Get your exit plan ready to execute on very short notice, and understand that it’ll be costly if you do it.
What would be a good exit plan? If you’ve thought about this, can you share your plan and/or discuss (privately) my specific situation?
Do what you can to keep your local environment sane, so you don’t have to run, and so the world gets back onto a positive trend.
How? I’ve tried to do this a bit, but it takes a huge amount of time, effort, and personal risk, and whatever gains I manage to eek out seem to be highly ephemeral at best. It doesn’t seem like a very good use of my time when I can spend it on something like AI safety instead. Have you been doing this yourself, and if so what has been your experience?
I do not intend to claim that I’m particularly great at this, and I certainly don’t think I have sufficient special knowledge for 1-1 planning. I’m happy to listen and make lightweight comments if you think it’d be helpful.
What would be a good exit plan
My plans are half-formed, and include maintaining some foundational capabilities that will help in a large class of disasters that require travel. I have bank accounts in two nations and currencies, and I keep some cash in a number of currencies. Some physical precious metals or hard-to-confiscate digital currency is a good idea too. I have friends and coworkers in a number of countries (including over a border I can cross by land), who I visit enough that it will seem perfectly normal for me to want to travel there. I’m seriously considering real-estate investments in one or two of those places, to make it even easier to justify travel if it becomes restricted or suspicious.
I still think that the likelihood is low that I’ll need to go, but there may come a point where the tactic of maintaining rolling refundable tickets becomes reasonable—buy a flight out at 2 weeks and 4 weeks, and every 2 weeks cancel the near one and buy a replacement further one.
Do what you can to keep your local environment sane .
How?
This is harder to advise. I’m older than most people on LW, and have been building software and saving/investing for decades, so I have resources that can help support what seem to be important causes, and I have a job that has (indirect, but clear) impact on keeping the economy and society running.
I also support and participate in protests and visibility campaigns to try to make it clear to the less-foresightful members of society that tightening control isn’t going to work. This part is more personal, less clearly impactful toward my goals, and takes a huge amount of time, effort, and personal risk. It’s quite possible that I’m doing it more for the social connections with friends and peers than for purely rational goal-seeking. I wouldn’t fault anyone for preferring to put their effort (which will ALSO take a huge amount of time, effort, and risk (though maybe less short-term physcial risk); everything worthwhile does) into other parts of the large and multidimensional risk-space.
What would be a good exit plan? If you’ve thought about this, can you share your plan and/or discuss (privately) my specific situation?
How? I’ve tried to do this a bit, but it takes a huge amount of time, effort, and personal risk, and whatever gains I manage to eek out seem to be highly ephemeral at best. It doesn’t seem like a very good use of my time when I can spend it on something like AI safety instead. Have you been doing this yourself, and if so what has been your experience?
I do not intend to claim that I’m particularly great at this, and I certainly don’t think I have sufficient special knowledge for 1-1 planning. I’m happy to listen and make lightweight comments if you think it’d be helpful.
My plans are half-formed, and include maintaining some foundational capabilities that will help in a large class of disasters that require travel. I have bank accounts in two nations and currencies, and I keep some cash in a number of currencies. Some physical precious metals or hard-to-confiscate digital currency is a good idea too. I have friends and coworkers in a number of countries (including over a border I can cross by land), who I visit enough that it will seem perfectly normal for me to want to travel there. I’m seriously considering real-estate investments in one or two of those places, to make it even easier to justify travel if it becomes restricted or suspicious.
I still think that the likelihood is low that I’ll need to go, but there may come a point where the tactic of maintaining rolling refundable tickets becomes reasonable—buy a flight out at 2 weeks and 4 weeks, and every 2 weeks cancel the near one and buy a replacement further one.
This is harder to advise. I’m older than most people on LW, and have been building software and saving/investing for decades, so I have resources that can help support what seem to be important causes, and I have a job that has (indirect, but clear) impact on keeping the economy and society running.
I also support and participate in protests and visibility campaigns to try to make it clear to the less-foresightful members of society that tightening control isn’t going to work. This part is more personal, less clearly impactful toward my goals, and takes a huge amount of time, effort, and personal risk. It’s quite possible that I’m doing it more for the social connections with friends and peers than for purely rational goal-seeking. I wouldn’t fault anyone for preferring to put their effort (which will ALSO take a huge amount of time, effort, and risk (though maybe less short-term physcial risk); everything worthwhile does) into other parts of the large and multidimensional risk-space.
+1 for this. Would love to talk to other people seriously considering exit. Maybe we could start a Telegram or something.
I also have started making plans and would love to hear what others are thinking.