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Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards

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1 Introduction It’s dangerous to be alive and risks are everywhere. Luckily, not all risks are equally serious. For present purposes we can use three dimensions to describe the magnitude of a risk: scope, intensity, and probability. By “scope” I mean the size of the group of people that are at risk. By “intensity” I mean how badly each individual in the group would be affected. And by “probabilit

1 Introduction It’s dangerous to be alive and risks are everywhere. Luckily, not all risks are equally serious. For present purposes we can use three dimensions to describe the magnitude of a risk: scope, intensity, and probability. By “scope” I mean the size of the group of people that are at risk. By “intensity” I mean how badly each individual in the group would be affected. And by “probability” I mean the best current subjective estimate of the probability of the adverse outcome.1 1.1 A typology of risk We can distinguish six qualitatively distinct types of risks based on their scope…

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