This piece draws on the work of Nathan A. Sears (2023), who argues that the failure to sufficiently eliminate plausible existential threats throughout the 20th century emerges from a ‘national securitisation’ narrative winning out over a ‘humanity macrosecuritization narrative’.
Love to see Nathan's work continue to provide value. Such a tragic loss.
(For folks unaware, Nathan died not long after completing this thesis. A list of his other relevant scholarly contributions can be found here)
This would be a nice proof of concept towards hemispheric eradication of aedes aegypti mosquitoes via gene drives. PAHO resolved to attempt hemispheric eradication in 1947, and very nearly succeeded (pdf) with conventional methods, before the program faltered and the hemisphere was re-infested.
Good shower thought! A few people have come to this idea independently for swine CAFOs.
There are a fair number of important "production-limiting diseases" in swine that are primarily spread via respiratory transmission, so this seems to me like a plausible win-win-win (as you've described).
This is all very "shower thought" level on my side as well, and I'd be keen for someone to think this through in more depth. Very happy to talk it through with anyone considering a more thorough investigation!
(Note my understanding is influenza is primarily a gastrointestinal illness in poultry, so I don't think this intervention is as promising in that context.)
Outsized Influence of Small Countries in Multilateral Orgs: This isn’t about middle and low income countries specifically, but I think CEA and Open Phil should specifically invest in community building focused on careers in government in a country with a very small population, to help the country advocate for good ideas in multilateral organisations.
I'm pretty entrenched in Camp Narrow, but this is a very good point in favour of "Global EA" that I have not previously encountered (the other arguments are also compelling, just not new-to-me).
The moderator team is (IMO) the most valuable part of ProMED, and they seem to have fundamental strategic disagreement with ISID leadership. It's not obvious to me that an influx of donations would solve this problem, even temporarily.
Fair point. I'm actually pretty comfortable calling such reasoning "non-EA", even if it led to joining pretty idiosyncratically-EA projects like alignment.
Actually, I guess there could be people attracted to specific EA projects from "non-EA" lines of reasoning across basically all cause areas?
Love to see Nathan's work continue to provide value. Such a tragic loss.
(For folks unaware, Nathan died not long after completing this thesis. A list of his other relevant scholarly contributions can be found here)
This would be a nice proof of concept towards hemispheric eradication of aedes aegypti mosquitoes via gene drives. PAHO resolved to attempt hemispheric eradication in 1947, and very nearly succeeded (pdf) with conventional methods, before the program faltered and the hemisphere was re-infested.
Outstanding piece, kudos!
Flagging a minor error: in Table 1 first column last row seems to be truncated.
Good shower thought! A few people have come to this idea independently for swine CAFOs.
There are a fair number of important "production-limiting diseases" in swine that are primarily spread via respiratory transmission, so this seems to me like a plausible win-win-win (as you've described).
This is all very "shower thought" level on my side as well, and I'd be keen for someone to think this through in more depth. Very happy to talk it through with anyone considering a more thorough investigation!
(Note my understanding is influenza is primarily a gastrointestinal illness in poultry, so I don't think this intervention is as promising in that context.)
This is a pretty good overview: https://www.decodingbio.com/p/decoding-biosecurity-and-biodefense
I know the space reasonably well, happy to connect and discuss with anyone interested!
I'm pretty entrenched in Camp Narrow, but this is a very good point in favour of "Global EA" that I have not previously encountered (the other arguments are also compelling, just not new-to-me).
The moderator team is (IMO) the most valuable part of ProMED, and they seem to have fundamental strategic disagreement with ISID leadership. It's not obvious to me that an influx of donations would solve this problem, even temporarily.
(just noting it does not actually appear to be fixed)
I typically refer to this as "EA+", and people seem to understand what I mean.
Fair point. I'm actually pretty comfortable calling such reasoning "non-EA", even if it led to joining pretty idiosyncratically-EA projects like alignment.
Actually, I guess there could be people attracted to specific EA projects from "non-EA" lines of reasoning across basically all cause areas?