Alec Stapp: policy for progress, under-researched areas, science of science, biosecurity

Ben Yeoh Chats

Alec is the co-founder and co-CEO of the Institute for Progress. The IFP is dedicated to to accelerating scientific, technological, and industrial progress while safeguarding humanity’s future. Alec and co-founder Caleb Watney are supported by prominent progress thinkers such as Tyler Cowen and Patrick Collinson.

We discuss the competing interests that prevent physical infrastructure such as power lines, or cafe “parklet” structures from being easily built.

Alec explains how using a framework borrowed from Effective Altruism: impact (will it be impactful), tractability (is it possible?), under-researched (are many other people working on the challenge?) - is a useful framing.

Alex discusses why biosecurity (pandemic preparedness), meta-science (understanding how science progresses) and immigration (in particular high skilled) are the initial areas of interest and what other areas, like climate, might be next.

We speculate on what intractable bluesky policies we would potentially pursue.

We play over-rated/under-rated (in honour of Tyler Cowen):

-Carbon tax

-Planning laws

-Crypto

-Rogue AI

-Animal welfare

-Charter cities

-Innovation agencies

-Remote working

Alec ends with his life advice for others in thinking about a career on how to have the most impact in your life.

Transcript and video are available here, with links.