Effective Altruism Forum
EA Forum

Hide table of contents
Comment Permalink
Jonas V2
0
0

For those looking for the ebook, it's only available on the Canadian, German, and Australian (cheapest) amazon pages (but not US / UK ones). (EDIT: Actually available on the UK store.)

Reply
See in context
by matthew.vandermerwe
2 min read 17

146

CommunityBooksLongtermismToby OrdThe Precipice
Frontpage

The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity is out today. I’ve been working on the book with Toby for the past 18 months, and I’m excited for everyone to read it. I think it has the potential to make a profound difference to the way the world thinks about existential risk.

How to get it

  • It's out in the UK on March 5 and US March 24
  • An audiobook, narrated by Toby himself, is out March 24
  • You can buy it on Amazon now, or at theprecipice.com/purchase
  • You can download the opening chapters for free by signing up to the newsletter at www.theprecipice.com

What you can do

  • Read the book
  • Talk about it with your friends and family, or share quotes you like on social media
  • If you enjoy it, consider writing a review on Amazon or Goodreads

Summary of the book

Part One: The Stakes

Toby places our time within the broad sweep of human history: showing how far humanity has come in 2,000 centuries, and where we might go if we survive long enough. He outlines the major transitions in our past—the Agricultural, Scientific, and Industrial Revolutions. Each is characterised by dramatic increases in our power over the natural world, and together they have yielded massive improvements in living standards. During the twentieth century, with the detonation of the atomic bomb, humanity entered a new era. We gained the power to destroy itself, without the wisdom to ensure that we don’t. This is the Precipice, and how we navigate this period will determine whether humanity has a long and flourishing future, or no future at all. Toby introduces the concept of existential risk—risks that threaten to destroy humanity’s longterm potential. He shows how the case for safeguarding humanity from these risks draws support from a range of moral perspectives. Yet it remains grossly neglected—humanity spends more each year on ice cream than we do on protecting our future.

Part Two: The Risks

Toby explores the science behind the risks we face. In Natural Risks, he considers threats from asteroids & comets, supervolcanic eruptions, and stellar explosions. He shows how we can use humanity’s 200,000 year history to place strict bounds on how high the natural risk could be. In Anthropogenic Risks, he looks at risks we have imposed on ourselves in the last century,  from nuclear war, extreme climate change, and environmental damage. In Future Risks, he turns to threats that are on the horizon from emerging technologies, focusing in detail on engineered pandemics, unaligned artificial intelligence, and dystopian scenarios. 

Part Three: The Path Forward

Toby surveys the risk landscape and gives his own estimates for each risk. He also provides tools for thinking about how they compare and combine, and for how to prioritise between risks. He estimates that nuclear war and climate change each pose more risk than all the natural risks combined, and that risks from emerging technologies are higher still. Altogether, Toby believes humanity faces a 1 in 6 change of existential catastrophe in the next century. He argues that it is in our power to end these risks today, and to reach a place of safety. He outlines a grand strategy for humanity, provides actionable policy and research recommendations, and shows what each of us can do. The book ends with an inspiring vision of humanity’s potential, and what we might hope to achieve if we navigate the risks of the next century. 

146

0
0

Reactions

0
0
Mentioned in

More posts like this

Comments18


Sorted by
New & upvoted
Click to highlight new comments since:
Robert_Wiblin11
0
0

I've compiled 16 fun or important points from the book for the write-up of my interview with Toby, which might well be of interest people here. :)

Reply
JP Addison🔸8
0
0

I have a selfish question. How hard is it for y'all to get the audio synced with the text version? (Amazon calls this Whispersync.)

(This is selfish because despite constant evangelizing on my part, my friends are not that enthusiastic, and I have no indicators that I'm normal in my fanaticism for this feature.)

Reply
matthew.vandermerwe2
0
0

I will investigate this and get back to you!

Reply
MichaelA🔸6
0
0

Excited to get stuck into this!

I generally prefer audiobooks, but on 80k Toby mentioned that about half of the book is interesting footnotes and appendices. Will the audiobook version have all of that? And how would it work (e.g., are all the footnotes just read at the end, or read alongside the relevant part of the main text)?

Reply
matthew.vandermerwe15
0
0

The audiobook will not include the endnotes. We really couldn't see any good way of doing this, unfortunately.

Toby is right that there's a huge amount of great stuff in there, particularly for those already more familiar with existential risk, so I would highly recommend getting your hands on a physical or ebook version (IMO ebook is the best format for endnotes, since they'll be hyperlinked).

Reply
Jonas V2
0
0

For those looking for the ebook, it's only available on the Canadian, German, and Australian (cheapest) amazon pages (but not US / UK ones). (EDIT: Actually available on the UK store.)

Reply
Jest(comment)er1
0
0

Infinite Jest has them at the end of the audiobook in chaptered (clickable) segments, iirc

[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply
MichaelA🔸1
0
0

Thanks. Yes, I'll get the ebook then.

