> Eg: Automating jobs is possibly an ethical positive provided people don't need jobs to survive.

Or maybe automating certain jobs is an ethical positive because means fewer people die in coal pits. You're very right that this is an excellent opportunity to kick off other lines of research and inquiry. It's possible that what is essentially a journal of applied mathematics might not be an ideal venue for such, given that journals of ethics and economics already exist.

> Could someone give concrete examples of the possible costs of "false positives"? In the picture I have in mind, papers are not accepted/rejected based on whether someone likes the consequences or not. (as stated in the article)

What would be the point of a negative social consequences disclosure requirement if there were no consequences whatsoever for leaving one off or being glaringly silly in the disclosure? The point of this proposed process is that it is ground to reject a paper and require further revision.

To put it another way: the process proposed will either have false positives or it will do nothing. The extent to which it has false positives that exact a cost will be determined by the extent to which the process works as intended to discourage research deemed to have negative social consequences.

Rejecting a paper might end a grad student's career. It might prevent disclosure of a significant finding in time to have a major impact on something important. We have no way of anticipating the consequences of this. Perhaps this proposal should come with a discussion of the potential negative social consequences of it, given that some can already be reasonably foreseen.

Given how abstract that is, I shall offer a more concrete example. My past involves research into how to make circuits more efficient and easily produced reliably and at scale. At no point in this process did anyone stop and think about if this might have applications in computers used as part of weapons systems. Which, looking back, is obviously one application of computers.

> The authors are expected to have the most insight into the specific aspects they are writing on, and generally educated well enough to be a functioning citizen of modern society.

You're absolutely right. The authors can be expected to have deep and significant insight into the technical or mathematical aspects of their work. It's possible that this might not be the same as having the most insight into economic or social consequences of their work.

> 1. Get a better understanding of the possible consequences of different lines of advancement, and, as a community, encourage the "positive" ones while discouraging the "negative" ones. (for some value of positive/negative, which might well be emergent only after much back-and-forth)

This is a laudable goal! And it's perhaps worth considering if there might be unintentional and perhaps "negative" side effects to such a process.

> 2. Get each and every researcher to actively think about the ethics of their research and the problems they choose to solve.

If this is the goal, then perhaps the requirement should be for every paper to be accompanied with an ethical statement which is in no way part of the review process. That would satisfy your needs without risking significant unintentional side-effects, would it not?