Very much agreed, but I want to add one other avenue:
We can focus on writing policy proposals that address the current climate. There are a lot of concrete steps we can take, today, that both lay the groundwork for “Plan A” and address more mundane concerns.
“Addressing mundane concerns” is probably going to be a critical compromise in building political influence. If we focus entirely on the risks of ASI, we alienate everyone who thinks that is Science Fiction. Publicly focusing on more mundane concerns let us skip around the “Sci-Fi” problem entirely.
(We should still have all the Sci-Fi policies and discussions, of course—I’m just saying that an ad about “stopping terrorists” is going to be a lot more influential than one about “stopping ASI”. As it happens, a lot of the proposed polices do plenty of useful things for all sorts of mundane concerns)
I think, in general, increasing the amount of communication between think tanks focused on different risks, and to the extent possible, making alliances, and increasing the bandwidth of communication would be positive
Very much agreed, but I want to add one other avenue:
We can focus on writing policy proposals that address the current climate. There are a lot of concrete steps we can take, today, that both lay the groundwork for “Plan A” and address more mundane concerns.
“Addressing mundane concerns” is probably going to be a critical compromise in building political influence. If we focus entirely on the risks of ASI, we alienate everyone who thinks that is Science Fiction. Publicly focusing on more mundane concerns let us skip around the “Sci-Fi” problem entirely.
(We should still have all the Sci-Fi policies and discussions, of course—I’m just saying that an ad about “stopping terrorists” is going to be a lot more influential than one about “stopping ASI”. As it happens, a lot of the proposed polices do plenty of useful things for all sorts of mundane concerns)
I think, in general, increasing the amount of communication between think tanks focused on different risks, and to the extent possible, making alliances, and increasing the bandwidth of communication would be positive