Good shower thought! A few people have come to this idea independently for swine CAFOs.
There are a fair number of important "production-limiting diseases" in swine that are primarily spread via respiratory transmission, so this seems to me like a plausible win-win-win (as you've described).
This is all very "shower thought" level on my side as well, and I'd be keen for someone to think this through in more depth. Very happy to talk it through with anyone considering a more thorough investigation!
(Note my understanding is influenza is primarily a gastrointes...
This is a pretty good overview: https://www.decodingbio.com/p/decoding-biosecurity-and-biodefense
I know the space reasonably well, happy to connect and discuss with anyone interested!
Outsized Influence of Small Countries in Multilateral Orgs: This isn’t about middle and low income countries specifically, but I think CEA and Open Phil should specifically invest in community building focused on careers in government in a country with a very small population, to help the country advocate for good ideas in multilateral organisations.
I'm pretty entrenched in Camp Narrow, but this is a very good point in favour of "Global EA" that I have not previously encountered (the other arguments are also compelling, just not new-to-me).
The moderator team is (IMO) the most valuable part of ProMED, and they seem to have fundamental strategic disagreement with ISID leadership. It's not obvious to me that an influx of donations would solve this problem, even temporarily.
Fair point. I'm actually pretty comfortable calling such reasoning "non-EA", even if it led to joining pretty idiosyncratically-EA projects like alignment.
Actually, I guess there could be people attracted to specific EA projects from "non-EA" lines of reasoning across basically all cause areas?
A further attempt at categorization that I think complements your "Respectable <-> Speculative" axis.
I've started to think of EA causes as sharing (among other things) a commitment to cosmopolitanism (ie neutrality with respect to the distance between the altruistic actor and beneficiary), but differing according to which dimension is emphasized i) spatial distance (global health, development), ii) temporal difference (alignment), or ii) "mindspace" distance (animal welfare).
I think a table of "speculativeness" vs "cosmopolitanism type" would classify initiatives/proposals pretty cleanly, and might provide more information than "neartermism vs longtermism"?
There's a real issue here but I dislike the framing of this post.
Throughout the text it casts neartermism as "traditional EA" and longtermism as an outside imperializing force. I think this is both historically inaccurate, and also rather manipulative.
Longdistancers (emphasizing neutrality wrt spatial distance from beneficiaries, vs temporal distance for longtermism)
Amazing, yes I know of the West African initiative and wondered if they were related. Will reach out, thanks!
Sentinel biosecurity program in Guatemala
This sounds really cool, but I can't seem to find any details on it outside of this post. Could you point me to a resource (or should I just email Paulina)?
I thought this might be the output of an LLM (it just has that 'feel'), but ChatGPT actually produced an IMO better essay when prompted with the title of this post:
...Complexity science is the study of complex systems, which are systems that consist of many interacting parts that can give rise to emergent behavior. Effective altruism is the idea of using evidence and reasoning to determine the most effective ways to benefit others, and taking action based on that evidence.
In recent years, effective altruism has become an increasingly popular movement, with a
This is wonderful.
Plausibly very high impact, certainly neglected, and (crucially) not a particularly weird research program for a neuro/global health focussed epidemiology department.
Have you had any interest from funders or researchers?
I'm actively learning Spanish but am nowhere near fluency, would my presence be disruptive/counterproductive to community building goals?
To be clear, from my perspective this is a plus (since part of what's exciting to me is some foreign language immersion), but I wouldn't want to make folks feel like they needed to default to English.
Very cool! I'm an epidemiologist, but I've long had the sense that most of the questions I find most interesting and relevant are actually OR! Your biosecurity list really resonated, many real-world problems reduce to where to position assets.
I have some concrete problems that I'd love to discuss, will reach out!
For convenience: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xFsmibHafAu8APgiS/request-for-proposals-help-open-philanthropy-quantify
(Deadline has passed, but it seems likely to be an ongoing need.)
Here's a scenario:
Bob runs an emergency response organization, which needs cash to scale up when an emergency hits (to hire surge staff, ramp up response operations, etc etc). Bob want to use prediction markets as a hedge, but appropriate disaster markets don't always exist plus it's hard to place high-payoff bets without tying up all his assets in the interim.
Does HedgEverything make Bob happy?
Just thinking out loud, natural triggers in the longtermist biosecurity space (where I'm by far most familiar) would be:
... anything else?
Y'all are fully complementary I think. From Linch's proposal:
So the appropriate structure of an elite Forecasting Center might be to pair it up with a elite crisis response unit, possibly in a network/constellation model such that most people are very part-time before urgent crises, such that the additional foresight is guaranteed to be acted on, rather than tossing the forecasts to the rest of the movement (whether decisionmakers or community members) to be acted on later.
No one's quite sure exactly what the WHO's Pandemic Intelligence Hub is going to, like y'know, actually do... but it existing is probably a marginal boost in favour of Berlin for Biosecurity EAs.
To some degree these already exists (eg here's a description of Canada's system), but I'm certain they could be drastically expanded, standardized, synthesized, and otherwise improved.
My company seeks to predict or rapidly recognize health security catastrophes, and also requires an influx of capital when such an event occurs (since we wind up with loads of new consulting opportunities to help respond).
Is there currently any way for us to incentivize thick markets on topics that are correlated with our business? The idea of getting the information plus the hedge is super appealing!
My understanding is the Erasmus Programme was explicitly started in part to reduce the chance of conflict between European states.
EA Micro Schools
Effective Altruism
We would be excited to fund projects that make it easier to start up an EA-aligned, accredited private school.
As EA matures, there will be more and more parents. Kids of self-identified EAs are likely to be smart and neurodivergent, and may struggle with the default schooling system. They're also likely to grow into future adult EAs. Remote work options will free up location choice, and there could be major community-building gains if parents can easily find their ideal school in an EA hub.
