Executive summary: While reducing extinction risk is crucial, focusing solely on survival overlooks the importance of improving the quality of the future; a broader framework is needed to balance interventions that enhance future value with those that mitigate catastrophic risks.
Key points:
Expanding beyond extinction risk – Prior work on existential risk reduction primarily quantified the expected value of preventing human extinction, but did not consider efforts to improve the quality of the future.
The limits of a risk-only approach – Solely focusing on survival neglects scenarios where humanity persists but experiences stagnation, suffering, or unfulfilled potential. Quality-enhancing interventions (e.g., improving governance, fostering moral progress) may provide high impact.
Developing a broader model – A new framework should compare extinction risk reduction with interventions aimed at increasing the future’s realized value, incorporating survival probability and the value trajectory.
Key factors in evaluation – The model considers extinction risk trajectory, value growth trajectory, persistence of effects, and tractability/cost of interventions to estimate long-term expected value.
Implications for decision-making – This approach helps clarify trade-offs, prevents blind spots, informs a portfolio of interventions, and allows adaptation based on new evidence, leading to better allocation of resources for shaping the long-term future.
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Executive summary: While reducing extinction risk is crucial, focusing solely on survival overlooks the importance of improving the quality of the future; a broader framework is needed to balance interventions that enhance future value with those that mitigate catastrophic risks.
Key points:
Expanding beyond extinction risk – Prior work on existential risk reduction primarily quantified the expected value of preventing human extinction, but did not consider efforts to improve the quality of the future.
The limits of a risk-only approach – Solely focusing on survival neglects scenarios where humanity persists but experiences stagnation, suffering, or unfulfilled potential. Quality-enhancing interventions (e.g., improving governance, fostering moral progress) may provide high impact.
Developing a broader model – A new framework should compare extinction risk reduction with interventions aimed at increasing the future’s realized value, incorporating survival probability and the value trajectory.
Key factors in evaluation – The model considers extinction risk trajectory, value growth trajectory, persistence of effects, and tractability/cost of interventions to estimate long-term expected value.
Implications for decision-making – This approach helps clarify trade-offs, prevents blind spots, informs a portfolio of interventions, and allows adaptation based on new evidence, leading to better allocation of resources for shaping the long-term future.
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.