That rush of confidence and almost righteousness you had when you posted that? No offense, but learn to recognize that feeling, it's oversimplification or maybe wishful thinking.
There not much emotion in the lines I wrote. You are the person who's emotional because of some perceived danger to yourself.
There no wishful thinking behind the notion that a lot of scientific research is dangerous. I'm in favor of scientific research because without it I will certainly die in the next hundred years. On the other hand the idea that scientific research reduces existential is naive.
Yudkowsky was working on building AGI when he got the insight that the likely outcome of building an AGI is that the AGI goes bad and kills everyone. Then he grew up and thought about whether persuing that problem is the right thing to do.
There are way to many scientists who just naively want to believe that they are doing good, when they are endangering humanity. The idea that everyone is on the same time when it comes to reducing X-risks is wishful thinking.
Bottom line, MIRI and similar projects only exist in countries rich enough to have the time and resources to devote to future risks. If you believe that MIRI reduces existential risks, then something that is a risk to MIRI is itself an existential risk to some extent.
Update: Thanks everyone for the continuing thought-provoking discussion. I intend to post my decision spreadsheet, and still am looking for suggestions on where to do so. It might come in handy come February. A discussion that I find interesting has branched off on the topic of technological progress versus Malthusian Crunch, and I started a new article on that over here.
I would like to kick off a discussion about optimal strategies to prepare for the event that the US government fails to raise the debt ceiling before the US Treasury Department's "extraordinary measures" are exhausted, which is estimated to happen sometime between October 17th and mid-November.
This is a risk *caused* by politics, but my goal is to talk about bracing against the event itself if it happens, not the underlying politics. If you want to debate Obama-care, who is at fault, or how likely a US default actually is, please start a separate discussion.
I consider this to be an indirect existential risk because if it kicks off a national or global recession, it will likely slow or halt research and philanthropic efforts at mitigating longer-term existential risks.
Since there are obvious associations between unemployment/poverty and crime, civil unrest, and poor health, a global recession is likely to be to some extent a personal existential risk to those living in the United States or countries that have trade links with the United States.
I notice that the markets do not seem to be anticipating a bad outcome. But I heard one analyst advance the theory that investors simply don't believe the government can (his words) "be that stupid". I imagine there is more than a touch of availability bias as well-- breaching the debt ceiling might, even for fund managers who harbor no illusions about the wisdom of politicians, be up there with science-fictional scenarios like asteroid impact, peak oil, grey goo, global warming, and
terrorist attacks. Moreover, there may be a dangerous feedback loop as the politicians in turn watch the stock indexes and conclude that "the market says there is nothing to worry about".So, I would like to hear what folks who are making contingency plans are doing. Especially people who have training or experience in economics and finance. What do you think the closest parallels in 20th/21st century history are for what the worst case scenario for a US government default would be like? Is there anything you would have done differently if you had known the date for the start of the 2008 recession with a +/- 2 week confidence interval, starting in two days? Or, if you did call it ahead of time, what are you glad you did?