EA - Speedrun: Develop an affordable super PPE by Buhl

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Speedrun: Develop an affordable super PPE, published by Buhl on February 7, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.IntroductionThis post is a shallow investigation of the intervention of developing better, cheaper, and easier-to-use personal protective equipment (PPE).The post is part of a sequence of speedrun research projects by Rethink Priorities’ general longtermism team. I recommend you begin by reading the introductory post in the sequence if you haven’t already for information about the context of this post.A quick context tl;dr:The aim of this investigation was to help our team decide if we should take steps towards incubating an organization focusing on this project. Keep in mind that some of the conclusions take into account considerations (such as our team’s comparative advantage) that may not be relevant to the reader.The investigation was intended to be very early-stage and prioritize speed over rigor. We would have conducted a more in-depth investigation before launching any projects in this space (and recommend that others do the same).This post was written in early fall 2022; the funding situation has changed significantly since then, but the investigation has not been updated to reflect this. As such, the funding bar alluded to in the post is probably outdated. My quick guess is that this does not significantly affect the bottom line in this case; at least I think this project is still likely to rank relatively highly among biosecurity-related projects.Epistemic statusI spent ~15 hours researching and writing this speedrun. I have no other experience with biosecurity research and I don’t have a natural science background. So: I’m a junior generalist who has thought about this for a couple of work days, and as a result, this post should be considered very preliminary and likely to contain mistakes and bad takes. My goal in publishing this regardless is that it may be useful as (a) a primer gathering useful information in one place, and (b) an example of the kind of research done by junior generalists.SummaryBottom line:I’m generally optimistic about work being done to develop better PPE: I think it’s ~60% likely to be in the top 20 of the project ideas on our current list excluding considerations about Rethink’s fit for supporting a project like this.My analysis of the merits of this project is primarily based on deferral to Andrew Snyder-Beattie and Ethan Alley, from whose post we got this idea.If I were to make a decision now about whether RP should try to incubate a new project in this space, I would say that it should not . (Incubating a new project might involve things like scoping out a concrete project plan and conducting a founder search; more on how we think about project incubation in this post.)The key reason is that there are a number of other actors already doing or planning projects in this space that are likely better suited to support this kind of work (primarily due to having more biosecurity expertise).I think I’d be unlikely to change my mind about this bottom line with ~10 more hours of investigation, but could easily imagine myself changing my mind after something like ~40 hours of investigation.More detailed summary:There are two main types of PPE a project could focus on developing: Type I PPE, optimized for price and ease of use, and Type II PPE optimized for robust threat protection. I focus on type I PPE, mainly because it’s more commonly brought up in the x-risk community (but there are also some plausible object-level reasons to do so). (more)I think the most important impact of type I PPE from a longtermist perspective is to reduce panic, unrest, and conflict in a highly deadly pandemic, thereby helping to avoid civilisational collapse. (more)I estimate that the financial cost of a project aiming to devel...