Two things are nagging the back of my mind with this post but I’m not sure about one of them.
First, I am not at all sure history shows international coordination has ever done anything about limiting war. WWI could be seen as occurring due to the presence of the existing international agreements and coordination of that time. The League of Nations did little to prevent WWII, and the international coordination that produced the Treaty of Versailles and particularly the structure for managing reparations and other war debt have been seen as the cause of WWII. The United Nations has not really stopped conflict. I think it would be hard to demonstrate that the UN can take credit for the USA and USSR not going to war, for Russia and China not going war or the USA and China not going to war (with the exception of the USA-USSR fight the other cases have in fact occurred, just limited).
The critical question here is how the institution manages factions and mitigates the factional disputes effectively. I’m not sure we get that done well at the international level. If so, putting everyone in the same institutional straight jacket seems like the problem that produces the USA Civil War (which resulted in a complete shift from a collection of equal states into a single nation in fact if not in design or Constitution). Perhaps the decentralized, more flexible framework might be better.
In other words, greater international coordination may actually increase the risk of nuclear war, or other major technology risks.
The second aspect, which I’m not as sure about, is the metaphor of the colored balls and giant urn. I think research and technology is much more targeted than the random process suggested. I think that will have some impact on just how the technology is both implemented and made available to the world. The random black ball version seem to suggest we will be too surprised and unprepared for the risks—like opening Pandora’s box.
I will concede there are some elements of those problems but not as sure that this is the either a signification aspect of the risk or uncontrolled, just who could build a hydrogen bomb, new biological agent of mass destruction or some AI that will kill us all in their basement without that activity not setting off some alarms via material purchases or energy consumption?
If the metaphor used to frame the question is not fairly accurate, how will that influence the conclusion?
First, I am not at all sure history shows international coordination has ever done anything about limiting war.
I think there’s a decent case that the Peace of Westphalia is a case of this. It wasn’t strong centralized coordination, but it was a case of major powers getting together and engineering a peace that lasted for a long time. I agree that both the League of Nations and the UN have not been successful at the large-scale peacekeeping that their founders hoped for. I do think there are some arguments that the post-WWII US + allies prevented large scale wars. Obviously nuclear deterrence was a big part of that, but it doesn’t seem like the only part. I wouldn’t call this a big win for explicit international cooperation, but it is an example of a kind of prevention. I recognize that the kind of coordination I’m calling for is unprecedented, and it’s unclear whether it’s possible.
What I like about the urn metaphor is the recognition that the process is ongoing and it’s very hard to model the effects of technologies before we invent them. It’s very simplified, but it illustrates that particular point well. We don’t know what innovation might lead to an intelligence explosion. We don’t know if existentially-threatening biotech is possible, and if so what that might look like. I think the metaphor doesn’t capture the whole landscape of existential threats, but does illustrate one class of them.
Two things are nagging the back of my mind with this post but I’m not sure about one of them.
First, I am not at all sure history shows international coordination has ever done anything about limiting war. WWI could be seen as occurring due to the presence of the existing international agreements and coordination of that time. The League of Nations did little to prevent WWII, and the international coordination that produced the Treaty of Versailles and particularly the structure for managing reparations and other war debt have been seen as the cause of WWII. The United Nations has not really stopped conflict. I think it would be hard to demonstrate that the UN can take credit for the USA and USSR not going to war, for Russia and China not going war or the USA and China not going to war (with the exception of the USA-USSR fight the other cases have in fact occurred, just limited).
The critical question here is how the institution manages factions and mitigates the factional disputes effectively. I’m not sure we get that done well at the international level. If so, putting everyone in the same institutional straight jacket seems like the problem that produces the USA Civil War (which resulted in a complete shift from a collection of equal states into a single nation in fact if not in design or Constitution). Perhaps the decentralized, more flexible framework might be better.
In other words, greater international coordination may actually increase the risk of nuclear war, or other major technology risks.
The second aspect, which I’m not as sure about, is the metaphor of the colored balls and giant urn. I think research and technology is much more targeted than the random process suggested. I think that will have some impact on just how the technology is both implemented and made available to the world. The random black ball version seem to suggest we will be too surprised and unprepared for the risks—like opening Pandora’s box.
I will concede there are some elements of those problems but not as sure that this is the either a signification aspect of the risk or uncontrolled, just who could build a hydrogen bomb, new biological agent of mass destruction or some AI that will kill us all in their basement without that activity not setting off some alarms via material purchases or energy consumption?
If the metaphor used to frame the question is not fairly accurate, how will that influence the conclusion?
I think there’s a decent case that the Peace of Westphalia is a case of this. It wasn’t strong centralized coordination, but it was a case of major powers getting together and engineering a peace that lasted for a long time. I agree that both the League of Nations and the UN have not been successful at the large-scale peacekeeping that their founders hoped for. I do think there are some arguments that the post-WWII US + allies prevented large scale wars. Obviously nuclear deterrence was a big part of that, but it doesn’t seem like the only part. I wouldn’t call this a big win for explicit international cooperation, but it is an example of a kind of prevention. I recognize that the kind of coordination I’m calling for is unprecedented, and it’s unclear whether it’s possible.
What I like about the urn metaphor is the recognition that the process is ongoing and it’s very hard to model the effects of technologies before we invent them. It’s very simplified, but it illustrates that particular point well. We don’t know what innovation might lead to an intelligence explosion. We don’t know if existentially-threatening biotech is possible, and if so what that might look like. I think the metaphor doesn’t capture the whole landscape of existential threats, but does illustrate one class of them.