tl;dr: Toby Ord seems to imply that economic stagnation is clearly an existential risk factor. But I that we should actually be more uncertain about that; I think it’s plausible that economic stagnation would actually decrease economic risk, at least given certain types of stagnation and certain starting conditions.
(This is basically a nitpick I wrote in May 2020, and then lightly edited recently.)
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In The Precipice, Toby Ord discusses the concept of existential risk factors: factors which increase existential risk, whether or not they themselves could “directly” cause existential catastrophe. He writes:
An easy way to find existential risk factors is to consider stressors for humanity or for our ability to make good decisions. These include global economic stagnation… (emphasis added)
This seems to me to imply that global economic stagnation is clearly and almost certainlyan existential risk factor.
He also discusses the inverse concept, existential security factors: factors which reduce existential risk. He writes:
Many of the things we commonly think of as social goods may turn out to also be existential security factors. Things such as education, peace or prosperity may help protect us. (emphasis added)
It does seem to me quite plausible—indeed, probably >50% likely—that global economic stagnation is an existential risk factor, and that prosperity is a security factor (or at least that they tend to be these things). And in the case of prosperity, Ord merely says that prosperity may help protect us, which seems an entirely fair statement. (In the case of global economic stagnation, he seems to be making a stronger claim.)
But it also seems like how economic growth affects existential risk is still a fairly open and important question. (This is related to the idea of differential progress.)
And it also seems plausible that increasing growth from unusually low levels could be protective, while increasing it further from already high levels could increase risk, or something like that.
In fact, Ord himself separately—not in the context of economic growth—provides an interesting discussion of “the question of variables that both increase and decrease existential risk over different parts of their domains (i.e. where existential risk is non-monotonic in that variable).” He says that, in certain cases, we will need to consider such variables not as simply risk or security factors, but “as a more complex kind of factor instead”.
Altogether, I think that, if I had been the person writing The Precipice:
The book would’ve been much less excellent
...But also, I would’ve tried to make it clearer that global economic stagnation is just plausibly or probably an existential risk factor, rather than definitely one.
I think I would’ve highlighted economic growth as a potential example of one of the “more complex kind[s] of factor[s]”, for which the relationship is non-monotonic.
(See also this paper, this summary of it, and posts tagged differential progress. Based on a skim, that paper seems to suggest that economic growth reduces totalexistential risk, but also that it might increase annual risk in the short-run. I think that that’d roughly support Ord’s statements. But given that that’s just one paper on a complex topic, I still think we shouldn’t be highly confident that economic growth is (always) an existential security factor.)
You can see a list of all the things I’ve written that summarise, comment on, or take inspiration from parts of The Precipice here.
tl;dr: Toby Ord seems to imply that economic stagnation is clearly an existential risk factor. But I that we should actually be more uncertain about that; I think it’s plausible that economic stagnation would actually decrease economic risk, at least given certain types of stagnation and certain starting conditions.
(This is basically a nitpick I wrote in May 2020, and then lightly edited recently.)
---
In The Precipice, Toby Ord discusses the concept of existential risk factors: factors which increase existential risk, whether or not they themselves could “directly” cause existential catastrophe. He writes:
This seems to me to imply that global economic stagnation is clearly and almost certainly an existential risk factor.
He also discusses the inverse concept, existential security factors: factors which reduce existential risk. He writes:
It does seem to me quite plausible—indeed, probably >50% likely—that global economic stagnation is an existential risk factor, and that prosperity is a security factor (or at least that they tend to be these things). And in the case of prosperity, Ord merely says that prosperity may help protect us, which seems an entirely fair statement. (In the case of global economic stagnation, he seems to be making a stronger claim.)
But it also seems like how economic growth affects existential risk is still a fairly open and important question. (This is related to the idea of differential progress.)
And it also seems plausible that increasing growth from unusually low levels could be protective, while increasing it further from already high levels could increase risk, or something like that.
In fact, Ord himself separately—not in the context of economic growth—provides an interesting discussion of “the question of variables that both increase and decrease existential risk over different parts of their domains (i.e. where existential risk is non-monotonic in that variable).” He says that, in certain cases, we will need to consider such variables not as simply risk or security factors, but “as a more complex kind of factor instead”.
Altogether, I think that, if I had been the person writing The Precipice:
The book would’ve been much less excellent
...But also, I would’ve tried to make it clearer that global economic stagnation is just plausibly or probably an existential risk factor, rather than definitely one.
I think I would’ve highlighted economic growth as a potential example of one of the “more complex kind[s] of factor[s]”, for which the relationship is non-monotonic.
(See also this paper, this summary of it, and posts tagged differential progress. Based on a skim, that paper seems to suggest that economic growth reduces total existential risk, but also that it might increase annual risk in the short-run. I think that that’d roughly support Ord’s statements. But given that that’s just one paper on a complex topic, I still think we shouldn’t be highly confident that economic growth is (always) an existential security factor.)
You can see a list of all the things I’ve written that summarise, comment on, or take inspiration from parts of The Precipice here.