Buck Shlegeris @bshlgrs
— reply from Nathan Helm-... (@nathan846...) [Nathan's own account]
Buck Shlegeris @bshlgrs
I think the Iraq war has some interesting lessons for AI safety advocates.
It's an example of a crazy event (9/11) leading to an extreme action (invading an unrelated country) because the crazy event empowered a pre-existing interest group (neocons).
11:55 AM · Jul 10, 2025 · 1,915 Views
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Buck Shlegeris @bshlgrs · 9h
Post here. lesswrong.com/posts/PLZh4dcZ...
[embedded link card: lesswrong.com — "Lessons from the Iraq War about AI policy — ..."]
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Nathan Helm-... @nathan846... · 7h
In a serious way, I appreciate the thoughtful post. On a silly note, I had a great moment of delighted confusion when I misread 'neocons' as 'raccoons.' 🦝
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
Buck Shlegeris (Redwood Research, AI safety) draws an analogy between the Iraq War (a shock event empowering a pre-existing interest group into extreme action) and AI safety policy, linking to a LessWrong post. Nathan himself replied under his own account (@nathan846...) — a rare direct trace of Nathan's own public engagement with the AI safety community, worth noting for the archive as his own voice/participation rather than just something he read.
ai-safetyai-policybuck-shlegerislesswrongiraq-war-analogynathan-own-post