Rating: 10
The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity
Toby Ord | 2020
The Precipice is a compelling work that addresses the existential risks that are (or could) threaten not only the extinction of humanity but also our potential. It is one of the most well-structured, thoroughly researched, and engaging books I’ve read all year. Ord argues that we’re currently in a unique, brief period of time that will determine whether we mature and grow as a species or succumb to the numerous threats we face. It is in this period (which he names ‘The Precipice’) that he urges humanity to undergo a moral revolution so that our collective wisdom can match our technological prowess, thus minimizing the probability of civilizational collapse. Ord argues that the species of Homo sapiens, who have been around for 200,000 years, is essentially an adolescent, and like actual adolescents we are prone to making rash decisions without regard for our future. However, if we play our cards right we could exist and thrive for potentially billions of years to come. What’s most important now is for humanity to preserve our options through existential security. The book is filled with detailed and compelling discussions about a number of existential risks, including those that are natural (asteroids/comets, supervolcanic eruptions, stellar explosions), ones that are anthropogenic (nuclear weapons, climate change, environmental damage), and those that will threaten us in the future (pandemics, unaligned artificial intelligence, dystopian scenarios). Ord evaluates these risks through various metrics to determine which ones should be prioritized, but his careful analysis and comparison of their probabilities is most convincing. Overall, The Precipice is an impressively persuasive work that, despite its terrifying subject matter, encourages a constructive and hopeful approach to addressing these problems.
“And a world without agony and injustice is just a lower bound on how good life could be. Neither the sciences nor the humanities have yet found any upper bound. We get some hint at what is possible during life’s best moments: glimpses of raw joy, luminous beauty, soaring love. Moments when we are truly awake. These moments, however brief, point to possible heights of flourishing far beyond the status quo, and far beyond our current comprehension.”
“People matter equally regardless of their temporal locations too. Our lives matter just as much as those lived thousands of years ago, or those a thousand years hence. Just as it would be wrong to think that other people matter less the further they are from you in space, so it is to think they matter less the further away from you they are in time. The value of their happiness, and the horror of their suffering, is undiminished.”