Them: I think state bioweapons programs are another example of something where nothing very bad has happened.
The 2001 anthrax attacks in the US seemed to come out of US bioweapons stockpiles. It wasn’t as bad as them being used in war, but it still seems bad to me.
“very bad” = “a significant fraction of humanity died, or something comparable to that”, because we’re talking about x-risk, and the key claim is something like “humanity does better at higher-stakes problems”.
I also apply this view mainly to accidents and not to conflict—we didn’t prevent World War 2, which killed ~2% of humans. (The reason for the distinction is simple—to a first approximation, it’s in everyone’s interest to prevent accidents; it may not be in everyone’s interest to prevent conflicts.)
The 2001 anthrax attacks in the US seemed to come out of US bioweapons stockpiles. It wasn’t as bad as them being used in war, but it still seems bad to me.
“very bad” = “a significant fraction of humanity died, or something comparable to that”, because we’re talking about x-risk, and the key claim is something like “humanity does better at higher-stakes problems”.
I also apply this view mainly to accidents and not to conflict—we didn’t prevent World War 2, which killed ~2% of humans. (The reason for the distinction is simple—to a first approximation, it’s in everyone’s interest to prevent accidents; it may not be in everyone’s interest to prevent conflicts.)