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To the hundred billion people before us, who fashioned our civilisation; To the seven billion now alive, whose actions may determine its fate; To the trillions to come, whose existence lies in the balance.
a species precariously close to self-destruction, with a future of immense promise hanging in the balance.
safeguarding humanity’s future is the defining challenge of our time.
To allow this book to reach a diverse readership, I’ve been ruthless in stripping out the jargon, needless technical detail and defensive qualifications typical of academic writing
In ecological terms, it is not a human that is remarkable, but humanity.
Either humanity takes control of its destiny and reduces the risk to a sustainable level, or we destroy ourselves.
The Precipice gives our time immense meaning.
our actions have uniquely high stakes.
I think safeguarding humanity through these times is among the most noble purposes you could pursue.
An existential risk is a risk that threatens the destruction of humanity’s longterm potential.
If we fail, that upwards force, that capacity to push towards what is best or what is just, will vanish from the world.
we threaten, in the name of our transient aims and fallible convictions, to foreclose it all.
the immense value of humanity’s potential—
To risk destroying this future, for the sake of some advantage limited only to the present,
it privileges this particular century over the millions, or maybe billions, yet to come.
People matter equally regardless of their temporal location, too.
longtermism,
A full explanation of why economic discounting does not trivialise the value of the longterm future can be found in Appendix A.
‘population ethics’
Appendix B.
While Epicurus’s argument may provide consolation in times of grief or fear, it is not fit to be a guide for action, and no one treats it so.
how concern about existential risk could also spring from considerations of our past, our character and our cosmic significance.
obligations to our grandparents, as well as our grandchildren.
one doesn’t repay one’s parents. One passes it on.
if we drop the baton, succumbing to an existential catastrophe, we would fail our ancestors
look at humanity itself as a group agent,
civilisational virtues and vices.
Whether we are alone in the universe is one of the greatest remaining mysteries of science.
we are alone, our survival and our actions might take on a cosmic significance.
we may yet be one of the most rare and precious parts of the cosmos.
ethics from the perspective of humanity.
humanity over deep time:
It changes the way we see the world and our role in it, shifting our attention from things that affect the fleeting present, to those that
could make fundamental alterations to the shape of the longterm future. What matters most for humanity? And what part in this plan should our generation play? What part should I play?
If we are the only moral agents that will ever arise in our universe—the only beings capable of making choices on the grounds of what is right and wrong—then responsibility for the history of the universe is entirely on us.
This is the only chance ever to shape the universe towards what is right, what is just, what is best for all.
For it would only be through us that a part of the universe could come to fully understand the laws that govern the whole.
humanity would be the only form of life capable of stewarding life itself,
we could understand the importance of existential risk in terms of our present, our future, our past, our character or our cosmic significance.
doesn’t rely on any single school of moral thought, but springs naturally from a great many.
failing forever in what could well be our most important duty.
there would be immense value of information in finding out more about whether our future will be positive or negative.
protect humanity until we have a much more informed position on this crucial question.
do well to be humble, to leave our options open, and to ensure our descendants have a chance to see more clearly, and choose more wisely, than we can today.
Protection from existential risk is a public good:
global public good—
Protection from existential risk is an intergenerational global public good.
availability heuristic.
scope neglect.
Bertrand Russell
