[ExI] Planetary defense

[Anders Sandberg]

Richard Loosemore wrote:
>
> Which is to say, people who *assess* risk behave irrationally in the 
> face of quantifiable versus non-quantifiable risks.  When they can put 
> numbers on a risk, they love to study the heck out of out it (even if, 
> in fact, it is not that important), because playing games with numbers 
> and equations makes the risk-scientist have a warm feeling that they 
> are doing something.

Good point. Might explain why we are doing so well on NEOs.


> I think that the best thing that could happen right now is for the 
> risk scientists to stop and look at themselves for a while.  Try to 
> understand their OWN biasses first, then, when they've got a grip on 
> that, get back to looking at everyone else's.

However, most work on dealing with risks is not done by risk scientists 
but by ordinary scientists. They see the risk, think they ought to do 
something, and then do something. In the quantifiable fields it looks 
much better than in the nonquantifiable fields.


I would love to convey the importance of other xrisks to this community, 
but I don't want to clank down too much on what they are doing - after 
all, they are doing something to reducing xrisks, and otherwise their 
efforts would not be spent on xrisk mitigation at all. It is not as if 
people look around, realize they need to stop xrisks, find the most 
important one, and start working on it. Maybe they should, but that is 
not how it works right now.



-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute 
James Martin 21st Century School 
Philosophy Faculty 
Oxford University