Feb 12, 2023·edited Feb 12, 2023Liked by Damien Laird
"Can we incentivize the creation of high quality accountings of past pandemics or volcanic eruptions or nuclear close calls? They would have to be suitable for a layman to not just comprehend, but understand deep enough to be able to decide how to vary those historical base rates based on differences in context between then and now."
I don't know if this fits what you had in mind here, Damien, but the Union of Concerned Scientists is one organization with both cause-based and financial incentives to create and maintain accounts of nuclear weapons "close calls." Here's their 2015 document summarizing – and even characterizing by context – a fair number of those:
As well, the Global Volcanism Program of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History maintains "a catalog of Holocene and Pleistocene volcanoes, and eruptions from the past 12,000 years":
(I haven't tried to search the database, and thus don't yet know how easy it may be to filter on criteria of particular relevance to forecasting work.)
One of their FAQ entries addresses the question, "What volcanoes have the most people living nearby?" While, AIUI, truly catastrophic impacts from such eruptions might involve sudden drops in global temperatures, induced droughts, and the like, the presence of large nearby populations might sometimes also be relevant?
"Can we incentivize the creation of high quality accountings of past pandemics or volcanic eruptions or nuclear close calls? They would have to be suitable for a layman to not just comprehend, but understand deep enough to be able to decide how to vary those historical base rates based on differences in context between then and now."
I don't know if this fits what you had in mind here, Damien, but the Union of Concerned Scientists is one organization with both cause-based and financial incentives to create and maintain accounts of nuclear weapons "close calls." Here's their 2015 document summarizing – and even characterizing by context – a fair number of those:
https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/04/Close%20Calls%20with%20Nuclear%20Weapons.pdf
As well, the Global Volcanism Program of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History maintains "a catalog of Holocene and Pleistocene volcanoes, and eruptions from the past 12,000 years":
https://volcano.si.edu/
(I haven't tried to search the database, and thus don't yet know how easy it may be to filter on criteria of particular relevance to forecasting work.)
One of their FAQ entries addresses the question, "What volcanoes have the most people living nearby?" While, AIUI, truly catastrophic impacts from such eruptions might involve sudden drops in global temperatures, induced droughts, and the like, the presence of large nearby populations might sometimes also be relevant?
https://volcano.si.edu/faq/index.cfm?question=population