Why Is No One Talking About Existential Risk? - Mara Cortona - #229

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Howdy, friends, welcome back. My guest today is Mara Cortona, who is the Executive Director of the Astropolitics Institute and the founder of Nöonaut. The world is going to end eventually. For most of us, that concern is far away, but the smartest minds in the world of existential risk put the likelihood that we survive the next century at one in three. With this hugely terrifying statistic hanging over our heads, why is no one focusing on the big problems? Poorly aligned artificial general intelligence, biotechnology and other risks are all significantly more dangerous than global warming or the 2020 election, but get paid far less lip service. And today, Mara is going to put forth her case about why she thinks that that disparity is happening, and also to hopefully try and alert you to exactly where the main existential risks lie. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Mara Cortona.
So, what are we going to be talking about today?

**Mara Cortona** (1:18)
I'd love to talk about existential risk and the way that we relate to it as individuals and as societies.

**Chris Williamson** (1:26)
Positive conversation for us today then, everyone feeling good leaving this in fear of the world stopping?

**Mara Cortona** (1:34)
It's something that really troubles me that people aren't concerned about more than they are, both existential risk and global catastrophic risks. To the point that it is something that I tend to bring up in casual conversation, which makes me very fun at parties.
But it is a thing that I really think we should be talking about more, so here we are.

**Chris Williamson** (1:55)
What do we need to know about to start then? What's the glossary of words and key terms or whatever it is that we need to be aware of before we can begin?

**Mara Cortona** (2:04)
Sure. Well, initially, I think I'd like to draw a distinction between ex-risk or existential risk, which is a risk to the entire species as we know it, and global catastrophic risks, which perhaps wouldn't cause the entire extinction of our species, but would lead to mass die-offs and a really low quality of life. Those types of risks are both more likely to happen and more likely to happen sooner than the major types of ex-risks that are frequently modeled and talked about. Those are important things to discuss. Some of the most critical and pressing forms of ex-risk, obviously climate change is the one on everyone's mind.
Though engineered pandemics, bio-weapons and nuclear war are right up there. So it's really all, they're really all anthropo, excuse me, anthropic risks. And those are distinct from sort of this background rate of existential risk that's always there. From like asteroid collisions or perhaps natural pandemics or super volcanoes or the like. There's always this background risk of those happening, which is fairly low. As we have been on this planet in some degree for, you know, 2000 centuries and we haven't come across anything like that yet. So we're at the point where those natural background risks are far outweighed by the anthropic risks that are being precipitated and accelerated by our own activity. So those are some of the main terms that I use.

**Chris Williamson** (3:55)
The interesting thing that I learned upon reading Tobe Yord's The Precipice, which is going to contribute to a big chunk of my understanding for what we're talking about today. One of the things I thought was really interesting was technology is the cause and furthering civilization, well-being, further industrialization, etc., is causing many of the anthropic risks. However, because the natural risk is non-zero, i.e. if you ran this world, this planet, for long enough, you would get hit by an asteroid, a supervolcano would come and fuck you in the ass. If that's the case, you have to have sufficient technology to be able to avoid that from occurring. So if you were a militant Luddite and said, well, all that we need to do, just stop all technology, stop all industrialization, we existed as hunter-gatherers for ages, let's just go back to being farming people like 10,000 years ago, we'll be fine. That's not even an option because from a civilization standpoint, eventually the natural X risk is going to catch up with you, and you don't have any of the technology to save yourself.

**Mara Cortona** (5:06)
It's true, though there are schools of thought on that as well. There are many types of organisms that have been around in an almost unchanged state for millions and millions and millions of years, mostly marine animals. But cockroaches and horseshoe crabs are doing far, far better than we are in terms of longevity and stability.