have the ability meet the country's astronomical demand. When all was said and done, these 23 deals amounted to approximately $630MM worth of promised PPE that was desperately needed to help state and local governments fight the COVID-19 pandemic. In the end, almost all of these 23 deals tanked. After waiting months for supplies, governments were issued a refund and were told to look elsewhere for a supplier, effectively screwing over millions of Americans whose health relied on the successful delivery of these products. [1] Why did this happen? Days into the pandemic, the company was founded by a guy with major connections to Republican politicians and lobbyists. Even when the lives of millions of Americans are at stake, the temptation to allocate millions of dollars in ways that would benefit one's own self interests (and those of close relations)- even at the expense of efficiency or effectiveness- was still too great for many politicians to bear. The argument that capitalism inherently creates conflicts of interest is likely familiar to every UChicago student, but is something that- as a society- I believe we do not place enough emphasis on attempting to protect against. While it is true that hindsight is 20-20 and the US could have responded more adequately to a pandemic with practice or increased information about the future, conflicts of interest within the US political sphere- which can be resolved with increased public attention, accountability, and regulation- spurred decisions which were unethical, ineffective, and ultimately cost innumerable lives. In June, Elizabeth Warren called attention to what she referred to as "egregious" conflicts of interest within the Trump COVID response team, many of whom owned stakes in companies which sought to discover a COVID-19 vaccine. [2] In the administration's early travel restrictions banning trips to Europe, Britain and Ireland- the only two European countries with Trump hotels and/or golf courses- were quite noticeably absent. [3] The laundry list of questionable decisions I was able to find with just a few minutes of research was absolutely staggering, and begs the question- what is the real, invisible cost of political selfishness? In so many instances, this course has presented us of examples of times when the fate of humanity has rested on the decisions of the few or even- in some moments- of one. The government is supposed to be our decision-maker and our protector, and yet the flaw in our system is that no group of people would ever approve regulations that ban them from working to enrich themselves. When every additional risk may be the last straw, how do we deal with a flawed system which props the bad decision door wide open and leaves very few ways to actually shut it?
[1] https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-covid19-maryland-cancels-ppe-supply-contract-republican-firm-toomey-fundraiser-20200503.html |
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#origin #framing #nuclear #policy BackgroundThe various policy responses to existential threats are often incomprehensible to the average person in the present because of political manipulation and the sheer complexity of modern governance. However, the Cuban Missile Crisis stands in stark contrast to the climate crisis' slow burn. It was 13 days long, involved every government apparatus in the US and Soviet Union, and instilled existential fear in US citizens from the first moment. It sets the undesireable "gold medal" in existential policy responses. Yet, many have grown complacent, believing "if it was stopped then, it'll be stopped now," failing to realize the sheer luck in leaders' personalities and individual actions. Short of giving a complete history I've highlighted some key events, figures, and misunderstandings below. TimelineOctober
November
Nuclear OrdersCuban and Soviet forces under General Pliyev were authorized to use tactical nuclear force should American forces invade, leading to certain retaliatory annihilation. OPLAN 612At the height of the missile crisis, over 261,000 American troops were stationed in Florida for a possible invasion. General Maxwell Taylor, the only member of the armed forces on the National Security Council's Executive Committee and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signs a recommendation to the President calling for immediate military action on 29 October. This recommendation came after the CIA concluded that Cuban missile were operational and a U-2 pilot was shot down over Cuba by Soviet air defense forces. Black SaturdayOn October 27, US naval forces used depth charges on a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine. Fleet Commander Vasily Arkhipov was the only member of a 3-member body that could use nuclear force to object, averting war. An American U-2 accidentally flew ninety minutes into the eastern Soviet Union. Americans dispatched nuclear-armed