New publication "Compassionate Governance" + launch webinar

The Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering (OPIS) has just released a wide-ranging publication titled Compassionate Governance: A Strategic Guide to Preventing and Alleviating Global Suffering. Our goal was to bring together some key insights from a number of different fields that are relevant to systemic change, the reduction of x-risks and the prevention of extreme suffering, combined with our own thoughts and analyses. We hope that some of the ideas will be valuable for both those advocating and implementing policy.

Topics we cover at varying degrees of depth include ethics, game theory and the metacrisis, complex systems, trust-building, democratic reforms, conflict resolution, and AI regulation and governance. We've included excerpts from several relevant 80000 Hours interviews, insights from Anders Sandberg, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Scott Alexander's "Meditations on Moloch" essay, Yaneer Bar-Yam (head of the New England Complex Systems Institute) and many other domain experts. In the AI section we argue for striving to maintain control and bring in arguments from Nell Watson, Yoshua Bengio and PauseAI, among others.

We also argue for the wider implementation of citizens' assemblies in the interests of more transparent and evidence-based decision-making and a greater focus on specific issues than party platforms, a move away from first-past-the-post electoral systems in the interest of better representation, and also greater use of open-source government. Finally, there's an extensive list of specific policy recommendations to avert human, animal and potentially also machine suffering, and some insights on movement-building.

On Wednesday, 25 June 2025 at 8am SF/11am NYC/4pm UK/5pm Central Europe we'll be holding a launch webinar, with panellists representing 3 important cause areas: Holly Elmore, co-founder of PauseAI US; Tobias Leenaert, co-founder of ProVeg; and Suleiman Khatib, co-founder of Combatants for Peace.

All the information is available on the following page, including links to download the PDF (or order a print version), and to join the webinar: https://www.preventsuffering.org/compassionate-governance/guide/