When Does Worrying About Things Trade Off Against Worrying About Other Things?

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/when-does-worrying-about-things-trade On yesterday's post, some people tried to steelman Acemoglu's argument into something like this: There's a limited amount of public interest in AI. The more gets used up on the long-term risk of superintelligent AI, the less is left for near-term AI risks like unemployment or autonomous weapons. Sure, maybe Acemoglu didn't explain his dismissal of long-term risks very well. But given that he thinks near-term risks are bigger than long-term ones, it's fair to argue that we should shift our limited budget of risk awareness more towards the former at the expense of the latter. I agree this potentially makes sense. But how would you treat each of the following arguments?: (1): Instead of worrying about police brutality, we should worry about the police faking evidence to convict innocent people. (2): Instead of worrying about Republican obstructionism in Congress, we should worry about the potential for novel variants of COVID to wreak devastation in the Third World. (3): Instead of worrying about nuclear war, we should worry about the smaller conflicts going on today, like the deadly civil war in Ethiopia.

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