Excerpt from “Chapter 7: Safeguarding Humanity” of Toby Ord’s The Precipice, copied here for later reference. h/t Michael A.
SECURITY AMONG THE STARS?
Many of those who have written about the risks of human extinction suggest that if we could just survive long enough to spread out through space, we would be safe—that we currently have all of our eggs in one basket, but if we became an interplanetary species, this period of vulnerability would end. Is this right? Would settling other planets bring us existential security?
The idea is based on an important statistical truth. If there were a growing number of locations which all need to be destroyed for humanity to fail, and if the chance of each suffering a catastrophe is independent of whether the others do too, then there is a good chance humanity could survive indefinitely.
But unfortunately, this argument only applies to risks that are statistically independent. Many risks, such as disease, war, tyranny and permanently locking in bad values are correlated across different planets: if they affect one, they are somewhat more likely to affect the others too. A few risks, such as unaligned AGI and vacuum collapse, are almost completely correlated: if they affect one planet, they will likely affect all. And presumably some of the as-yet-undiscovered risks will also be correlated between our settlements.
Space settlement is thus helpful for achieving existential security (by eliminating the uncorrelated risks) but it is by no means sufficient. Becoming a multi-planetary species is an inspirational project—and may be a necessary step in achieving humanity’s potential. But we still need to address the problem of existential risk head-on, by choosing to make safeguarding our longterm potential one of our central priorities.
Nitpick: I would have written “this argument only applies to risks that are statistically independent” as “this argument applies to a lesser degree if the risks are not statistically independent, and proportional to their degree of correlation.” Space colonization still buys you some risk protection if the risks are not statistically independent but imperfectly correlated. For example, another planet definitely buys you at least some protection from absolute tyranny (even if tyranny in one place is correlated with tyranny elsewhere.)
Excerpt from “Chapter 7: Safeguarding Humanity” of Toby Ord’s The Precipice, copied here for later reference. h/t Michael A.
SECURITY AMONG THE STARS?
Many of those who have written about the risks of human extinction suggest that if we could just survive long enough to spread out through space, we would be safe—that we currently have all of our eggs in one basket, but if we became an interplanetary species, this period of vulnerability would end. Is this right? Would settling other planets bring us existential security?
The idea is based on an important statistical truth. If there were a growing number of locations which all need to be destroyed for humanity to fail, and if the chance of each suffering a catastrophe is independent of whether the others do too, then there is a good chance humanity could survive indefinitely.
But unfortunately, this argument only applies to risks that are statistically independent. Many risks, such as disease, war, tyranny and permanently locking in bad values are correlated across different planets: if they affect one, they are somewhat more likely to affect the others too. A few risks, such as unaligned AGI and vacuum collapse, are almost completely correlated: if they affect one planet, they will likely affect all. And presumably some of the as-yet-undiscovered risks will also be correlated between our settlements.
Space settlement is thus helpful for achieving existential security (by eliminating the uncorrelated risks) but it is by no means sufficient. Becoming a multi-planetary species is an inspirational project—and may be a necessary step in achieving humanity’s potential. But we still need to address the problem of existential risk head-on, by choosing to make safeguarding our longterm potential one of our central priorities.
Nitpick: I would have written “this argument only applies to risks that are statistically independent” as “this argument applies to a lesser degree if the risks are not statistically independent, and proportional to their degree of correlation.” Space colonization still buys you some risk protection if the risks are not statistically independent but imperfectly correlated. For example, another planet definitely buys you at least some protection from absolute tyranny (even if tyranny in one place is correlated with tyranny elsewhere.)