Other relevant notes from the spreadsheet itself, from the “In the coming century or so” cell:
Perhaps it’d make more sense to separate out the question of whether to focus on x-risks from the question of whether to focus on doing/supporting direct work done this century.
And perhaps it’d make sense to also add a separate question about whether to prioritise work that’s fairly directly relevant to x-risks from work on existential risk/security factors (e.g., perhaps, moral circle expansion or improving institutions). Currently this spreadsheet doesn’t address that question.
And perhaps it’d make sense to add a separate question about extinction risk vs other x-risks. (At the moment, I mean x-risks to be inclusive of risks of unrecoverable collapse or unrecoverable dystopia.) [emphasis added]
And FWIW, here’s a relevant passage from a research agenda I recently drafted, which is intended to be useful both in relation to extinction risks and in relation to non-extinction existential risks:
Why should someone do research related to non-extinction existential risks?
My answer to this question mirrors the answer I gave above:
In my view, we’re currently very uncertain about how the likelihood and tractability of extinction and non-extinction existential risks compare, such that:
Both categories of risks should get substantial attention
Decisions to specialise for work on one category of risks or the other should probably focus more on how neglected each category is and what one’s comparative advantage is, rather than how likely and tractable each category of risks is
There appears to be a substantially larger amount of rigorous work done and planned on extinction risk than on non-extinction existential risk
Perhaps especially when it comes to the risk of an unrecoverable dystopia, rather than the risk of an unrecoverable collapse) [Footnote: Some of the relatively small amount of work that has been done on these topics to date can be found here, here, and here.]
Note that that section is basically about what someone who hasn’t yet specialised should now specialise to do, on the margin. I’m essentially quite happy for people who’ve already specialised for reducing extinction risk to keep on with that work.
No, though I did worry people would misinterpret the post as meaning extinction risks specifically. As I say in the post:
Other relevant notes from the spreadsheet itself, from the “In the coming century or so” cell:
And FWIW, here’s a relevant passage from a research agenda I recently drafted, which is intended to be useful both in relation to extinction risks and in relation to non-extinction existential risks:
Note that that section is basically about what someone who hasn’t yet specialised should now specialise to do, on the margin. I’m essentially quite happy for people who’ve already specialised for reducing extinction risk to keep on with that work.