I think I buy that interventions which reduce either catastrophic or extinction risk by 1% for < $1 trillion exist. I’m less sure as to whether many of these interventions clear the 1,000x bar though, which (naively replacing US VSL = $7 mil with AMF’s ~$5k) seems to imply 1% reduction for < $1 billion. (I recall Linch’s comment being bullish and comfortable on interventions reducing x-risk ~0.01% at ~$100 mil, which could either be interpreted as ~100x i.e. in the ballpark of GiveDirectly’s cash transfers, or as aggregating over a longer timescale than by 2050; the latter is probably the case. The other comments to that post offer a pretty wide range of values.)
That said, I’ve never actually seen a BOTEC justifying an actual x-risk grant (vs e.g. Open Phil’s sample BOTECs for various grants with confidential details redacted), so my remarks above seem mostly immaterial to how x-risk cost-effectiveness estimates inform grant allocations in practice. I’d love to see some real examples.
I think I buy that interventions which reduce either catastrophic or extinction risk by 1% for < $1 trillion exist. I’m less sure as to whether many of these interventions clear the 1,000x bar though, which (naively replacing US VSL = $7 mil with AMF’s ~$5k) seems to imply 1% reduction for < $1 billion. (I recall Linch’s comment being bullish and comfortable on interventions reducing x-risk ~0.01% at ~$100 mil, which could either be interpreted as ~100x i.e. in the ballpark of GiveDirectly’s cash transfers, or as aggregating over a longer timescale than by 2050; the latter is probably the case. The other comments to that post offer a pretty wide range of values.)
That said, I’ve never actually seen a BOTEC justifying an actual x-risk grant (vs e.g. Open Phil’s sample BOTECs for various grants with confidential details redacted), so my remarks above seem mostly immaterial to how x-risk cost-effectiveness estimates inform grant allocations in practice. I’d love to see some real examples.