“One of the main lessons to come out of Tetlock’s work is that the best generalist forecasters are usually better at telling the future than domain-specific experts, even when it comes to those experts’ areas of study. This is because forecasting itself is its own science that requires a unique way of thinking, and a person having a great deal of knowledge about a field is no guarantee that they have good epistemological habits. If you’re going to ask, for example, whether American democracy is falling apart, an expert might start by making a superficial comparison between the modern US and the Weimar Republic. Someone with a forecasting mindset would be more likely to begin with a question like “how often do advanced democracies slide into dictatorships?” The answer is not very often.” Important reminder from @RichardHanania that domain experts are not the best at predicting what happens, even in their own domains.

I have not wanted to freak everyone out about this in the past, but the demonstrated catastrophic risks are now simply too numerous to remain quiet any longer. Look at the 20th century, and you will see a common thread running through the holocaust, nuclear war, and even the COVID lab leak: electricity. Those using it did so without the alignment infrastructure required to ensure that the immense leverage it provided them could not be directed at these despicable ends. I call upon our business and government leaders to immediately impose the controls we should have had from the beginning.