F-102 fighters when Soviets depoyed MiG interceptors. Additional MissilesThe US believed no missiles had remained in Cuba after the 29 October agreement and furthermore, that the Soviets had very few missiles already stationed. Yet, the Soviet Union, in fact, already had 162 nuclear warheads deployed, some of which remained after the October agreements. "Armageddon Letter"Fidel Castro advocated for a first-strike on 27 October in a letter to Krushchev, stating: "...that would be the moment to eliminate such danger forever... however harsh and terrible the solution would be." AnalysisHad Kennedy yielded to the intense and immediate pressures of military officials at the Defense Dept., had Krushchev yielded to hardliners in Cuba and the Soviet Union, had either been as dedicated anti-communist or anti-capitalists as some of their predecessors and successors, nuclear war would have broken out. Furthermore, Kennedy, around the 27th, seemed ready to acquiesce to the military's demands. Had OSPLAN 612 been ordered, the US would have certainly been embroiled in a nuclear conflict within 2 days. These examples illustrate that, even with a clear, well-defined danger, the political considerations and collective mistrust between governments and their citizens can have disastrous consequences. With nuclear rearmament seeming more likely as Russia deploys new weapons (hypersonic missiles and sea-based bombs) and detente giving way to antagonism and distrust, it's important to remember when the world was but two days away from annihilation. |
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#framing #risk #nuclear |
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#policy #framing This week’s readings included many former US officials’ thoughts on the United States’ current nuclear situation and policies. One of the challenges that comes with changing these policies is spreading correct, or not blatantly false information in a way that the general public can receive and understand it. In week 3 we talked about the danger that misinformation holds, and it’s only gets more dangerous when the topic is nuclear weapons and policy. During the first meeting, Rachel Bronson mentioned Madam Secretary as a TV show that was bringing information to the public in a way that is understandable while dealing with topics that are shied away from or danced around in other narratives. The show repeatedly and directly deals with threat of nuclear launches and the hair trigger that both the United States and Russia’s weapons are on. The show delves deep into the policy that surrounds these issues as well as other existential threats we’ve talked about like climate change and devastation, informing the public of extreme but realistic outcomes while also entertaining them. The Secretary’s husband is an ethics expert, so the show also knits questions of morality and ethics into its plot. While the show is a work of fiction, there are aspects of reality that are meant to be conversation starters. Two of the readings also talked about the morality of the politics, something I found very interesting. We know the existential threats are real and pose a risk to all of humanity, not simply the country hit by nukes or the victim of an engineered pandemic. So how do we spread the relevant information, so people know the risk? We also need to explain these moral questions to the public, which is what these articles and books aim to do. While fighting for and enacting legislation and policies to combat the nuclear threat, a part of this process needs to address misinformation as well.
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Edit: hashtags Voices Silenced in the Senate Fighting the military-industrial complex is difficult, but sometimes it can't help but pick one itself. One of the two lobbyists at the hearing made it his mission to specifically refute William Perry and Tom Collina's book The Button. Perry and Collina, in turn, are now demanding that they be given time to present their point of view in front of the Armed Services Committee. It's not just a matter of their own honor; they are also trying to inform the nation's legislators in proportion to the gravity of decisions entrusted to them. Bringing their arguments up for a hearing would only be the first step towards rational, non-fear-driven decision-making, but whether even this step will be managed remains unclear. This echo-chamber type of proceeding is not foreign to Washington politics. In the early 20th century, the Republican party was known as the party of the corporations, and Republican lobbyists could ensure that their side of the story governed lawmaking. In the early 19th century, Andrew Jackson's Democratic Party was already greatly concerned with combatting the influence of "the bank" on government. Human endeavors since then, however, have increased in magnitude. To rely on habit now is to risk annihilation.