Reply
Will Bradshaw4
0
0

I'd be fairly surprised if the answer wasn't "we dropped the footnotes" since this is almost always the answer. If that is not the answer I'd also be curious about how it was managed.

Reply
Sean_o_h2
0
0

That would be a shame. If you're fairly familiar with Xrisk literature and FHI's work in particular, then a lot of the juiciest facts and details are in the footnotes - I found them fascinating.

Reply
Jest(comment)er1
0
0

Infinite Jest has them at the end of the audiobook in chaptered (clickable) segments, iirc

Reply
JanB1
0
0

I think I overheard Toby saying that the footnotes and appendices were dropped in the audiobook and that, yes, the footnotes and appendices (which make up 50% of the book) should be the most interesting part for people already familiar with the X-risk literature.

Reply
Eevee🔹5
0
0

I noticed that much of the Wikipedia article about this book was copied from this post. Did you give anyone authorization to write the article using this post as the source? I ask because Wikipedia is very strict about copyrights, and I need to make sure that the article is rewritten if it violates your copyright.

Reply
matthew.vandermerwe2
0
0

Yes I gave authorization!

Reply
[anonymous]2
0
0

Such a great book!

I am struggling to get my friends and family to read it though as they are put off by it being quite a sizeable hefty book (even when I tell them they can skip the footnotes).

Are there plans to make a short/abridged paperback version that might spread more widely outside of the EA community? I'd love to see the main ideas and thoughts become somewhat common knowledge. Or is it more important to have fewer people have a deep understanding then many people have a surface level understanding?

Reply
Eevee🔹1
0
0

How are you planning to advertise the book? I have suggestions....

Reply
PlatonicPagan-1
0
0

My book has just arrived in the mail and I was excited to flick through the contents before I make my start later tonight. One thing I did notice, there makes no mention of religion and the influence it has had on human behaviour. One thing I have noticed very recently amongst this pandemic is that there seem to be some glaring issues and in my sense, classified as existential risks as they do cause endless death and carnage, and they are religion, democracy and capitalism.

I’m in the middle of gardening at the moment so can’t give this post the intricate detail it requires, but I would be very interested if someone with a voice was able to draw the dots between the fact that only approximately 25% of the world population are made up of intuitive minds and the remaining 75% classified as sensors and how the minority have evolved our species with their thinking yet are reliant on the democratic majority to make decisions for our collective species and environment. In layman’s terms, 75% of the population can only see the options presented in front of them (this traffic light is red). Whereas the remaining 25% are able to think of other options (why is this traffic light red?). As a simple man, I know which mind I would want at the head of every institution. Now, a great man once said that a democracy doesn’t work when the majority are idiots. He was right, the democracy which we are presented with, which is nothing like the true democracy of Ancient Greece, is littered with parasites and idiots (their true Ancient Greek meaning) who are incapable of knowing what’s best for the rest of their species in an altruist nature. A quick fix solution to this would be to ban political parties and the money, power and reach that supports them, this will create a fair playing field rather than this duopoly that we have and that 75% of the population can’t see past.

Religion, has someone not drawn the dots on how we became doomed with the moral compass that we have learnt from the majority of religions? Pagan gods enabled us to love and appreciate every little thing that occupies this earth as we saw a god or life story behind everything. When we took that away with one god, we instead increased our ego by telling ourselves that man created everything at the will of god, and of course to Indulge as that is the reason why he died for us. Indigenous cultures thrive because of their belief system and their respect for the life they see in everything. They live in harmony with their habitat. I believe the Roman Empire took a step back when they outlawed pagan gods at the time.

And lastly, capitalism, our sense of achievement has changed substantially. In ancient times when we learnt and discovered at a phenomenal pace, we did so because our personal sense of achievement was to discover something new, gather more wisdom or create some engineering feat. Nowadays, we measure our sense of achievement by money and how much more we have than our neighbour. The man who is poor in materials is rich in thought and the one rich in materials is too distracted to think.

My two cents, I think our existential problems all point down human behaviour. It hasn’t change throughout history and we have repeatedly repeated it, lol. Every man who tried to make change for good was persecuted or silenced, all the way back to Socrates. I reckon making parents wait a minimum of 5 years between kids should do the trick, something about birth orders and the effect on the child’s personality... But what would I know, I’ve got gardening to do

