How good is humanity at coordination?

Abstract

The post debates whether humanity is good at coordinating to prevent catastrophic risks. The debate is framed as an opposition between two camps, one arguing that the ability of humans to prevent those risks is overestimated, and another one arguing that they are underestimated. The author argues that the first camp is more correct because there are real-world examples of miscoordination leading to catastrophic risks, while the second camp relies on anthropic reasoning and ignores evidence of miscoordination leading to near misses. Examples of such miscoordination the author offers are the nuclear arms race, the anthrax attacks in 2001, and the lack of preparedness for COVID. – AI-generated abstract.