Are We Taking These Accidental Risks Seriously?

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podcast is about accidental risks. We go through the usual list of options, right? There's climate change, bio terrorism, asteroid hitting the earth. And we try to think about both what these risks are and also what we should do about them. Andrew explains how he didn't come into office in parliament being the accidential risk guy. He cares now about things like superintelligent a i in a way that he did before.

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.

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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.

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