Seven Samotsvety forecasters give their probabilities for different possible catastrophes to lead to more than 1M direct deaths in any one year, in any of the next 10 years. This post presents results, starting with a table which presents the probabilities, continuing with a discussion of each of the items, and concluding with some thoughts on relevance for Sentinel's work averting or mitigating incipient calamities.

Some forecasters found some questions in particular much more interesting, so we alternate between presenting the probability of the best model when one such exists, and the geometric mean of the odds when it's a risk that requires more subjective judgment and we have enough judgments to aggregate. Events that could fall into different buckets can resolve more than one bucket. For instance, an AI-invented biological weapon used during WW3 would resolve the “AI”, “biological weapons” and “WW3” buckets.

Summary

CalamityProbabilityRangeType of estimateWar23%18% to 40%Forecaster [...]

---

Outline:

(01:00) Summary

(01:40) War

(03:48) Natural pandemic

(05:39) The unexpected

(07:16) WW3 specifically

(08:33) AI

(10:35) Unintentional biochem

(11:16) Biological weapons

(13:05) Climate change

(14:18) Volcanoes

(21:36) US civil war

(23:16) Financial crisis (e.g., hyperinflation)

(25:29) Solar storm

(30:11) Simulation shutdown

(31:13) Asteroid impact

(32:52) Alien invasion

(33:38) Vacuum decay, spontaneous black holes, doomsday particles, or other weird physics-based catastrophes

(34:24) Conclusion and reflections

(35:34) Acknowledgements

(36:17) Appendix

(36:20) Shortcuts taken

(37:07) Other items we might have forecasted

The original text contained 4 images which were described by AI.

---

First published:
October 28th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8PcjymbWGJCgT7bSf/how-likely-are-various-precursors-of-existential-risk

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

“How Likely Are Various Precursors of Existential Risk?” by NunoSempere

LessWrong (30+ Karma)