How effective is the thinking that can be done if you don't have access to any of your work? I'm a gov't employee and am affected by the shutdown. All of my work is on my office computer, which I'm not allowed to even turn on during the shutdown. Yes, it's illegal for me to turn on my work computer or access work email during the shutdown.
Sure, I can think all day about how to solve the current bug in my software, but without access to the actual code on my gov't computer not much can be done.
I worked out an algorithm on paper while I was on vacation once. Once I was back, I implemented it quickly.
For those who haven't heard, NIH and NSF are no longer processing grants, leading to many negative downstream effects.
I've been directing my attention elsewhere lately and don't have anything informative to say about this. However, my uninformed intuition is that people who care about effective altruism (research in general, infrastructure development, X-risk mitigation, life-extension...basically everything, actually) or have transhumanist leanings should be very concerned.
The consequences have already been pretty disastrous. To provide just one, immediate example, the article says that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has shut down. I think that this is almost certain to directly cause a nontrivial number of deaths. Each additional day that this continues could have huge negative impact down the line, perhaps delaying some key future discoveries by years. This event *might* be a small window of opportunity to prevent a lot of harm very cheaply.
So the question is:
1) Can we do anything to remedy the situation?
2) If so, is it worth doing it? (Opportunity costs, etc)