I hadn’t thought to think about selection effects, thanks for pointing that out. I suppose Bostrom actually describes black balls as technologies that cause catastrophe but doesn’t set the bar as high as extinction. Then drawing a black ball doesn’t affect future populations drastically, so perhaps selection effects don’t apply?
Also, I think in The Precipice Toby Ord makes some inferences for natural extinction risk given the length of time humanity has existed for? Though I may not be remembering correctly. I think the logic was something like “Assume we’re randomly distributed amongst possible humans. If existential risk was very high, then there’d be a very small set of worlds in which humans have been around for this long, and it would be very unlikely that we’d be in such a world. Therefore it’s more likely that our estimate of existential risk is too high”. This then seems quite similar to my model of making inferences based on not having previously drawn a black ball. I don’t think I understand selection effects too well though so I appreciate any comments on this!
Thanks for your comment!
I hadn’t thought to think about selection effects, thanks for pointing that out. I suppose Bostrom actually describes black balls as technologies that cause catastrophe but doesn’t set the bar as high as extinction. Then drawing a black ball doesn’t affect future populations drastically, so perhaps selection effects don’t apply?
Also, I think in The Precipice Toby Ord makes some inferences for natural extinction risk given the length of time humanity has existed for? Though I may not be remembering correctly. I think the logic was something like “Assume we’re randomly distributed amongst possible humans. If existential risk was very high, then there’d be a very small set of worlds in which humans have been around for this long, and it would be very unlikely that we’d be in such a world. Therefore it’s more likely that our estimate of existential risk is too high”. This then seems quite similar to my model of making inferences based on not having previously drawn a black ball. I don’t think I understand selection effects too well though so I appreciate any comments on this!