Risks and Realities of Viral Research in Laboratories

Today’s bonus release is a pilot for a new podcast called ‘The Worst Ideas in the History of the World’, created by Keiran Harris — producer of the 80,000 Hours Podcast.

If you have strong opinions about this one way or another, please email us at podcast@80000hours.org to help us figure out whether more of this ought to exist.

Chapters:

• Rob’s intro (00:00:00)
• The Worst Ideas in the History of the World (00:00:51)
• My history with longtermism (00:04:01)
• Outlining the format (00:06:17)
• Will MacAskill’s basic case (00:07:38)
• 5 reasons for why future people might not matter morally (00:10:26)
• Whether we can reasonably hope to influence the future (00:15:53)
• Great power wars (00:18:55)
• Nuclear weapons (00:22:27)
• Gain-of-function research (00:28:31)
• Closer (00:33:02)
• Rob's outro (00:35:13)