Nathan BarnardShould I work on x-risk? Part 1There are two basic types of arguments vis-a-vis working on x-risk — ethical and non-ethical. Existential catastrophes are events that…Oct 31, 2022Oct 31, 2022
Nathan BarnardCapital and InequalityIn Thomas Piketty’s masterpiece, Capital in the 21st century, he showed the strong association between the rate of return on capital…Aug 15, 2022Aug 15, 2022
Nathan BarnardSafety without oppression: an AI governance problemNuclear weapons are an extremely dangerous technology. As a result we’ve made sure it’s an extremely centralised technology. Only…Jul 27, 2022Jul 27, 2022
Nathan BarnardWhy I like rational choice modelsRational choice models are a way of thinking about the social world that models individuals as rational agents and seeks to explain social…Jul 19, 2022Jul 19, 2022
Nathan BarnardAn epistemic critique of longtermismThere’s a famous graph showing the distribution of DALYs per dollar of global health interventions.Jul 10, 2022Jul 10, 2022
Nathan BarnardWe are all NationalistsIn polite society you don’t call yourself a nationalist. At most you might call yourself a patriot, although even this will often be viewed…Jun 30, 2022Jun 30, 2022
Nathan BarnardHow do poor countries get rich?When I’m talking to people who don’t know that much about development economics I quite often find myself trying to give a broad overview…Jun 26, 2022Jun 26, 2022
Nathan BarnardHow to states respond to changes in nuclear riskThere are two ways we can think about reducing nuclear risk. We can reduce the probability that there’s a nuclear war and we can reduce the…Jun 23, 2022Jun 23, 2022
Nathan BarnardHuman food production and early statesI used to have a fuzzy idea that around 10,000 years some hunter-gatherers what became Mesopotamia, who had been going around foraging for…Jun 18, 2022Jun 18, 2022
Nathan BarnardThe value of existential risk reductionIn his interview on the 80000 hours podcast after the publication the Precipice, Toby Ord claimed that existential risk (x-risk) reduction…May 21, 2022May 21, 2022
