Is There a Prior Probability?

In 2020, Oxford academic and 80,000 Hours trustee Dr Toby Ord released his book The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. It's about how our long-term future could be better than almost anyone believes, but also how humanity's recklessness is putting that future at grave risk — in Toby's reckoning, a 1 in 6 chance of being extinguished this century.

Toby is a famously good explainer of complex issues — a bit of a modern Carl Sagan character — so we thought this would be a perfect introduction to the problem of existential risks.

This episode first broadcast on the regular 80,000 Hours Podcast feed on March 7, 2020. Some related episodes include:

• #81 – Ben Garfinkel on scrutinising classic AI risk arguments
• #70 – Dr Cassidy Nelson on the twelve best ways to stop the next pandemic (and limit COVID-19)
• #43 – Daniel Ellsberg on the creation of nuclear doomsday machines, the institutional insanity that maintains them, & how they could be dismantled

Series produced by Keiran Harris.