WorksheetsWeek 4: Pandemics and existential risks
Total questions: 5
Worksheet time: 3mins
What is existential risk?
An existential risk is a threat to the life of an individual or group.
An existential risk is a risk that threatens the destruction of humanity's longterm potential.
An existential risk is a risk to the continued existence of effective altruism as a community.
An existential risk is the risk that existence will no longer be understandable by humans.
The present generation lives in the most prosperous period in human history. Why is it plausibly also the most dangerous?
The chance that we discover a technology with more destructive power than we have the ability to wisely use.
The explosive growth of the human population may cause overpopulation
The end of a unipolar world and rising chance of Great Power Conflict
Artificial Intelligence
Climate change is certainly a major risk to civilisation and biodiversity, and its destabilising effects could exacerbate other risks (inc. risks of nuclear conflict).
What, however, is the main reason EA does not consider it to be as high a priority as other problems, such as artificial intelligence and engineered pandemics?
It is not a neglected cause area.
Interventions related to climate change are less tractable than those in other cause areas
It is impossible to prevent, and will take a long time to happen.
It looks unlikely that even 13 degrees of warming would directly cause the extinction of humanity.
Which of the following is NOT an existential risk?
Climate Change
Pandemics
Supervolcanic Eruptions
Hyperinflation
Artificial Intelligence
The Biological Weapons Convention's (BWC)'s total annual budget is equivalent to...
The annual budget of the World Health Organisation
The annual budget of an average McDonald's franchise
The annual budget of Wikipedia
