Is there a safe way to ask dumb or potentially infohazardous questions? If you're not an expert in a field and are unsure whether your question could be hazardous or not, where do you go?   Perhaps I am being too security minded, but I feel like typing questions into a search engine or chatbot or publicly posting does not always seem like a good idea. I often sit on questions or ideas related to potential threats. I have no idea whether or not my questions/ thoughts are really dumb or whether some might be useful to existing efforts. I wonder if others experience this as well. Some of my thoughts or questions have been in relation to AI, supply chains, computer science, energy utilization, infrastructure (by location and by industry), intersectional risk (e.g. climate, nuclear, +), blockchain, telecommunication, hardware, natural resources, security (infosecurity, cybersecurity, hardware security, etc.), electronics (big and small), public messaging/communication/PR. I would really appreciate advice. If others have similar concerns, please upvote or pipe in, as it's possible that this is a problem that gets in the way with working on important problems and potentially could be turned into an opportunity.

Hey guys! I work in Politics and Economic Policy here in London. I’m going to San Fran for the first time ever - where are the best places to go and who are some great people to meet? Thanks in advance!

Daylight Savings Time Fix:  The real problem is losing the hour of sleep in the spring. The solution is to set clocks back an hour in Fall, and move them forward by 40 seconds everyday for 90 days in spring. No one is going to miss 40 seconds of sleep. Most clocks are digital and set themselves, so you don't need adjust them and you won't notice anything in spring.

I've been reading a few academic papers on my "to-read" list [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BJMYZ37XvLuqrEuW9UBO3EWZ2UkyUxfP7bDneKg2tyE/edit?usp=sharing], and The Crisis of Confidence in Research Findings in Psychology: Is Lack of Replication the Real Problem? Or Is It Something Else? [https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2016-28881-001.html] has a section that made me think about epistemics, knowledge, and how we try to make the world a better place. I'll include the exact quote below, but my rough summary of it would be that multiple studies found no relationship between the presence or absence of highway shoulders [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoulder_(road)] and accidents/deaths, and thus they weren't built. Unfortunately, none of the studies had sufficient statistical power, and thus the conclusions drawn were inaccurate. I suppose that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence might be somewhat relevant here. Lo and behold, later on a meta-analysis was done, finding that having highway shoulders reduced accidents/deaths. So my understanding is that inaccurate knowledge (shoulders don't help) led to choices (don't build shoulders) that led to accidents/deaths that wouldn't otherwise have happened. I'm wondering if there are other areas of life that we can find facing similar issues. These wouldn't necessarily be new cause areas, but the general idea of identify an area that involves life/death decisions, and then either make sure the knowledge is accurate or attempt to bring accurate knowledge to the decision-makers would be incredibly helpful. Hard though. Probably not very tractable. For anyone curious, here is the relevant excerpt that prompted my musings:

EDIT: Biden Backs $8 Billion Alaska Oil Project [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-13/biden-backs-giant-alaska-oil-project-despite-climate-peril]. I don't know why someone gave this shortform an immediate -9 downvote, but for those EAs that still care about climate change, thank you. A massive and controversial new oil production project in Alaska is under review by the US Department of the Interior. ConocoPhillips' massive Willow Project would be a climate disaster, locking in at least 30 years of fossil fuel production on sensitive Arctic ecosystems near Indigenous communities. It would unleash high levels of pollution - roughly the equivalent of 66-76 coal plants worth of carbon to the air - and directly undermine President Biden's climate goals. The Biden administration has the power to stop this massive fossil fuel development. Click here to send them a letter (2 minutes). [https://go.acespace.org/page/121441]