Why doesn’t the United States threaten to nuke everyone if they don’t give a very reasonable 20% of their GDP per year to fund X-Risk — or whatever your favorite worthwhile projects are?
Screw it, why don’t we set the bar at 1%?
Imagine you’re advising the U.S. President (it’s Donald Trump right now, incidentally). Who should President Trump threaten with nuking if they don’t pay up to fund X-Risk? How much?
Now, let’s say 193 countries do it, and $X trillion is coming in and doing massive good.
Only Switzerland and North Korea defect. What do you do? Or rather, what do you advise Donald Trump to do?
I wouldn’t do it for $100M.
Seriously.
Because it increases the marginal chance that humanity goes extinct ever-so-slightly.
If you have launch codes, wait until tomorrow to read the last part eh? —
(V zrna, hayrff lbh guvax gur rkcrevzrag snvyvat frpergyl cebzbgrf pnhgvba naq qrfgeblf bcgvzvfz, juvpu zvtug or gehr.)
Why couldn’t you use the $100M to fund x-risk prevention efforts?
Well, why stop there?
World GDP is $80.6 trillion.
Why doesn’t the United States threaten to nuke everyone if they don’t give a very reasonable 20% of their GDP per year to fund X-Risk — or whatever your favorite worthwhile projects are?
Screw it, why don’t we set the bar at 1%?
Imagine you’re advising the U.S. President (it’s Donald Trump right now, incidentally). Who should President Trump threaten with nuking if they don’t pay up to fund X-Risk? How much?
Now, let’s say 193 countries do it, and $X trillion is coming in and doing massive good.
Only Switzerland and North Korea defect. What do you do? Or rather, what do you advise Donald Trump to do?
I never suggested threats, and in fact I don’t think you should threaten to press the button unless someone makes a counterfactual donation of $1,672.
Jeff’s original comment was also not supposed to be a threat, though it was ambiguous. All of my comments are talking about the non-threat version.