The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. by Toby Ord

The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. 

Written by a modern-day prophet, Oxford philosopher Toby Ord.

Unfortunately, we find ourselves bound to a horde of people that are conscientiously numb to the outside world, gorging on a diet of reality shows, indifferent to politics and sleep walking into financial oblivion. I have an innate fear of missing something obvious, often ponder the meaning of my life, and wrestle painfully with trivial small talk and mind-numbing boredom. Initially, I though Ord to be somewhat of an alarmist. Yet, this book is probably the best thing I’ve read, to date, in regard to relieving some of that. Ironic considering it’s largely a list of scenarios that could go wrong (or right) and probability of each. Everything from death by natural disaster to climate change and a nuclear holocaust, engineered pandemics to AI takeover (not as exciting as Ex Machina’s Ava). He also manages to shine some light on our potential in lieu of cosmic insignificance.

I found the conspiracy theorist within me was contained with the impressive number of balanced arguments and statistics Ord lays out (admittedly I did not fact check) which intuitively feel right, along with his best guesses.

Surely a quick end to humanity cannot the be worst case scenario (quick meaning a few *short* years of the remaining survivors of an apocalyptic event dropping off) if the alternative is the continued unrelenting suffering of future generations in various forms. Sounds morbid doesn’t it.

The good news is we could control and shape the latter if the powers that be put their heads together. This race has gone to the moon, genetically engineered clones and created the combustion engine, but… is also the race that buys 1/4 pounders as standard as they thought a 1/3 pounder was smaller 🍔. Regardless, our innate drive to protect kids (psychopaths and peadophiles excluded) which aren’t of our own bloodline suggest we are programmed to insure the survival of the human race. Yet, humanity will likely pre-emptively under-respond to the inevitable in a half-hearted fashion for a multitude of reasons.

1.  Free Riders (basically about return on investment)
2. Scope insensitivity
3. Availability bias (would make more sense pre-Covid)

Essentially Ord’s giving us a peak into his crystal ball and hoping we’ll react appropriately. Appropriately meaning now. It’s a good read really (easy listen on Audible too).

Kat  <3