Political economy & Atrocity risk

By bhrdwj🔸 @ 2025-09-17T15:10 (0)

EA is neglecting the important middle ground between existential risk and public health: Atrocity risk.

We're now observing a causal chain of:

governance automation ➡️ government apathy toward stakeholders outside of the gov's minimally-viable winning-coalition.

For example, chatbot assistance emboldened DOGE cuts, which set the stage for a pivot away from Medicare and toward a Dept of War.

For more on this mechanism, see "Selectorate Theory" as described in the book "Dictator's Handbook" or the CGP Grey video "Rules for Rulers".

This will continue to be a escalating global trend unless/until we ban thinking machines like the Lansraad in Dune... or get a global EU-style geopolitical framework with the teeth to regulate nascent ASIs. I personally think that a humane peace between the USA and China is more tractable than a preemptive "Butlerian Jihad" without reconciliation.

Absent either such a ban, or such a peace, the atrocity risk from escalating neo-feudal proxy-conflicts is legion. This is a 3/3 on the ITN.

We should acknowledge these atrocity-risks as an important cause area. Technofeudalism without a Padishah Emperor is an atrocity-risk just from proxy wars, even before counting the inequity within the lordships.

The lack of attention to this is also part of the Western-centered and white-centered perspectives of the EA community and the tech community. Let's skip from feel-good "global health" straight to "existential risk" in our prioritization frameworks?

How is population-halving not also a major concern?

Ben_West🔸 @ 2025-09-18T04:32 (+2)

I'm not sure I fully understand what you're pointing to, but you might be interested in 80k's profile on Stable Totalitarianism or this recent piece from Forethought on AI-Enabled Coups.

bhrdwj🔸 @ 2025-09-24T04:25 (+1)

Those are great links, and a key part of the logic behind this point. 👍

I also appreciated your jounalistic (judgement-reserved, wikipedia NPOV) summary of Peter Thiel's ideas about EA being the literal antichrist. I actually agree with much of his logic behind those ideas... but I feel that his conclusion is quite degenerate.

I think there's such a Western-centered groupthink that "Global reconciliatory governance would be so easily corrupted into a scary global totalitarian dystopia"... that we're steering right into a much more real and present conflict-dystopia of a modern dark ages or warring kingdoms.