Next week for The 80,000 Hours Podcast I'm interviewing Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) on the topic of what the effective altruism community gets wrong/right about nuclear weapons & security.
What should I ask him?
Note he said this in a recent episode of his show:
By the way we have a second problem that arises which I think the book 'Wizards of Armageddon' helps explain: this is why our field can't get any money.
Because it's extremely hard to explain to people who are not already deep in this field how these deterrence concepts work because they don't get it.
I mean, if you look at any of the work that the EA community does on nuclear risk... It's as misguided as the Strategic Air Command's original, you know, approach to nuclear weapons.
And you would need an entire RAND-size outreach effort... I mean some people have tried to do this. If you look at Peter Scoblic — who I think is fundamentally a member of that community — he wrote a really nice piece responding to some of the not-great effective altruism assessments of nuclear risk in Ukraine.
So I don't want to criticise the entire community.
But I experienced this at a cocktail party. Once I start talking about nuclear weapons and deterrence if they don't do this stuff full time the popular ideas they have about it...
Well first off they might be super bored.
But if they're willing to listen the popular ideas they have about it are so misguided that it becomes impossible to make enough progress in a reasonable time. And that's death when you're asking someone to write you a big cheque. That's much harder than "Hi I want to buy some mosquito nets to reduce malaria deaths".
That's really straightforward. But this... this is really complex.
What are the most promising strategies for reducing the risks posed by nuclear weapons / reducing the risk of nuclear war? What kinds of evidence or other arguments are available for finding effective strategies in this space?
Also agree with one of the other comments: would be interesting to hear some further elaboration on what EA gets wrong, or is in danger of getting wrong, in the nuclear space.
To cast one vote.... Wait patiently for the moment when our society is ready to face this threat, and have a plan for what we can contribute when that happens.
Off the top of my head, an example of such a plan might be to assemble a group of retired American and Russian diplomats and generals etc and task them with the challenge of working out a process of disarmament. We aren't ready for such a plan now, but it would... (read more)