The fourth argument is just relevance to all of our wellbeing.
My intuition is that from here on out it’s going to be hard to find steps we can take that will have even a moderate impact on our wellbeing.
1) We know that we need to avoid contact with others, so I assume we’ll all being staying home. Given that we’re at home isolated from others, is there much left to do? Things that go beyond common sense and standard advice, like opening packages outside and disinfecting them?
2) Eventually we’ll face the question of when it is safe to end the quarantine. A conservative answer to that question is probably going to be “a few months after everyone else does”. Maybe by studying it we’ll learn that it’s safe to end quarantine after two months instead of three, but that doesn’t seem like it’s a particularly impactful use of time.
3) Sadly, we can probably expect some members of our community to be infected. Or at least the loved ones of some members of our community. So then, the question of how to deal with infection is inevitably going to present itself.
I feel torn about whether that will be the most important thing to focus on when it does. On the one hand, when you shut up and multiply, I’m pretty sure that xrisk is many, many times more important. On the other, I really care about people in this community. I’ve always felt torn about this question of how much extra moral weight to give to those who I care about.
Regardless, I feel pessimistic that there will be much room for us to offer useful advice here. The big question is probably going to be whether you’ll be able to navigate through the swarms in the hospitals to get access to treatment, and it seems unlikely that we’ll be able assist with that.
Fortunately our community tends to be on the young side, and we are probably all quarantined by now, so we’ll at least be good in a relative sense.
I feel torn about whether that will be the most important thing to focus on when it does. On the one hand, when you shut up and multiply, I’m pretty sure that xrisk is many, many times more important. On the other, I really care about people in this community. I’ve always felt torn about this question of how much extra moral weight to give to those who I care about.
The value of people working on x-risk, from an x-risk perspective, is quite high. So while I sympathize with the conflict in broader terms, in this case, it just seems pretty obvious to me that I care quite a lot about protecting the people in this community, from both a personal and an altruistic perspective.
My intuition is that from here on out it’s going to be hard to find steps we can take that will have even a moderate impact on our wellbeing.
It’s going to be hard now but it was easy before now?
I think the site regulars have a comparative advantage in thinking (and writing about those thoughts) and that we’ll make (relatively) good judgements about how much attention we should be paying to the pandemic.
I think it’s just as likely that we will continue to help as much as we have already, which I think has been an effective impact. A lot of this ‘work’ seems broadly useful too, beyond just this current crisis.
My intuition is that from here on out it’s going to be hard to find steps we can take that will have even a moderate impact on our wellbeing.
1) We know that we need to avoid contact with others, so I assume we’ll all being staying home. Given that we’re at home isolated from others, is there much left to do? Things that go beyond common sense and standard advice, like opening packages outside and disinfecting them?
2) Eventually we’ll face the question of when it is safe to end the quarantine. A conservative answer to that question is probably going to be “a few months after everyone else does”. Maybe by studying it we’ll learn that it’s safe to end quarantine after two months instead of three, but that doesn’t seem like it’s a particularly impactful use of time.
3) Sadly, we can probably expect some members of our community to be infected. Or at least the loved ones of some members of our community. So then, the question of how to deal with infection is inevitably going to present itself.
I feel torn about whether that will be the most important thing to focus on when it does. On the one hand, when you shut up and multiply, I’m pretty sure that xrisk is many, many times more important. On the other, I really care about people in this community. I’ve always felt torn about this question of how much extra moral weight to give to those who I care about.
Regardless, I feel pessimistic that there will be much room for us to offer useful advice here. The big question is probably going to be whether you’ll be able to navigate through the swarms in the hospitals to get access to treatment, and it seems unlikely that we’ll be able assist with that.
Fortunately our community tends to be on the young side, and we are probably all quarantined by now, so we’ll at least be good in a relative sense.
The value of people working on x-risk, from an x-risk perspective, is quite high. So while I sympathize with the conflict in broader terms, in this case, it just seems pretty obvious to me that I care quite a lot about protecting the people in this community, from both a personal and an altruistic perspective.
It’s going to be hard now but it was easy before now?
I think the site regulars have a comparative advantage in thinking (and writing about those thoughts) and that we’ll make (relatively) good judgements about how much attention we should be paying to the pandemic.
I think it’s just as likely that we will continue to help as much as we have already, which I think has been an effective impact. A lot of this ‘work’ seems broadly useful too, beyond just this current crisis.