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Were the Great Tragedies of History “Mere Ripples”?
Lowry3y15
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I had left this for a day and had just come back to write a response to this post but fortunately you've made a number of the points I was planning on making.

I think it's really good to see criticism of core EA principles on here, but I did feel that a number of the criticisms might have benefited from being fleshed out more fully .  

OP made it clear that he doesn't agree with a number of Nick Bostrom's opinions but I wasn't entirely clear (I only read it the once and quite quickly, so it may be the case that I missed this) where precisely the main di... (read more)

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Notes on "The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War" (2020)
Lowry3y1
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Mm, I can certainly see the temptation to lean towards 'nuclear weapons likely don't actually work as deterrents' if one didn't have a strong conviction in the other direction. 

I was under the impression that Beatrice seemed to be tentatively arguing that maintaining any sort of nuclear weapons capability would make an individual nation less safe from attack, but looking at the transcript again I think there is some potential ambiguity that means I could  be mistrepresenting her postition.

Would be very interested to hear a more fleshed-out argument though.

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Notes on "The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War" (2020)
Lowry3y3
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I've had the book on my to-read list for ages, but it's got so much company (including 'The Strategy of conflict', after reading this) that its odds aren't looking good!

I found your first criticism especially interesting:

At times, Kaplan seems to sort-of dismiss the whole idea that nuclear weapons could have any value (from a country’s perspective) via helping to deter an adversary from taking a disliked action

I listened to a future of life institute podcast with Beatrice Fihn (director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) recently, wh... (read more)

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MichaelA
3y
Yeah, Kaplan definitely isn't the only person who seems to totally dismiss the possibility that nuclear weapons have some value, from a country's own perspective, via aiding in deterrence. It seems to me that it's often hard to pin down precisely what people are claiming and what their reasoning is.  I think sometimes it's a sort of motte-and-bailey fallacy, where: * when pressed, the people focus on quite defensible arguments like "The US doesn't need the number of weapons it has, and having them increases overall risk to the US" * but at other times, they seem to be saying/implying things more like "The US doesn't need any nuclear weapons, and having them has no benefits at all" And I think this is problematic, because those two different sets/types of claims have different implications for which policies should be pursued.  I should note that, while I'm not sure if I agree with that claim overall, I think that that claim is much more reasonable than the claim that there is no deterrence value in having nuclear weapons. (Something can be net negative even if it has some positive effect.) My guess is that it's a sort of ideological thing, and/or a desire to make things sound as dramatic and simple as possible in order to build public/elite support for a particular set of policies. This connects to my guess that there's a motte-and-bailey fallacy going on; I'd guess Kaplan doesn't explicitly, fully believe strong versions of the things it sometimes sounds like he's saying. (But this is just a guess, and one should be quite careful when arguing that other people believe something just due to bias. I don't want to be perceived as highly confident or highly dismissive of Kaplan.)
Open and Welcome Thread: February 2021
Lowry3y13
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Hi everybody! A slippery slope from 80,000 hours podcasts has led me to this lovely community. Probably like a lot of people here I've been EA-sympathetic for a long time before realising that the EA community was a thing. 

I'm not in a very 'EA-adjacent' job (if that's the term!) at the moment and am starting to think about areas in which I might enjoy working, where I would value the work being done and feel that I was really contributing value myself. 

Very excited to start my journey of engaging more directly with all of you and the discussions being had here :)

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BrianTan
3y
Welcome Lowry! I'm Brian from EA Philippines. I love  80,000 Hours' content and podcast too. I was in a similar position to you last year, in that I was in a non-EA job and wanted to see how I could have a more EA-aligned and more enjoyable career. Thankfully I now do EA-aligned work  full-time (mainly through EA Philippines), but it does take a while before that can happen for a lot of people. And I think if people broaden the scope of what they consider to be "EA-adjacent" jobs, it's much more likely they'll get one (because we have a lot of EAs and too few jobs at EA orgs). You or others new to the EA community can feel free to message me about your cause interests, skills, and career interests, and I may have useful advice to give or resources/organizations to point you two. I've read up a lot on EA and its various concepts and causes, such as global health and development, animal welfare,  and some longtermist causes, so I can give some advice/resources there. :)
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Kirsten
3y
Welcome to the EA Forum!