Any existential risk angles to the US presidential election?

Stuart_Armstrong

Don't let your minds be killed, but I was wondering if there were any existential risk angles to the coming American election (if there isn't, then I'll simply retreat to raw, enjoyable and empty tribalism).

I can see three (quite tenuous) angles:

Obama seems more likely to attempt to get some sort of global warming agreement. While not directly related to Xrisks per se, this would lead to better global coordination and agreement, which improves the outlook for a lot of other Xrisks. However, pretty unlikely to succeed.
I have a mental image that Republicans would be more likely to invest in space exploration. This is a lot due to Newt Gingrich, I have to admit, and to the closeness between civilian and military space projects, the last of which are more likely to get boosts in Republican governments.
If we are holding out for increased population rationality as being a helping factor for some Xrisks, then the fact the the Republicans have gone so strongly anti-science is certainly a bad sign. But on the other hand, its not clear whether them winning or losing the election is more likely to improve the general environment for science among their supporters.

But these all seem weak factors. So, less wronger, let me know: are the things I should care about in the election, or can I just lie back and enjoy it as a piece of interesting theatre?

I can see three (quite tenuous) angles:

Obama seems more likely to attempt to get some sort of global warming agreement. While not directly related to Xrisks per se, this would lead to better global coordination and agreement, which improves the outlook for a lot of other Xrisks. However, pretty unlikely to succeed.
I have a mental image that Republicans would be more likely to invest in space exploration. This is a lot due to Newt Gingrich, I have to admit, and to the closeness between civilian and military space projects, the last of which are more likely to get boosts in Republican governments.
If we are holding out for increased population rationality as being a helping factor for some Xrisks, then the fact the the Republicans have gone so strongly anti-science is certainly a bad sign. But on the other hand, its not clear whether them winning or losing the election is more likely to improve the general environment for science among their supporters.

But these all seem weak factors. So, less wronger, let me know: are the things I should care about in the election, or can I just lie back and enjoy it as a piece of interesting theatre?

Why do you think space exploration matters? Self-sustaining space colonization is decades away, and wouldn't help against UFAI. OTOH, it might help in the case of global war, if there are some colonies that all sides are nice enough not to attack.

I can't think of any risks that space colonization helps against that deep underground colonies wouldn't, though space colonization has the huge advantage of being much more popular.

(Also, asteroid mining is a WMD and might increase x-risk for that reason. On the other hand, cheaper more abundant minerals might be geopolitically stabilizing — or destabilizing, for all I know.)

Other existential risks that are impacted by space colonization include asteroids and sudden diseases. One other thing to keep in mind is that if the Great Filter is some specific advanced technology that we haven't yet constructed, then it is likely that space colonization will allow some avoidance of that. This follows since any such technology will likely not be able to spread much beyond the planet where it occurs (otherwise we would have started to see signs of its spread in the star systems that are the graves of civilizations). Thus for example, the... (read more)

5komponisto14y

Probably mostly indirectly, as a catalyst for science, engineering, and industry in general, with concomitant beneficial effects on education and living standards, thus potentially allowing more attention and resources to be allocated to x-risk mitigation in the long term. On the other hand, technological advances bring risks of their own, so it's not obvious what the net benefit is. My intuition tends to favor advancement, but I'm open to persuasion if there are good (particularly inside-view) arguments against it.

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Any existential risk angles to the US presidential election?

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Any existential risk angles to the US presidential election?

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