It seems to me like a pretty relevant comparison would be to the probabilty that an asteroid impact causes >1 billion deaths.
As in, run this exact methodology using deaths due to asteroid impacts per year over the past 200 years as the dataset (we could also use injuries instead of deaths).
My understanding is that this would result in predicting an astronomically, astronomically low probability of >1 billion deaths.
So either:
- Updating up massively on such astronomically low priors is common in cases where we have other arguments at hand (in the asteroid case it would be various other data sources on asteriod collisions, in the war case it would be arguments related to bioweapons or similar) - This methodology provides a very bad prior for asteroids.
Yes, asteroids are slightly cherry picked, but when talking about probabilities of 10^-13 this amount of cherry picking doesn’t matter.
In general, extrapolations based on a given dataset become less reliable as one tries to predict events which are increasingly far away from the region for which there is data. Therefore my methodology is way more applicable to estimate the annual risk of human extinction from wars than from asteroids:
My maximum annual war deaths as a fraction of the global population is 0.300 %[1] (= 1.50*10^-3/0.5), which is just 2.5 orders of magnitude away from extinction.
I guess the maximum annual deaths from asteroids in the past 200 years were less than 800, i.e. less than 10^-7 (= 800/(8*10^9)) of the global population, which is at least 7 orders of magnitude away from extinction.
In any case, annual extinction risk from asteroids and comets is astronomically low based on inside view models. The results of Table 1 of Salotti 2022 suggest it is 2.2*10^-14 (= 2.2*10^-12/100), which is around 1⁄3 of my best guess prior for wars of 6.36*10^-14.
Agreed. At the same time, my methodology resulting in an astronomically low extinction risk from asteroids would arguably still be qualitatively in agreement with the results of Salotti 2022.
It seems to me like a pretty relevant comparison would be to the probabilty that an asteroid impact causes >1 billion deaths.
As in, run this exact methodology using deaths due to asteroid impacts per year over the past 200 years as the dataset (we could also use injuries instead of deaths).
My understanding is that this would result in predicting an astronomically, astronomically low probability of >1 billion deaths.
So either:
- Updating up massively on such astronomically low priors is common in cases where we have other arguments at hand (in the asteroid case it would be various other data sources on asteriod collisions, in the war case it would be arguments related to bioweapons or similar)
- This methodology provides a very bad prior for asteroids.
Yes, asteroids are slightly cherry picked, but when talking about probabilities of 10^-13 this amount of cherry picking doesn’t matter.
Thanks for the suggestion, Ryan!
In general, extrapolations based on a given dataset become less reliable as one tries to predict events which are increasingly far away from the region for which there is data. Therefore my methodology is way more applicable to estimate the annual risk of human extinction from wars than from asteroids:
My maximum annual war deaths as a fraction of the global population is 0.300 %[1] (= 1.50*10^-3/0.5), which is just 2.5 orders of magnitude away from extinction.
I guess the maximum annual deaths from asteroids in the past 200 years were less than 800, i.e. less than 10^-7 (= 800/(8*10^9)) of the global population, which is at least 7 orders of magnitude away from extinction.
In any case, annual extinction risk from asteroids and comets is astronomically low based on inside view models. The results of Table 1 of Salotti 2022 suggest it is 2.2*10^-14 (= 2.2*10^-12/100), which is around 1⁄3 of my best guess prior for wars of 6.36*10^-14.
For my best guess of war deaths of combatants equal to 50 % of total deaths.
(Yeah, the asteroids comparison is perhaps more relevant to the post on terrorist attacks.)
Agreed. At the same time, my methodology resulting in an astronomically low extinction risk from asteroids would arguably still be qualitatively in agreement with the results of Salotti 2022.