Project summary

Our interdisciplinary team seeks to pilot an innovative process combining complexity modelling, expert judgement elicitation, and deliberative democracy to better understand and prioritise systemic risks and potential catastrophic events. This "Odyssean Process" aims to leverage existing methodologies in a novel way to enable more effective decision-making on mitigating global risks.

White Paper: https://www.odysseaninstitute.org/_files/ugd/e56281_f0a77ff859354023bf743d07b9cea519.pdf

Through a structured expert elicitation and exploratory modelling, we will horizon scan for risks, map interconnected systems, identify leverage points and weaknesses, and develop robust options for mitigation. We will do this using modelling and deliberation mechanisms designed for these classes of multi-risk, multi-criteria optimisations. These will then feed into a representative deliberative process engaging citizens to evaluate tradeoffs and strengthen collective intelligence.

Goals include demonstrating viability of combining these approaches, surfacing neglected risks, and influencing policymakers. With meticulous design and analysis, this pilot aims to validate the process for scaling up and replication. It builds on our team's expertise across systemic forecasting, collective intelligence, and decision-making under uncertainty.

Deliverables are a pilot study report, open access publications, and outreach to catalyse adoption. Funding will support staff time, expert panel costs, assembly costs, training, and operational expenses. We estimate $50-100k to fully deliver this initial pilot over 12 months.

With existential risks on the rise, we have a responsibility to explore every option. This project offers a promising new framework to understand complexity, consult experts and citizens, and make more informed choices. We welcome collaborators and supporters to prototype the future of enlightened policymaking.

Following the conclusion of the Epistea Residency for which I have received funding until the end of November for this work, I am looking to maintain and scale my team's work through operational and test study funding.

Consistent with similar funded projects here on Manifund, I am applying for funding analogous to early career support funding, as I have exposed myself to financial precarity working for over a year on establishing the agenda, collaborators, and conceptual base for the Institute. Our mission is developed from several years of thinking and working on neglected systemic, foresight exercises (such as backcasting and scenario planning), and deliberative democratic potentials around GCR & x-risk, which have grown in stature recently and thus helped signal that these ideas moment has come:

Complexity modelling is used to better address systemic risk; such as identifying system leverage points, tipping points, early warning signs from both contemporary data and historical cases with similar patterns.

EEJ such as the IDEA Protocol to enhance epistemic inputs into this analysis using structured expert predictions (and thus contributing to forecasting and foresight of x-risks); and

Exploratory modelling and … to improve implementation and decision making generally by working with deep uncertainty, and identifying optimalities in deliberations experimenting with new forms of it that facilitate

Deliberation to facilitate more epistemic democratic decision making, working with collective intelligence to ensure weak but crucial signals are not lost, and to iterate between this and expert forecasts in a process of 'post-normal science'

These are required largely because systemic risks, and even x-risks in general due to their scope, are inherently transdisciplinary

We are now in a position to conduct a pilot study - with it costing in the region of £12,000 for the expert panel, and around £50,000 (lower estimate but consistent with average range of £20,000 - £200,000 for a full assembly) for the assembly it will culminate in.

Furthermore, I am working on a paper alongside this building on Matt Boyd  and Nick Wilson’s work to learn about stressors on the interconnected trade and resilient food supply chain in the event of a large nuclear weapons exchange. We are planning to design and test a  systems dynamical analysis on post-nuclear catastrophic trade routes to distribute resilience foods complimenting the researched by ALLFED.  While complete extinction and civilisation collapse is unlikely, the aftermath of an industry and infrastructure disabling nuclear and volcanic impact will be dire. Crippling infrastructure, particularly in healthcare, industrial agriculture, damage to supply chains, and the ensuing famine will increase our vulnerability for pandemics and other unforeseen aftershocks. In an event of catastrophic impact, understanding the mechanism of how to quickly rebuild can inform policy decisions now to adequately prepare for ASRS and distribute resilience food and essential medicine.

What are this project's goals and how will you achieve them?

Our goal is to pilot test the innovative "Odyssean Process" combining complexity modelling, expert judgement elicitation, and deliberative democracy to better understand, prioritise, and deliberate on systemic risks and potential catastrophic events. Through a structured expert forecasting exercise and exploratory modelling, we will identify and analyse risks, leverage points, and robust policy options. These will feed into a representative deliberative process to evaluate tradeoffs and strengthen collective intelligence on mitigation strategies. We aim to demonstrate the viability of combining these approaches in a novel way, highlight neglected risks, and influence policymakers.

Demonstrate the viability of powerful tools and methodologies with proven track records in isolation, combined in our unique Odyssean Process.

Explore neglected areas in systemic risk, intercausal risks, GCRs, and x-risk using our epistemic democratic methodologies to aid in cutting edge cause prioritisation - such as horizon scanning, simulated solutions with DMDU, and deliberation as was used in Taiwan with pol.is and Audrey Tang's public consultations.

Expand outreach and exposure of these ideas through advocacy as we write up our findings for open access and media engagement.

