The Precipice
The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity is a book by Toby Ord. It was published on 5 March 2020.
The book is an extended argument for the conclusion that reducing existential risk is the fundamental challenge of our time. The book's title refers to a period of heightened risk which humanity must navigate safely to realize its long-term potential. Ord dates the beginning of this period to the Trinity test, when the first atomic bomb was detonated.
Connection to longtermism
The Precipice characterizes longtermism as an ethic "especially concerned with the impacts of our actions upon the longterm future", and on which "our most important role may be how we shape—or fail to shape—that story" (Ord 2020: 46). This characterization may suggest that the book's central thesis is a restatement of the longtermist thesis. However, while the two are related, they are different. First, according to Ord the case for reducing existential risk does not presuppose longtermism, and can be made even if one rejects that view: as he writes, "[o]ne doesn’t have to approach existential risk from [a longtermist] direction" since "there is already a strong moral case just from the immediate effects" (Ord 2020: 46). Second, while reducing existential risk is an obvious path to influencing the longterm future, there may be other ways of exerting such a lasting influence....