Variation: develop an EA stream o...
Add-on: for natural epidemics, there are a number of “event-based surveillance systems” that monitor news, social media, and other sources for weak signals of potential emergencies. WHO, PAHO, and many national governments run such systems, and there are a few private ones (one of which I run).
One could set up such a system focussing exclusively on the regions immediately surrounding high containment labs.
There are only ~60 BSL-4 labs, so you could conceivably monitor each of these regions quite closely without an impossibly large team.
Direct monitoring would be much better, but this might be a useful adjunct.
Quick start kit for new EA orgs
EA ops
Stipe atlas for longtermist orgs. Rather than figuring out the best tools, registrations, and practices for every new org, figure out the best default options and provide an easy interface to start up faster.
Suggestion - start with a focus on eradicating Aedes mosquitoes (aegypti, albopictus, and maybe japonicus) from the Western hemisphere.
These species are invasive/non-native to the Americas (so "ecological risks" arguments against are more tenuous), cause a tremendous burden of illness (Zika, Dengue, Yellow Fever, Chikungunya, ...), and have been subject to previous eradication efforts (so there's precedent).
There isn't particularly a "biorisk/GCBR" angle to this problem, but such projects being executed by a team that was very biosecurity-aware seems wise ...
It's going to be a tough sell. The scientists involved are saturated with cultural norms and deep beliefs that more information is always better, and academic and funding incentives are aligned with that understanding.
I don't know that the "open data movement" is, like, radically influencing the beliefs of scientists involved in this kind of work, but rather they're both products of the same (mostly great) culture of openness.
I think the actual long-term solution is to influence trainees and help them rise to positions of influence. In the meantime we nee...
Hope it isn't too on the nose, but that was my thinking behind this project proposal.
I'm a former emerging/zoonotic disease epidemiologist, EcoHealth Alliance fellow, generally was all-in on DEEP VZN/PREDICT pandemic prediction type work for the better part of a decade, turned biosecurity-pilled apostate. AMA!
Oh that is good to know, I think that significantly reduces reputation risk to EA vs it being completely publicly accessible.
Monitoring and advocacy to make Zoonotic Risk Prediction projects safer
Biorisk and recovery from catastrophe
Following COVID-19, a great deal of funding is becoming available for "Zoonotic Risk Prediction" projects, which intend to broadly sample wildlife pathogens, map their evolutionary space for pandemic potential, and publish rank-ordered lists of the riskiest pathogens. Such work is of dubious biodefence value, presents a direct risk of accidental release in the field and lab, and the resulting information is a clear biosecurity infohazard.
We would be ...
FWIW, when I tried to view this from one of my devices I got an error message that "This post is only visible to logged-in users," which I'd never seen before. I guess this is a new option for authors on the forum, which is good to know.
An easier means of starting up an EA-aligned, accredited private school.
As EA matures, there will be more and more parents. Kids of self-identified EAs are (going out on a limb) likely to be very smart and neuroatypical, and to struggle with the default schooling system .
As remote work options free up location choice, there could be major EA community-building gains from making it more straightforward to start an aligned micro school.
Speaking from personal experience, schooling considerations are a major limitation on my family's ability to relocate and ge...
I’m Alex’s wife and this came out of a conversation during our Saturday night date watching the SERI conference.
An important point is that the kids of EAs are way more likely than others to grow up to become EAs. We certainly share these values with our children.
If the EA community is taking a long term view, we should be investing in the children of EAs as likely future EAs. Adding support for EA families may sow the seeds for future EA generations. Should EA be supporting their peers’ parental leave?
This is such a great idea, I really hope someone does it! My company is small (~80 person startup), but might be an example of a potential customer type - we're an infectious disease intelligence company, so we're literally trying to predict epidemics/disease events/operational disruption and an internal PM could be a useful way to organize our ongoing analysis and judgment.
Generally anyone working in the risk/critical event/threat intelligence/OSINT space might have a similar use case around collecting and coordinating their internal experts' assessments....
My company has a few airline and airport clients. My understanding is that waste management is a service the airport provides to the airlines, and I'd guess there are third party contractors involved.
I'll be on the lookout for opportunities to learn more, and report back if I hear anything useful.
Overall, the book convinced me that more people interested in GCRs should seriously engage with the existing fields and literatures around disaster risk reduction and crisis management.
I have one foot in this world, and would love to connect with anyone exploring similar terrain from a GCR perspective!
Moreover, a team of people scouring open sources (i.e. publication records, job specs, equipment supply chains) could potentially make it difficult for a lab to get away with doing bad research, and thereby strengthen the [BWC] treaty.
Here's quite a good article calling for the same thing, which also outlines lots of promising avenues for open-source investigation (in addition to the above; trade data, patents, social media, satellite imagery, unusual epidemic reports, and environmental sampling):
Can everyone help verify the bioweapons convention? Perha...
[Epistemic status - I have no idea what I'm talking about.]
Could you set up a futures exchange, with physical-delivery contracts, around various PPE types? From my extremely naive understanding, couldn't this direct more capital available towards PPE production, plus as an ancillary benefit act as an implicit prediction market of pandemic risk?
I haven't thought this all the way through, but the potential to push more capital toward production, transparently allocate supply, and also get a warning signal seems quite appealing on first blush.
One concrete goal would be something simple where a small team of people collects samples from volunteer travelers around the world and then does a full metagenomic scan for anything that could be dangerous.
Could you feasibly get the same information from airport waste collection? I'm thinking of an airport/travel focused BioBot, but with pathogen agnostic ambitions.
Outstanding piece, kudos!
Flagging a minor error: in Table 1 first column last row seems to be truncated.