I found our COVID response pretty “par for the course” in terms of how well we handle novel challenges. That was a significant negative update for me because I had a moderate probability on us collectively pulling out some more exceptional adaptiveness/competence when an issue was imposing massive economic costs and had a bunch of people’s attention on it. I now have somewhat more probability on AI dooms that play out slowly where everyone is watching and yelling loudly about it but it’s just really tough to do something that really improves the situation (and correspondingly more total probability on doom). I haven’t really sat down and processed this update or reflected on exactly how big it should be.
What was your biggest update about the world from living through the coronavirus pandemic?
Follow-up: does it change any of your feelings about how civilization will handle AGI?
I found our COVID response pretty “par for the course” in terms of how well we handle novel challenges. That was a significant negative update for me because I had a moderate probability on us collectively pulling out some more exceptional adaptiveness/competence when an issue was imposing massive economic costs and had a bunch of people’s attention on it. I now have somewhat more probability on AI dooms that play out slowly where everyone is watching and yelling loudly about it but it’s just really tough to do something that really improves the situation (and correspondingly more total probability on doom). I haven’t really sat down and processed this update or reflected on exactly how big it should be.