
The world should think better about catastrophic and existential risks - jkuria
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/06/25/the-world-should-think-better-about-catastrophic-and-existential-risks
======
theonemind
Do people _actually_ care enough about "threats to humanity's potential" to
actually support this kind of thing? I imagine more people would _say_ they
care than would actually want to pay tax dollars towards it.

~~~
tluyben2
People care about #1 and the close relatives (very close usually); the rest is
nice to say you care at parties and people might even want to contribute to it
if the are either filthy rich anyway or get paid to do so (or both). There are
exceptions (covid doctors/nurses most notably the last months; although I
personally know doctors (and I only know 3) who all refused to work on the
frontlines as ... looking out for #1), but in general, no-one wants to
pay/help unless they get screwed themselves (Boris Johnson with covid as an
example) which then humbles them (hopefully).

Most of the rich countries' people are healthy (although it seems the US(and
UK lately?) is trying to change that with obesity, diabetes being so
prevalent?) so it's easy to think ; screw that, I will never get anything so
I'm not paying taxes or doing anything for those 'lazy sods'. Until they get
something.

I think covid is not (yet ...) bad enough to change that way of thinking;
especially here in europe (without the uk) there is strong pressure against
helping 'lazy people' (between '' because they are not lazy generally, it's
just inequality) with handouts, even though many rich people suffered first
hand through how fast you can go from healthy to a complete wreck (or dead).

The scare (I hope a scare will be enough..) needs to be far worse than this;
the people who lived through WOII are dying off (faster with covid) so most
people in the western world hardly lived through any real trauma in general.
Imho also the reason words like 'trauma' are now used in completely wrong
ways; people getting traumatised by, on a war or 'spanish flu' type pandemic
scale, things that mean really not much at all. This is great because it means
we live in prosperity (in the west!), however we are not prepared, at all for
any larger calamity.

And we forgot the calamities of yore (not sure if they still teach history in
schools; I have a bad feeling it's not very ... well done) so it's easy to
focus on the direct family and say 'f you!' to the rest of the world. I don't
think that will change unless there is a real unifying event, far worse than
this. Unfortunately it might come as the 2nd or 3rd wave of covid. And if not,
as #1, I hope to be dead when that finally happens. But it will happen and we
won't be prepared at all because our governments love dismantling things 'we
don't need' (do we even have an army of any significance in the EU?) to save
money and memory is _really_ short for the 'bad things'.

------
gregjor
The article manages to describe tail risk without using the term, and the
author avoids mentioning Nasim Taleb, the current leading author/speaker on
low probability/high risk events, so-called Black Swans. I suppose Taleb has
offended enough people at this point to earn this treatment. Instead Nick
Bostrom gets a nod for his sci-fi singularity fantasies.

~~~
rramadass
Am i the only one who really likes Taleb and his aggressive approach ? :-) I
couldn't care less about "Offended feelings" of charlatans, posers and fakes.
Given the mess that the so-called "people in charge" have made of everything i
wish more academics/intelligentsia were as aggressive as him in calling out
mistakes/errors in our patterns of thought and force us to face them.

------
LockAndLol
Scientists have been basically screaming at the public since the 60s or so. 60
years later, people still don't take climate change seriously enough for the
majority to vote in politicians who care about it.

Just look at how we're actually having protests against something as simple as
staying inside. We can think better about existential risks but that won't
help if we don't actually take action. Given our track record, my bet is that
barely anything will be done.

Not enough people care.

------
yboris
Without paywall: [http://archive.is/SH3EU](http://archive.is/SH3EU)

The article mentions Toby Ord and his _The Precipice_ \- I think a must-read
book:

[https://theprecipice.com/](https://theprecipice.com/)

------
aeternum
Seems like the best risk mitigation strategy is to become multi-planetary. We
would eliminate the vast majority of existential risks.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
We can't stop ourselves from trashing this planet. I don't know why people
think we would be more succesful elsewhere.

~~~
aeternum
One organism's trash is another's habitat. None of us would be around if the
early cyanobacteria hadn't polluted the earth with oxygen.

~~~
glial
That might be the strangest apologetics for pollution that I’ve ever seen.

------
redis_mlc
What, like relying on the CCP for our pharmaceutical, mfg. and rare earth
processing? Maybe something like that?

