If we think existential risk reduction is important than we should care about whether politicians think that existential risk reduction is a good idea.
I don’t think that a substantial number of US congressman are what you consider to be good rationalists.
For Congress to implement good policy in this area would be performance vastly exceeding what we’ve previously seen from them. They called prediction markets terror markets. I expect more of the same, and expect to have little effect on them.
The flipside though is if we can frame the issue in a way that there’s no obvious Democrat or Republican position, then we can, as Robin Hanson puts it, “pull the rope sideways”.
The very fact that much of the existential risk stuff is “strange sounding” relative to what most people are used to really thinking about in the context of political arguments might thus act as a positive.
If we think existential risk reduction is important than we should care about whether politicians think that existential risk reduction is a good idea. I don’t think that a substantial number of US congressman are what you consider to be good rationalists.
For Congress to implement good policy in this area would be performance vastly exceeding what we’ve previously seen from them. They called prediction markets terror markets. I expect more of the same, and expect to have little effect on them.
The flipside though is if we can frame the issue in a way that there’s no obvious Democrat or Republican position, then we can, as Robin Hanson puts it, “pull the rope sideways”.
The very fact that much of the existential risk stuff is “strange sounding” relative to what most people are used to really thinking about in the context of political arguments might thus act as a positive.