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#framing This week's reading examined focused on the current thinking and policy mobilizations to prophylactically avoid existential threats. For this week's memo post, I would like to discuss a recurring point of concern that I oftentimes find in these "sectors" of discourse; particularly, within discourses that deal most heavily in the speculative, the predictive, the doomsday-saying, and the terrifying. Please excuse the tangent. Thinkers belonging to such sectors oftentimes tactically deploy very extreme rhetoric and wording, understandably so. This is either due to their own persuasion of the viability of the catastrophe they are describing, or in order to mobilize people and governments to action. Regardless, such rhetoric has been used in the literature that has been assigned over and over in this course by our guest speakers. However, oftentimes, these arguments are accompanied by attempts at quantitative justifications via speculative models that seemingly lend credibility to the doomsday hypotheses of the writers. This can take the shape of many forms: a model that, say, reduces millions of variables that could determine the realization of a future (for example) pandemic to merely five key variables. Or, for example, a model that selectively picks data from certain studies to extrapolate some trend over time, predicting that "humanity in ____ years will be in ____ terrible state based on data of the past." Or, this quantitative conjecture can even be present in other areas: the mandrake equation, a predictive model of encountering extraterrestrial life, is a good example of this. In the New Yorker reading “How Close is Humanity to the Edge," Purtill frequently cites the Australian philosopher Toby Ord. Ord apparently has run the number and done the math; he has prescribed humanity a fairly dim future, placing our odds at extinction at 1/6 during the 2000s. This is another good example of mathematical conjecture. In reading Ord's analysis, I found myself completely unconvinced upon seeing that he had conveniently reduced the incomprehensibly complex problem of the survival of the human race in an unknown future to a few core, deterministic variables for the sake of his model. Though I believe that it is important for theoreticians and policy makers to strive for some sort of quantifiable risk conditions in informing our planning for the future, I believe that in many cases, we should take care to tease out what is frankly just bad science from all productive, significant, and internally valid research.
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#salience Toby Ord’s counterfactuals in The Precipice are fascinating. His writing and the New Yorker article on Ord's thoughts on our likelihood of reaching a doomsday scenario got me thinking about the connection between Ord’s way of thinking and effective policy aimed at the existential threats humans face. During our last discussion section, we started talking about our sentiments about readings meant to make us aware of the high probability of existential crises. Specifically, to what extent is the increased awareness about these issues driving tangible changes in political and social behaviour? This issue was brought to light with Netflix’s Seaspriacy documentary that had a lot of people talking about the damage that industrial fisheries inflict on the oceans. The documentary has been criticised for taking the serious issue of the impact of commercial fishing and dismissing it because of a series of falsehoods. However, I am more interested in the delivery of facts rather than their accuracy, and what that delivery does to the propensity of policy to drive change among populations. I felt that movies and literature like Seaspiracy and, to some extent, The Precipice, make their viewers feel helpless and doomed. The images from the Seaspiracy documentary served to show how the issue was out of the control of individuals. Hyperbole, gore, and corruption distanced the issue of overfishing from the consumer and from governments. The images below show the whaling occurring on certain remote islands on the coasts of Japan. Whales and dolphins are both killed and held captive. Captivity drives the profits in these industries. Nevertheless, for every dolphin in captivity, 12 are killed in order to prevent them from eating the fish that are currently fueling the Japanese fishing industry. I felt that the bloody water and dying dolphins and whales were seen in the image below served to instil both guilt but also of concession. The nuclear deterrence discussion we have had and the readings from this week have a similar effect of making the reader disassociate and concede. I would be interested to further discuss what the role of scholars like Ord is in priming the population for policy rather than demoralizing it. |
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#framing #salience |
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Since the founding of our country, the people of the United States have always had little trust for the people in power. First, there was the American Revolution and the distrust in the British Government and royalty, then as time progressed, the ideals of each American have changed and caused a divide in our population. Half the country today believes one person in power is trustworthy, and the other half thinks they aren’t. And in regard to issues that don’t spawn from a single person, the general consensus in American right now is that the government can’t be trusted. This is why policies take so long to come into action, and why politicians are viewed as evil and selfish and don’t work toward long term goals but short-term ones that will keep them from looking bad in the public eye. So where does this distrust come from and why is it important? Distrust makes it hard for our country to problem solve and makes people feel unwanted. According to the Pew Research Center, “nonwhites, poorer and less educated individuals, and younger adults” have lower trust for our federal and state governments than others. This comes from the way our country discriminates and prioritizes some classes and some people over others. If the government took action to help that group of people, the trust they would have for elected officials would increase. This distrust also comes from the two major political parties that split American into two. One party, when in office, has half the people’s trust and not the others. There’s a constant headbutting between the two groups of people that cause politicians to focus more on how they can stay in office than how they can help solve the major problems that haunt our country. Distrust in government is what leads to lags in policy action, conflicting ideals about future courses of actions, and in terms of existential risk, people prioritizing some things or people over others. It’s hard to want to think about other people in other places under other circumstances when you live in an environment that is conflicting and scary. Like other memos of mine, there is a common theme of thinking about the now and not the future. The way you gain trust is by treating the people of the future as the people of the now. Set up policies based on long term growth and wellness that aren’t at the expense of others and our planet. Sources: |