Exploit existing and growing collaborative possibilities, with leading organisations and institutions in this space, including but not limited to: Missions Publiques (recently confirmed as a strategic partner), CSER, Involve UK, RAND, Institute for New Economic Thinking, EU Commission’s Joint Research Council, and political parties’ policy advisors amenable to addressing risks through supporting these processes in policy making.

How will this funding be used?

Running our pilot study, involving an iterated process of expert foresight through the IDEA Protocol, advising an eventual citizen assembly. DMDU will serve as the connecting process that iterates the different predictive and foresight outputs from these exercises, developing a map of systemic risk and defence in depth approaches to them that can also benefit from win-win dynamics identified through robust decision making.

Continuing work, including systems dynamical and agent-based modelling, on a paper on post-collapse trade routes needed for getting resilience foods across the planet after e.g. a nuclear war. I am collaborating with Christopher Chan on this currently, with an aim to build on ALLFED's work, and even directly work with them on this, as well as develop positive policy recommendations as a part of it to enable impact.

Operational funding will pay our staff and enable full focus and a healthy work life balance, which has been lacking as we have made considerable progress but with almost minimal funding so far.

Upskilling, in postgraduate level and domain specific courses for relevant team members in increasing their engagement with the varied disciplines involved.

Who is on your team and what's your track record on similar projects?

Our board of trustees include myself as the Founder and CEO, with written work read by thousands on Medium preparing the groundwork for our projects based on research I undertook at Oxford University; Dr. Dan Hoyer, the President of the Cliodynamical Association and a leading academic on incorporating insights from historical collapses and Structural Demographic Theory into policy making, CSER's, Kaela Scott, Involve UK's former Director of Innovation and Practise for 7 years, and Prof. Jan Kwakkel, a leading academic in the field of exploratory modelling and decision making under deep uncertainty.

Our core team includes Christopher Chan, a Geospatial Scientist and complex systems modeller, and Dr. Joel Dyer, an agent-based and DMDU specialist at the University of Oxford who has worked with Doyne Farmer and is currently also at the INET working on resilience, and at Improbable on AI safety.

Our academic board includes leading academics and practitioners in fields directly relevant: Dr. Bonnie Wintle, a coauthor on leading IDEA Protocol experiments and experienced in working with DARPA project repliCATS on replicating psychological studies; Dr. Constantin Arnscheidt, an MIT Earth Scientist with a focus on system’s tipping points for cascade risk working at CSER; Dr. Matt Boyd, of Adapt Research and a leading scholar on nuclear resilience; Dr. Mark Fabian, working on studying and enabling human wellbeing at the level of public policy. 

We also have several endorsements and references speaking to the value of our work and the need for its funding, linked here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1j2COihqc_QKXHWfG9DfeRaRNrmH9_5R4PGLuJu0fSMw/edit 

With our Theory of Change included here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qHpkwvXa5Bs1NCn7DLwXzIbzwra63OyMaew1rCJt4uE/edit

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails? (premortem)

Already our work has suggested viability, with leading academics (including at the RAND Corporation, who invited us to give a seminar), junior researchers, and policymakers (including a large opposition party in a country with major influence, and the EU Commission) expressing interest in our approaches. As such we believe we are at a scale up phase, and likely causes of failure will be inability to maintain our current tempo as a team or myself as the Director of these efforts, as a large constraint already has experienced turnover due to constrained funding, and a need to balance the work with part time jobs or housing crisis in London, where I have been forced to move from after 6 years due to prioritising this work. These disruptions have led to acute stress.

Other possible failure modes include the inherent complexity of our work, and the possible intractability of existing policy making. However, the research we build on, real world examples from hundreds of contexts (for deliberation, but also complexity modelling of the kinds we are advocating), and preliminary support and endorsements suggest this should not be insurmountable if resource, time, and energy bottlenecks are addressed.

What other funding are you or your project getting?

We have only ever received £10k from a private philanthropist - in March 2023 - for team operational budget. This is partly due to the transdisciplinary nature of our work, and partly due to the relative neglect and technical specificity and complexity of the mutually reinforcing components of the Process we want to test. The wider funding environment post-FTX and tech stocks has also naturally constricted x-risk funding broadly.

I have individually received $10k to attend the Epistea Residency, where I am continuing and scaling these efforts until the end of November.

We have a wide range of funding plans between the minimum and funding goal: our optimistic goal is a full operational budget allowing for the whole team to work full time on the pilot study, related papers, and associated systemic risk research partly informed by existing literature, partly added to by our methodologies. This would last 1.5-2 years with our core team, but new hires are also possible for a policy outreach function, meaning the budget may be for a full year if growth is pursued.

At the low end, $15,000 is a survival level which can allow for each team member being paid on a project basis, removing the precarity and instability, and also allowing for the expert panel first stage to go ahead.

This combines both survival and a pilot study, building on the preparatory work for this ongoing at Epistea.

I am personally applying for funding for an MPhil in Public Policy at the University of Cambridge to deepen my engagement, networks, and experience in this field as well as upskill in it. However, as postgraduate funding is uncertain, I include this as relevant support here could help plug any gaps required to take up this high impact further education.