I havenât read much of this post, so just call me out if this is totally off base, but I suspect youâre treating events as more âindependentâ than you should.
On the other extreme, we could imagine repeatedly flipping a coin with only heads on it, or a coin with only tails on it, but we donât know which, but we think itâs probably the one only with heads. Of course, this goes too far, since only one coin flip outcome is enough to find out what coin we were flipping. Instead, we could imagine two coins, one with only heads (or extremely biased towards heads), and the other a fair coin, and we lose if we get tails. The more heads we get, the more confident we should be that we have the heads-only coin.
To translate this into risks, we donât know what kind of world we live in and how vulnerable it is to a given risk, and the probability that the world is vulnerable to the given risk at all an upper bound for the probability of catastrophe. As you suggest, the more time goes on without catastrophe, the more confident we should be that we arenât so vulnerable.
I think a galactic civilisation needs to have absolute existential security, or a galactic x-risk will inevitably occur (i.e., they need a coin that always lands on heads). If your galactic civilisation has survived for longer than you would have expected it to based on cumulative chances, then you can be very confident youâve achieved absolute existential security (you have that coin). But a galactic civ would have to know whether they have the coin that is always heads, or the coin that is heads 99.9999999% of the time. Iâm not sure how thatâs possible.
I havenât read much of this post, so just call me out if this is totally off base, but I suspect youâre treating events as more âindependentâ than you should.
Relevant: A nuclear war forecast is not a coin flip by David Johnston.
I also illustrated in a comment there:
Definitely on base :D
I think a galactic civilisation needs to have absolute existential security, or a galactic x-risk will inevitably occur (i.e., they need a coin that always lands on heads). If your galactic civilisation has survived for longer than you would have expected it to based on cumulative chances, then you can be very confident youâve achieved absolute existential security (you have that coin). But a galactic civ would have to know whether they have the coin that is always heads, or the coin that is heads 99.9999999% of the time. Iâm not sure how thatâs possible.