From Nineteen Eighty-Four to Black Mirror, we are all familiar with the tropes of dystopian science fiction. But what if worst-case scenarios could actually become reality? And what if we could do something now to put the world on a better path?
In my new book, Avoiding the Worst: How to Prevent a Moral Catastrophe, I lay out the concept of risks of future suffering (s-risks). With a focus on s-risks that are both realistic and avoidable, I argue that we have strong reasons to consider their reduction a top priority. Finally, I turn to the question of what we can do to help steer the world away from s-risks and towards a brighter future.
You can get the book for free on Amazon or read the PDF version.
Other writings
S-risks
- S-risks: An introduction
- Arguments for and against a focus on s-risks
- S-risk FAQ
- A typology of s-risks
- Risk factors for s-risks
- How can we reduce s-risks?
Thoughts on cause prioritization
- Reducing long-term risks from malevolent actors
- Space governance is important, tractable and neglected
- Is most suffering due to worst-case outcomes?
- How can we influence the long-term future?
- Representing future generations in the political process
- Improving our political system: An overview
- Thoughts on patient philanthropy
- Thoughts on longtermism
- Chaos theory, attractors and longtermism
- Arguments for and against moral advocacy
- Uncertainty smoothes out differences in impact
- An overview of wagers for reducing future suffering
The future of artificial intelligence
- Summary of my views on AI risk
- A framework for thinking about AI timescales
- Thoughts on short timelines
- What does the stock market tell us about AI timelines?
- Why I expect successful (narrow) alignment
- Should altruists focus on artificial intelligence?
Worst-case AI safety
- An introduction to worst-case AI safety
- Focus areas of worst-case AI safety
- Mechanism design for AI
- Cooperative Artificial Intelligence (MPhil thesis)
- Training neural networks to detect suffering
Agential s-risks
- Using surrogate goals to deflect threats
- Challenges to implementing surrogate goals
- Surrogate goals under uncertainty
- Surrogate goals and private information
- Research priorities for preventing threats
- Symmetry between two types of anti-threat measures
- Heuristics to assess the feasibility of threats
Miscellaneous
- Spanish translations of my publications
- Thoughts on electoral reform
- Thoughts on space colonisation
- AMA on the Effective Altruism Forum
- Open Research Questions
- Spreadsheet: Overview of plausible priority areas for s-risk reduction
- Tool use and intelligence: A conversation
- Strategic implications of AI scenarios
- Summary of Eric Drexler’s work on reframing AI safety
- Sentience Politics Philosophy Sequence
- The Case Against Speciesism
- Altruism, Numbers, and Factory Farms
- Effective Strategies To Reduce Animal Suffering
- The Relevance of Wild Animal Suffering
- The Importance of the Far Future
- The Benefits of Cause-Neutrality
Further reading
- Center for Reducing Suffering
- Resources on suffering-focused ethics
- Brian Tomasik’s Essays on Reducing Suffering
- Magnus Vinding’s blog
- Simon Knutsson’s writing on ethics
- Center on Long-Term Risk