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#risk #policy |
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The Atomic Titanic reading mentioned the New START treaty that was negotiated by the Obama administration in 2010. Since the author mentioned that it needed to be renewed in February 2021, I looked it up and discovered that, in January, President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to extend the treaty for another five years. This is very exciting news and demonstrates progress towards several of the goals outlined in the Atomic Titanic, for example, electing a president who cares about nuclear nonproliferation. Many of our readings emphasized the dangers of putting so much power in one person. However, at the moment there is not large political momentum to take power away from the American presidency. Therefore, it can be helpful to consider the good that the job can do if the president cares about reducing humanities existential risk. One of the first ways that presidents can promote peace and stability is by conducting diplomacy with other countries and setting an example by not increasing nuclear armament. This can include making certain deals with other countries that don’t need congressional approval and lifting sanctions on countries that are complying with our goals. Additionally, with the use of executive orders can be used to fight climate change by putting in place standards for the emissions of specific consumer products, as the Obama administration did several times. The president can direct funds to sustainable energy and responsible technology that can help us prevent crisis associated with artificial intelligence. Finally, as we are seeing with President Biden right now, you can build pandemic response teams so that we are more prepared to deal with new diseases. President Obama’s White House a. lso had a pandemic task force. In an ideal world, one person would not have so much power over human lives. However, while the US presidency retains its power, it is important that we vote with our values so that power can be used for good. My attached image is a photo of President Biden and Vladimir Putin when they extended the New START treaty. Sources: https://www.politico.eu/article/putin-and-biden-confirm-extension-of-new-start-treaty/
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#salience #solutions #nuclear |
and others
Leave below as comments your memos that grapple with the topic of Policy Responses to Existential Crisis inspired by the readings, movies & novels (at least one per quarter), your research, experiences, and imagination! Also add a thumbs up to the 5 memos you find most awesome, challenging, and discussion-worthy!
Recall the following instructions:
Memos: Every week students will post one memo in response to the readings and associated topic. The memo should be 300–500 words + 1 visual element (e.g., figure, image, hand-drawn picture, art, etc. that complements or is suggestive of your argument). The memo should be tagged with one or more of the following:
#origin: How did we get here? Reflection on the historical, technological, political and other origins of this existential crisis that help us better understand and place it in context.
#risk: Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the risk associated with this challenge. This risk analysis could be locally in a particular place and time, or globally over a much longer period, in isolation or in relation to other existential challenges (e.g., the environmental devastation that follows nuclear fallout).
#policy: What individual and collective actions or policies could be (or have been) undertaken to avert the existential risk associated with this challenge? These could include a brief examination and evaluation of a historical context and policy (e.g., quarantining and plague), a comparison of existing policy options (e.g., cost-benefit analysis, ethical contrast), or design of a novel policy solution.
#solutions: Suggestions of what (else) might be done. These could be personal, technical, social, artistic, or anything that might reduce existential risk.
#framing: What are competing framings of this existential challenge? Are there any novel framings that could allow us to think about the challenge differently; that would make it more salient? How do different ethical, religious, political and other positions frame this challenge and its consequences (e.g., “End of the Times”).
#salience: Why is it hard to think and talk about or ultimately mobilize around this existential challenge? Are there agencies in society with an interest in downplaying the risks associated with this challenge? Are there ideologies that are inconsistent with this risk that make it hard to recognize or feel responsible for?
#nuclear/#climate/#bio/#cyber/#emerging: Partial list of topics of focus.
Movie/novel memo: Each week there will be a selection of films and novels. For one session over the course of the quarter, at their discretion, students will post a memo that reflects on a film or fictional rendering of an existential challenge. This should be tagged with:
#movie / #novel: How did the film/novel represent the existential challenge? What did this highlight; what did it ignore? How realistic was the risk? How salient (or insignificant) did it make the challenge for you? For others (e.g., from reviews, box office/retail receipts, or contemporary commentary)?
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