Thanks Vasco!

I agree that social dilemmata are not, by and large, solved through individuals spontaneously acting differently in isolation.

I think a fairer title of the piece could have been "economics needs more progress studies and more social science" given the vast differences in how well societies across time and space are solving coordination problems mediated (if not explained) by differences in institutions, norms, laws, etc.

The basic functioning of society -- the most important coordination problem of all -- varies widely across locales with the same technology.

Is there any justification of the "most"?

It's easy to list many social dilemmata that have been transformed by technology, but it would probably be equally easy to come up with a list of social dilemmata that are primarily solved through non-technological means, first and foremost through social norms and laws successfully solving similar problems.

Thanks for the thorough reply!

What's the upshot of this? Do you see this as informing relative prioritization between the two causes?

This is a great post!

I wish there was more discussion like this and more appreciation for how challenging the current moment is, I think this would bring EA closer -- in a good way -- to where a lot of people concerned about the world are.

Yeah, I broadly agree with that.

I am worried that the public at large, not you, does massively under appreciate nuclear risk in the short term, this at least seems to be true in philanthropy (climate 100x larger than nuclear risk reduction).

Climate action is the most important thing, because it allows us to avoid the others.

(Working on climate)

Nuclear war seems by far the most consequential threat of those you mention here and the contribution of climate to nuclear war risk would need to be quite high to prioritize this over nuclear risk reduction (or climate and SAI together would need to be similarly important as nuclear war).

Do you think that climate change contributes more than, say, 10-20% to nuclear risk?

This aspect of EA is massively alienating to me in this moment and I would be curious how common this experience is.

Really great resource!

Lewis's vivid descriptions of how neglected this space is and how that led to a lot of picking of low-hanging fruit of really high impact things to do seemed like a super useful general EA messaging resource to me.

Thanks for writing this! Have you considered sharing this with non-EA audiences?