Yep, I think these three perspectives roughly cover why I think it might have been a good idea. I also think that a good number of people we now think of as having had a large impact on x-risk and who were kind of similar to rationalists (e.g. some of the Manhattan Project scientists) had that impact because they participated in that effort (and the followup cold-war period) for roughly the three reasons you cite.
It seems important to note that, from my reading of the Making of the Atomic Bomb, the biggest motivator for most of the physicists was the fear that the Nazis would get to the bomb first. This is technically under Vaniver’s first point above, but it has a different tenor: it wasn’t a dispassionate assessment of counterfactual impact, it was visceral fear.
Relevant quote:
Patriotism contributed to many decisions, but a deeper motive among the physicists, by the measure of their statements, was fear—fear of German triumph, fear of a thousand-year Reich made invulnerable with atomic bombs. And deeper even than fear was fatalism. The bomb was latent in nature as a genome is latent in flesh. Any nation might learn to command its expression. The race was therefore not merely against Germany. As Roosevelt apparently sensed, the race was against time. (Rhodes, Chapter 12)
I’m not sure what the relevance to the current corona situation is.
Yep, I think these three perspectives roughly cover why I think it might have been a good idea. I also think that a good number of people we now think of as having had a large impact on x-risk and who were kind of similar to rationalists (e.g. some of the Manhattan Project scientists) had that impact because they participated in that effort (and the followup cold-war period) for roughly the three reasons you cite.
It seems important to note that, from my reading of the Making of the Atomic Bomb, the biggest motivator for most of the physicists was the fear that the Nazis would get to the bomb first. This is technically under Vaniver’s first point above, but it has a different tenor: it wasn’t a dispassionate assessment of counterfactual impact, it was visceral fear.
Relevant quote:
I’m not sure what the relevance to the current corona situation is.