Executive summary: Thorstad argues that leading models of existential risk mitigation make three key mistakes that significantly inflate the estimated value of reducing existential risk.
Key points:
Focusing on cumulative extinction risk instead of per-century risk assumes we can change risk for all future generations and requires dramatic reductions in per-century risk to make small changes to cumulative risk.
Ignoring background extinction risk from other sources makes reducing any single existential risk appear more valuable than it actually is when accounting for the unaltered risks.
Ignoring realistic population dynamics and assuming maximum supportable population leads to overestimates of potential future population. More realistic models project population decline.
Even with optimistic assumptions of space settlement, the downtime to establish each new colony reduces the value of existential risk mitigation compared to estimates that ignore this factor.
When accounting for these mistakes, the cost-effectiveness of reducing existential risk is reduced by orders of magnitude, potentially below that of near-term interventions.
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Executive summary: Thorstad argues that leading models of existential risk mitigation make three key mistakes that significantly inflate the estimated value of reducing existential risk.
Key points:
Focusing on cumulative extinction risk instead of per-century risk assumes we can change risk for all future generations and requires dramatic reductions in per-century risk to make small changes to cumulative risk.
Ignoring background extinction risk from other sources makes reducing any single existential risk appear more valuable than it actually is when accounting for the unaltered risks.
Ignoring realistic population dynamics and assuming maximum supportable population leads to overestimates of potential future population. More realistic models project population decline.
Even with optimistic assumptions of space settlement, the downtime to establish each new colony reduces the value of existential risk mitigation compared to estimates that ignore this factor.
When accounting for these mistakes, the cost-effectiveness of reducing existential risk is reduced by orders of magnitude, potentially below that of near-term interventions.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.