What Are Your Top 3 Accidential Risks?

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Andrew lee: There's a pleter of ways things could go wrong, none of them probable. But the possibilities are big enough that i think it's worth us investing a bit more time and energy to make sure they don't happen. He says he doesn't really think of climate change as something that could literally end humanity on earth,. Although it could cause tremendous disruption and poverty and hardship and so forth. The distinction is one between future generations not existing, and future generations having a diminished quality of life.

We’re pretty well-calibrated when it comes to dealing with common, everyday-level setbacks. But our brains aren’t naturally equipped for dealing with unlikely but world-catastrophic disasters. Yet such threats are real, both natural and human-induced. We need to collectively get better at anticipating and preparing for them, at the level of political action. Andrew Leigh is an academic and author who now serves in the Parliament of Australia. We discuss how to move the conversation about existential risks from the ivory tower to implementation in real policies.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Andrew Leigh received his Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is a member of the Australian House of Representatives representing Fenner. He was previously a professor of economics at Australian National University, and has served as Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury and Charities. His recent book is What’s the Worst That Could Happen? Existential Risk and Extreme Politics.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.