This is a link post for the Biosecurity Fundamentals Curriculum
Core:
Information hazards and establishing discussion norms
◦ What are information hazards? [5 mins]
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?
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:
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
Discussion on why we care about GCBRs from an X-risk perspective
◦ Biotechnology and existential risk | Andrew Snyder Beattie | EA Global: London 2017
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
