Some other context I perhaps should’ve given is that Ord writes that his estimates already:
incorporate the possibility that we get our act together and start taking these risks very seriously. Future risks are often estimated with an assumption of ‘business as usual’: that our levels of concern and resources devoted to addressing the risks stay where they are today. If I had assumed business as usual, my risk estimates would have been substantially higher. But I think they would have been misleading, overstating the chance that we actually suffer an existential catastrophe. So instead, I’ve made allowances for the fact that we will likely respond to the escalating risks, with substantial efforts to reduce them.
The numbers therefore represent my actual best guesses of the chance the threats materialise, taking our responses into account. If we outperform my expectations, we could bring the remaining risk down below these estimates. Perhaps one could say that we were heading towards Russian roulette with two bullets in the gun, but that I think we will remove one of these before it’s time to pull the trigger. And there might just be time to remove the last one too, if we really try.
This kind of complexity tells me that we should talk more often of risk %’s in terms of the different scenarios they are associated with. E.g., the form of current trajectory Ord is using, and also possibly better (if society would act further more wisely) and possible worse trajectories (society makes major mistakes), and what the probabilities are under these.
We can’t disentangle talking about future risks and possibilities entirely from the different possible choices of society since these choices are what shapes the future. What we do affect these choices.
(Also, maybe you should edit the original post to include the quote you included here or parts of it.)
Some other context I perhaps should’ve given is that Ord writes that his estimates already:
This kind of complexity tells me that we should talk more often of risk %’s in terms of the different scenarios they are associated with. E.g., the form of current trajectory Ord is using, and also possibly better (if society would act further more wisely) and possible worse trajectories (society makes major mistakes), and what the probabilities are under these.
We can’t disentangle talking about future risks and possibilities entirely from the different possible choices of society since these choices are what shapes the future. What we do affect these choices.
(Also, maybe you should edit the original post to include the quote you included here or parts of it.)