Reply
More from matthew.vandermerwe
81
Future Matters #8: Bing Chat, AI labs on safety, and pausing Future Matters
2 authors
· · 29m read
5
5
109
Future Matters #0: Space governance, future-proof ethics, and the launch of the Future Fund
2 authors
· · 18m read
20
20
70
Future Matters #3: digital sentience, AGI ruin, and forecasting track records
2 authors
· · 23m read
2
2
View more
Curated and popular this week
 ·  · 5m read
 · 
[Cross-posted from my Substack here] If you spend time with people trying to change the world, you’ll come to an interesting conundrum: Various advocacy groups reference previous successful social movements as to why their chosen strategy is the most important one. Yet, these groups often follow wildly different strategies from each other to achieve social change. So, which one of them is right? The answer is all of them and none of them. This is because many people use research and historical movements to justify their pre-existing beliefs about how social change happens. Simply, you can find a case study to fit most plausible theories of how social change happens. For example, the groups might say: * Repeated nonviolent disruption is the key to social change, citing the Freedom Riders from the civil rights Movement or Act Up! from the gay rights movement. * Technological progress is what drives improvements in the human condition if you consider the development of the contraceptive pill funded by Katharine McCormick. * Organising and base-building is how change happens, as inspired by Ella Baker, the NAACP or Cesar Chavez from the United Workers Movement. * Insider advocacy is the real secret of social movements – look no further than how influential the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights was in passing the Civil Rights Acts of 1960 & 1964. * Democratic participation is the backbone of social change – just look at how Ireland lifted a ban on abortion via a Citizen’s Assembly. * And so on… To paint this picture, we can see this in action below: Source: Just Stop Oil which focuses on…civil resistance and disruption Source: The Civic Power Fund which focuses on… local organising What do we take away from all this? In my mind, a few key things: 1. Many different approaches have worked in changing the world so we should be humble and not assume we are doing The Most Important Thing 2. The case studies we focus on are likely confirmation bias, where
 ·  · 2m read
 · 
I speak to many entrepreneurial people trying to do a large amount of good by starting a nonprofit organisation. I think this is often an error for four main reasons. 1. Scalability 2. Capital counterfactuals 3. Standards 4. Learning potential 5. Earning to give potential These arguments are most applicable to starting high-growth organisations, such as startups.[1] Scalability There is a lot of capital available for startups, and established mechanisms exist to continue raising funds if the ROI appears high. It seems extremely difficult to operate a nonprofit with a budget of more than $30M per year (e.g., with approximately 150 people), but this is not particularly unusual for for-profit organisations. Capital Counterfactuals I generally believe that value-aligned funders are spending their money reasonably well, while for-profit investors are spending theirs extremely poorly (on altruistic grounds). If you can redirect that funding towards high-altruism value work, you could potentially create a much larger delta between your use of funding and the counterfactual of someone else receiving those funds. You also won’t be reliant on constantly convincing donors to give you money, once you’re generating revenue. Standards Nonprofits have significantly weaker feedback mechanisms compared to for-profits. They are often difficult to evaluate and lack a natural kill function. Few people are going to complain that you provided bad service when it didn’t cost them anything. Most nonprofits are not very ambitious, despite having large moral ambitions. It’s challenging to find talented people willing to accept a substantial pay cut to work with you. For-profits are considerably more likely to create something that people actually want. Learning Potential Most people should be trying to put themselves in a better position to do useful work later on. People often report learning a great deal from working at high-growth companies, building interesting connection
 ·  · 1m read
 · 
I wanted to share a small but important challenge I've encountered as a student engaging with Effective Altruism from a lower-income country (Nigeria), and invite thoughts or suggestions from the community. Recently, I tried to make a one-time donation to one of the EA-aligned charities listed on the Giving What We Can platform. However, I discovered that I could not donate an amount less than $5. While this might seem like a minor limit for many, for someone like me — a student without a steady income or job, $5 is a significant amount. To provide some context: According to Numbeo, the average monthly income of a Nigerian worker is around $130–$150, and students often rely on even less — sometimes just $20–$50 per month for all expenses. For many students here, having $5 "lying around" isn't common at all; it could represent a week's worth of meals or transportation. I personally want to make small, one-time donations whenever I can, rather than commit to a recurring pledge like the 10% Giving What We Can pledge, which isn't feasible for me right now. I also want to encourage members of my local EA group, who are in similar financial situations, to practice giving through small but meaningful donations. In light of this, I would like to: * Recommend that Giving What We Can (and similar platforms) consider allowing smaller minimum donation amounts to make giving more accessible to students and people in lower-income countries. * Suggest that more organizations be added to the platform, to give donors a wider range of causes they can support with their small contributions. Uncertainties: * Are there alternative platforms or methods that allow very small one-time donations to EA-aligned charities? * Is there a reason behind the $5 minimum that I'm unaware of, and could it be adjusted to be more inclusive? I strongly believe that cultivating a habit of giving, even with small amounts, helps build a long-term culture of altruism — and it would
Recent opportunities in Community
3
Applications Open: AI Safety India Phase 1 – Fundamentals of Safe AI (Global Cohort)
adityaraj@eanita
· · 2m read
0
0
104
E2G help available
Will Kirkpatrick
· · 3m read
3
3
45
The CEA Events Team is Hiring for Three Program Lead Positions
OllieBase
· · 3m read
0
0
View more