In his interview on the 80000 hours podcast after the publication the Precipice, Toby Ord claimed that x-risk reduction was worth pursing regardless of weather x-risk was high or low. The claim is that when x-risk is low, it's worth working on x-risk because a small decline in the probability of x-risk has very large returns because by reducing the value of x-risk you're increasing the value of the future and the value of the future is greatest when x-risk is smallest. On the other hand, when x-risk is large, the return is also high because x-risk is likely to be neglected and therefore the marginal impact of work on x-risk is likely to be very high. This post aims to show the cases when this does and doesn't hold true.
The value of existential risk reduction
The value of existential risk reduction
The value of existential risk reduction
In his interview on the 80000 hours podcast after the publication the Precipice, Toby Ord claimed that x-risk reduction was worth pursing regardless of weather x-risk was high or low. The claim is that when x-risk is low, it's worth working on x-risk because a small decline in the probability of x-risk has very large returns because by reducing the value of x-risk you're increasing the value of the future and the value of the future is greatest when x-risk is smallest. On the other hand, when x-risk is large, the return is also high because x-risk is likely to be neglected and therefore the marginal impact of work on x-risk is likely to be very high. This post aims to show the cases when this does and doesn't hold true.