The Nonlinear Library EA - What are the biggest misconceptions about biosecurity and pandemic risk? by 80000 Hours
Feb 29, 2024
21:27
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: What are the biggest misconceptions about biosecurity and pandemic risk?, published by 80000 Hours on February 29, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
by Anemone Franz and Tessa Alexanian
80,000 Hours ranks preventing catastrophic pandemics as one of the most pressing problems in the world, and we have advised many of our readers to work in biosecurity to have high-impact careers.
But biosecurity is a complex field, and while the threat is undoubtedly large, there's a lot of disagreement about how best to conceptualise and mitigate the risks. We wanted to get a better sense of how the people thinking about these threats every day perceive the risks.
So we decided to talk to more than a dozen biosecurity experts to better understand their views.
To make them feel comfortable speaking candidly, we granted the experts we spoke to anonymity. Sometimes disagreements in this space can get contentious, and certainly many of the experts we spoke to disagree with one another. We don't endorse every position they've articulated below.
We think, though, that it's helpful to lay out the range of expert opinions from people who we think are trustworthy and established in the field. We hope this will inform our readers about ongoing debates and issues that are important to understand - and perhaps highlight areas of disagreement that need more attention.
The group of experts includes policymakers serving in national governments, grantmakers for foundations, and researchers in both academia and the private sector. Some of them identify as being part of the effective altruism community, while others do not. All the experts are mid-career or at a more senior level. Experts chose to provide their answers either in calls or in written form.
Below, we highlight 14 responses from these experts about misconceptions and mistakes that they believe are common in the field of biosecurity, particularly as it relates to people working on global catastrophic risks and in the effective altruism community.
Here are some of the areas of disagreement that came up:
What lessons should we learn from COVID-19?
Is it better to focus on standard approaches to biosecurity or search for the highest-leverage interventions?
Should we prioritise preparing for the most likely pandemics or the most destructive pandemics - and is there even a genuine trade-off between these priorities?
How big a deal are "information hazards" in biosecurity?
How should people most worried about global catastrophic risks engage with the rest of the biosecurity community?
How big a threat are bioweapons?
For an overview of this area, you can read our problem profile on catastrophic pandemics. (If you're not very familiar with biosecurity, that article may provide helpful context for understanding the experts' opinions below.)
Here's what the experts said.
Expert 1: Failures of imagination and appeals to authority
In discussions around biosecurity, I frequently encounter a failure of imagination. Individuals, particularly those in synthetic biology and public health sectors, tend to rely excessively on historical precedents, making it difficult for them to conceive of novel biological risks or the potential for bad actors within a range of fields. This narrow mindset hinders proactive planning and compromises our ability to adequately prepare for novel threats.
Another frequent problem is appeal to authority. Many people tend to suspend their own critical reasoning when a viewpoint is confidently presented by someone they perceive as an authoritative figure. This can stymie deeper reflections on pressing biosecurity issues and becomes especially problematic when compounded by information cascades. In such scenarios, an uncritically accepted idea from an authoritative source can perpetuate as fact, sometimes going unquestioned for...
by Anemone Franz and Tessa Alexanian
80,000 Hours ranks preventing catastrophic pandemics as one of the most pressing problems in the world, and we have advised many of our readers to work in biosecurity to have high-impact careers.
But biosecurity is a complex field, and while the threat is undoubtedly large, there's a lot of disagreement about how best to conceptualise and mitigate the risks. We wanted to get a better sense of how the people thinking about these threats every day perceive the risks.
So we decided to talk to more than a dozen biosecurity experts to better understand their views.
To make them feel comfortable speaking candidly, we granted the experts we spoke to anonymity. Sometimes disagreements in this space can get contentious, and certainly many of the experts we spoke to disagree with one another. We don't endorse every position they've articulated below.
We think, though, that it's helpful to lay out the range of expert opinions from people who we think are trustworthy and established in the field. We hope this will inform our readers about ongoing debates and issues that are important to understand - and perhaps highlight areas of disagreement that need more attention.
The group of experts includes policymakers serving in national governments, grantmakers for foundations, and researchers in both academia and the private sector. Some of them identify as being part of the effective altruism community, while others do not. All the experts are mid-career or at a more senior level. Experts chose to provide their answers either in calls or in written form.
Below, we highlight 14 responses from these experts about misconceptions and mistakes that they believe are common in the field of biosecurity, particularly as it relates to people working on global catastrophic risks and in the effective altruism community.
Here are some of the areas of disagreement that came up:
What lessons should we learn from COVID-19?
Is it better to focus on standard approaches to biosecurity or search for the highest-leverage interventions?
Should we prioritise preparing for the most likely pandemics or the most destructive pandemics - and is there even a genuine trade-off between these priorities?
How big a deal are "information hazards" in biosecurity?
How should people most worried about global catastrophic risks engage with the rest of the biosecurity community?
How big a threat are bioweapons?
For an overview of this area, you can read our problem profile on catastrophic pandemics. (If you're not very familiar with biosecurity, that article may provide helpful context for understanding the experts' opinions below.)
Here's what the experts said.
Expert 1: Failures of imagination and appeals to authority
In discussions around biosecurity, I frequently encounter a failure of imagination. Individuals, particularly those in synthetic biology and public health sectors, tend to rely excessively on historical precedents, making it difficult for them to conceive of novel biological risks or the potential for bad actors within a range of fields. This narrow mindset hinders proactive planning and compromises our ability to adequately prepare for novel threats.
Another frequent problem is appeal to authority. Many people tend to suspend their own critical reasoning when a viewpoint is confidently presented by someone they perceive as an authoritative figure. This can stymie deeper reflections on pressing biosecurity issues and becomes especially problematic when compounded by information cascades. In such scenarios, an uncritically accepted idea from an authoritative source can perpetuate as fact, sometimes going unquestioned for...