This article stresses the importance of global catastrophic risks, and how understanding these risks will be the key to their reduction.
The article begins as follows:
Global catastrophes are events so large — global warming, nuclear war, pandemics, and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and synthetic biology — that they threaten the entire future of human civilization If we fail to we avoid a global catastrophe, nothing else matters. Therefore, preventing a global catastrophe must be a top priority for society today. We should all try as hard as we can on this, but it’s not enough to try. To succeed, we must be smart.
We need to be smart because some actions are a lot more effective than others at confronting global catastrophes. We should not waste our time on inefficient, ineffective little efforts when we could be going big. But how to go big can be a subtle endeavor. That means we need to invest in — and listen to — practical research that helps us confront global catastrophes more effectively.
Smart action on global catastrophes does two things well. First, it makes large reductions in the risk of global catastrophe. Second, it is easy. The larger the risk reduction, and the easier the action is to do, the smarter it is.
The remainder of the article is available in Medium.
Image credit: US Air Force
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This blog post was published on 28 July 2020 as part of a website overhaul and backdated to reflect the time of the publication of the work referenced here.