Transdisciplinary complexity modelling, applied via deliberative mechanisms, to generate high impact policy mitigating systemic risks for long-termist outcomes

Odysseus, through Athena’s patronage, passed a series of seemingly insurmountable tests over a decade of trials. This corresponds with our civilisational journey, with a decade and thereafter a century of incredibly daunting intellectual, social, political, and economic tests to avoid X-risk. In contemporary use, Murray Gell-Mann coined the ‘Odyssean’ as the union of natural and social sciences appropriate for wicked problems. We intend to apply these approaches directly to catastrophic risks and the systemic multipliers of those risks.

The Odyssean Institute has been founded to bridge gaps within EA and academia, and outside it in policymaking and the public. We will address catastrophic risk conceptualisation, modelling, and practical policy. Specifically on conceptual and empirical gaps within X-risk and GCR preparation, by drawing on complexity, biophysical analyses, and machine learning to build larger parameter models. We will bring the highest quality research, integrative solutions, and decision making mechanisms into solution development, testing, and scaling. We will then test these findings’ applications with deliberative democratic and epistemic expert aggregation processes, connecting them to decision makers in key locations to build momentum for change.