“Want to make a difference on policy and governance? Become an expert in something specific and boring” by ASB

I sometimes get a vibe that many people trying to ambitiously do good in the world (including EAs) are misguided about what doing successful policy/governance work looks like. An exaggerated caricature would be activities like: dreaming up novel UN structures, spending time in abstract game theory and ‘strategy spirals[1]’, and sweeping analysis of historical case studies.Instead, people that want to make the world safer with policy/governance should become experts on very specific and boring topics. One of the most successful people I’ve met in biosecurity got their start by getting really good at analyzing obscure government budgets.Here are some crowdsourced example areas I would love to see more people become experts in:Legal liability - obviously relevant to biosecurity and AI safety, and I’m especially interested in how liability law would handle spreading infohazards (e.g. if a bio lab publishes a virus sequence that is then used for bioterrorism, or if [...] The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: August 31st, 2023 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/J7nmbqcWncPMZFhGC/want-to-make-a-difference-on-policy-and-governance-become-an --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.