Defining the GCBR Landscape

Defining the GCBR Landscape

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This is a link post for the Biosecurity Fundamentals Curriculum

Core:

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Information hazards and establishing discussion norms What are information hazards? [5 mins]
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Defining the GCBR landscape

Reducing global catastrophic biological risks - 80,000 Hours  [60 mins]  ◦ This is the main reading for this session as it introduces a lot of concepts and arguments, a lot of which are fundamental to the GCBR field and easy to miss in the first few reads.  ▪ Which parts of the arguments/frameworks do you buy? Which parts are you sceptical about?  ▪ Does the “key uncertainties” section align with your uncertainties?

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Glossary etc. [10 mins] Familiarise yourself with the “definitions” and “key players” section. Don’t memorise these, you can come back here for reference later. [Optional] Look over the concepts section if helpful.

Optional:

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More outlines of the basic argument  ◦ The Precipice - Toby Ord (2020) [30 mins]  ▪ Read the pandemic section of chapter 5, p123-137  ◦ Biosecurity as an EA cause area | Claire Zabel | EA Global: San Francisco 2017
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Discussion on why we care about GCBRs from an X-risk perspective ◦ Biotechnology and existential risk | Andrew Snyder Beattie | EA Global: London 2017
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General discussion from experts to get a sense of their intuitions in the field ◦ 80k Post podcast episode, which is longer and covers the area in more depth ◦ Jaime Yassif on safeguarding bioscience to prevent catastrophic lab accidents and bioweapons development - 80,000 Hours

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