I think high X-risk makes working on X-risk more valuable only if you believe that you can have a durable effect on the level of X-risk—here’s MacAskill talking about the hinge-of-history hypothesis (which is closely related to the ‘time of perils’ hypothesis):
Or perhaps extinction risk is high, but will stay high indefinitely, in which case in expectation we do not have a very long future ahead of us, and the grounds for thinking that extinction risk reduction is of enormous value fall away.
I think high X-risk makes working on X-risk more valuable only if you believe that you can have a durable effect on the level of X-risk—here’s MacAskill talking about the hinge-of-history hypothesis (which is closely related to the ‘time of perils’ hypothesis):