Is It Ten to the Minus One?

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The chance of a sort of an accidental misfire then leading into a cascade is, is whatd what you'd wat you'd invisage. Their best judgments by experts they've got huge margins of error around them. What we're trying to do really is get a sense of ina rough meal orders of magnitude rather than nail down the last decimal pointof the probability. The point is it's bigger than you'd think.

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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