Many thanks to all those whose conversations have contributed to forming these ideas.

Will the singleton save us?

For most of the large existential risks that we deal with here, the situation would be improved with a single world government (a singleton), or at least greater global coordination. The risk of nuclear war would fade, pandemics would be met with a comprehensive global strategy rather than a mess of national priorities. Workable regulations for the technology risks - such as synthetic biology or AI – become at least conceivable. All in all, a great improvement in safety...

...with one important exception. A stable tyrannical one-world government, empowered by future mass surveillance, is itself an existential risk (it might not destroy humanity, but it would “permanently and drastically curtail its potential”). So to decide whether to oppose or advocate for more global coordination, we need to see how likely such a despotic government could be.

This is the kind of research I would love to do if I had the time to develop the relevant domain skills. In the meantime, I’ll just take all my thoughts on the subject and form them into a “proto-research project plan”, in the hopes that someone could make use of them in a real research project. Please contact me if you would want to do research on this, and would fancy a chat.

Defining “acceptable”

Before we can talk about the likelihood of a good outcome, we need to define what a good outcome actually is. For this analysis, I will take the definition that:

• A singleton regime is acceptable, if it is at least as good as any developed democratic government of today.