Why Is No One Talking About Existential Risk? | Mara Cortona | Modern Wisdom Podcast 229

The COVID-19 pandemic, the level of uncertainty about it shouldn't have been there that seemed to have been there. I mean, we know that pandemics happen. We know that pandemics at this scale happen. You know, it, it's, it's shocking to us 'cause we haven't experienced something like this in our lifetimes, but we all knew. It w- it was modeled, like, that something like this was going to happen. And we were completely unprepared globally. And not only were we unprepared globally, but the fact that so many people in the world are just caught up in these concerns about whether it's a hoax or these conspiracies. I mean, it, it's really very simple measures that need to be taken to control the spread of this pandemic that we all knew was coming. It's very clear that our communication and collaboration systems are very broken and things are heavily politicized.

I am joined by Mara Cortona. Mara, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Pleasure to have you on. So, what are we, what are we gonna be talking-

Thanks a lot.

... about today?

Um, I'd love to talk about existential risk, um, and the way that we relate to it as individuals and, and as societies.

Positive conversation for us today, then. Everyone feeling good leaving this (laughs) leaving, leaving this in fear of the world stopping?

Okay. It's something that really troubles me that people aren't concerned about more than they are, both existential risk and global catastrophic risks, um, to the point that it is something that I tend to bring up in casual conversation, which makes me very fun at parties, um, but it is a thing that I, I really think we should be talking about more. So, here we are.

What do we need to know about to start then? What's the, the glossary of words and key terms or whatever it is that we need to be aware of before we can begin?

Sure. Um, well, I, I, initially, I think I'd like to draw a distinction between ex-risk, or existential risk, which is, um, a risk to the entire species as we know it, and, uh, global catastrophic risks, which, um, perhaps wouldn't cause the en- entire extinction of our species, um, but would lead to mass die-offs and a really low quality of life. And those are, um, those types of risks are both more likely to happen and more likely to happen sooner than the major types of ex- ex-risks that are frequently modeled and talked about. So, those are important things to discuss. Um, some of the main, some of the most critical and pressing forms of ex-risk, obviously climate change is the one on everyone's mind, um, though engineered pandemics, um, bio-weapons, and, um, nuclear war are, are right up there. So, it's really all, they're really all anthropo, um, excuse me, anthropic, um, risks. And those are distinct from sort of this background rate of existential risk that's always there, um, from, like, asteroid collisions or, um, perhaps natural pandemics, or, um, super volcanoes or the like. There's always this background risk of those happening, which is fairly low, um, as we have been on this planet to, in some degree for, um, you know, 2,000 centuries and we, we haven't come across anything like that yet. So, we're at the point where, um, those natural background risks are far outweighed by the anthropic risks that, um, are being precipitated and accelerated by our own activity. So, those are some of the main, um, the main terms that I use.