Doris Lessing’s “Report on the Threatened City” (I found it unreadable, so this is not a recommendation) points out that Californians live with the constant threat of a major earthquake. A big enough quake could kill millions, although a quake of that magnitude would be rather infrequent. In general, seismic, volcanic, and weather events are a matter of when, not whether, so perhaps this is not quite in the right reference class.
Albania spent billions of dollars on useless bunkers in case of an invasion.
Many countries now or in the past have banned human cloning. There are a number of justifications for this, but some of them center around speculative risks.
Why? Three possible reasons. First, the Brave New World Factor: Research cloning gives man too much power for evil. Second, the Slippery Slope: The habit of embryonic violation is in and of itself dangerous. Violate the blastocyst today and every day, and the practice will inure you to violating the fetus or even the infant tomorrow. Third, Manufacture: The very act of creating embryos for the sole purpose of exploiting and then destroying them will ultimately predispose us to a ruthless utilitarianism about human life itself.
Human cloning violates the precautionary principle
A foundation of environmentalism, the precautionary principle requires that people must consider the consequences of their actions before they carry them out. The genetic engineering field is infamous for some of the unintended and unforeseen effects of genetic modification, such as the Bt corn’s harmful effects on the Monarch butterfly.
Do you have a sense for the size of the threat that Y2K presented?
Doris Lessing’s “Report on the Threatened City” (I found it unreadable, so this is not a recommendation) points out that Californians live with the constant threat of a major earthquake. A big enough quake could kill millions, although a quake of that magnitude would be rather infrequent. In general, seismic, volcanic, and weather events are a matter of when, not whether, so perhaps this is not quite in the right reference class.
Building regulations may count, though I think that the historical precedent somewhat frequent large earthquakes in California makes the case disanalogous to the issue of AI risk, which involves an event that has never happened before.
Albania spent billions of dollars on useless bunkers in case of an invasion.
Can you give a reference? Who did they anticipate potential invasion from?
Some random examples:
Y2K mitigation.
Doris Lessing’s “Report on the Threatened City” (I found it unreadable, so this is not a recommendation) points out that Californians live with the constant threat of a major earthquake. A big enough quake could kill millions, although a quake of that magnitude would be rather infrequent. In general, seismic, volcanic, and weather events are a matter of when, not whether, so perhaps this is not quite in the right reference class.
Albania spent billions of dollars on useless bunkers in case of an invasion.
Many countries now or in the past have banned human cloning. There are a number of justifications for this, but some of them center around speculative risks.
Can you give a reference for discussion of speculative risks?
Here, for example:
All of these are speculative.
And here:
Do you have a sense for the size of the threat that Y2K presented?
Building regulations may count, though I think that the historical precedent somewhat frequent large earthquakes in California makes the case disanalogous to the issue of AI risk, which involves an event that has never happened before.
Can you give a reference? Who did they anticipate potential invasion from?
Some competing cost estimates. I tend towards the “fix it when it fails” side of things, but that is a tendency not a rule.
And a related issue
Bunkers—invasion from the US or the USSR; cost was twice the Maginot Line, which Wikipedia elsewhere describes as 3 billion French Francs.
this is the conversion to 2012 Euros
Great! Thanks.