Precipice

by Toby Ord

Paperback, 2021

Status

Available

Call number

303.49

Genres

Publication

Hachette Books (2021), 480 pages

Description

From one of the world's leading moral voices, this urgent and eye-opening book makes the case that protecting humanity's future is the central challenge of our time. If all goes well, human history is just beginning. Our species could survive for billions of years enough time to end disease, poverty, and injustice, and to flourish in ways unimaginable today. But this vast future is at risk. With the advent of nuclear weapons, humanity entered a new age, where we face existential catastrophes those from which we could never come back. Since then, these dangers have only multiplied, from climate change to engineered pathogens and unaligned artificial intelligence. If we do not act fast to reach a place of safety, it will soon be too late. Drawing on over a decade of research, The Precipice explores the cutting-edge science behind the risks we face. It puts them in the context of the greater story of humanity, showing how ending these risks is among the most pressing moral issues of our time. And it points the way forward, to the actions and strategies that can safeguard humanity. An Oxford philosopher committed to putting ideas into action, Toby Ord has advised the US National Intelligence Council, the UK Prime Ministers Office, and the World Bank on the greatest challenges facing humanity. In The Precipice, he offers a startling reassessment of human history, the future we are failing to protect, and the steps we must take to ensure that our generation is not the last.… (more)

Media reviews

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Ord implies that there is relatively little need to adjudicate traditional ethical debates right now, that this can instead be left for the Long Reflection. ... But I believe The Precipice in fact brings into focus a number of ethical and other philosophical debates the adjudication of which cannot

wait. ... Ord's book is the best starting place for philosophers looking to participate in this vital interdisciplinary endeavor.

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Los Angeles Review of Books

I suspect that the greatest resistance to The Precipice will be to its use of the first-person plural. It isn’t a stylistic objection; it takes us, rather, to the heart of the project. Getting you to occupy this “we,” where Ord’s argument is clarified and its urgency most deeply felt, is

the book’s most incredible work.

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Books, Et Al.

I urge caution against setting our action threshold to the level of a global catastrophe, which could distort the way we prioritize our next decisions. But Ord’s map of the existential risk landscape is an engaging read for anyone who wants to learn more about this important and interdisciplinary

research.

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The New Yorker

In a book that seems made for the present moment, Ord, a moral philosopher, examines and seeks to quantify existential risk—the looming threats that might someday wipe out humanity.

The Spectator

It’s not a gloomy book. Ord doesn’t take the easy route of bemoaning the human race as despoilers or vandals; he loves it and wants it to thrive. We have achieved so much — come to understand the universe, reduced poverty and illnesses — and he wants us to carry on doing so. The final

section on our potential, should we survive the ‘precipice’ of the next century or two, is moving and poetic ...

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London Evening Standard

Many people have recently found that they want to read books offering the grandest perspectives possible on human existence ... Toby Ord’s new book is a startling and rigorous contribution to this genre ... It is clearly written, approachable and concise for a work tackling such an immense

subject, since Ord has confined all subsidiary questions to extensive footnotes and appendices.

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User reviews

LibraryThing member davidroche

In for a pandemic, in for Armageddon. The Precipice – Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity (Bloomsbury) by Toby Ord is surprisingly a book of hope, given that he believes there is a 1 in 6 chance that an existential crisis will hit in the next century and the future potential of the human

race may be blunted permanently. Ord examines our self-inflicted risks such as nuclear winters and climate change, and potential new threats such as engineered pandemics and artificial general intelligence reaching singularity. This work crosses multiple disciplines of science and PPE, but is nicely structured for the lighter reader, such as myself. Of the 468 pages 241 are the general book, which is followed by 7 appendices giving more detail on specific areas e.g. ethics, risk, policy and research; 132 pages of notes that are for the heavy lifters who want to drill down into greater detail; and then the extensive bibliography and index.

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LibraryThing member nmele

The themes and the size of this book were intimidating, but Ord captured me with his argument that the future of humankind is, from our perspective, boundless, so why not take what steps we can to reduce existential threats to ourselves and our future progeny. Ord is thorough, considering

everything from the awakening of artificial intelligences inimical to human beings, asteroid strike, natural and artificial pandemics, nuclear winter and environmental degradation and what we might call the 1984 scenario where a single autocratic dystopia limits our descendants' ability to thrive and develop. On the other hand, his vision for humanity's future is expansive; Ord imagines a future where an expanding humanity explores and settles not only this galaxy and neighboring galaxies, but the entire universe. He supports his risk estimates and most of his projections with current science, probability theory and healthy doses of math. Most of this infrastructure he sequesters in notes and appendices, all very readable, but the meat of the book is a set of straightforward discussions of the risks and an argument for taking action to reduce those risks.

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LibraryThing member fpagan

Oxford ethics philosopher Ord judges that nothing is more important than safeguarding the existence of far-future human generations (and, I'd hope, transhuman ones) and finds that "the chance of an existential catastrophe striking humanity in the next hundred years is about one in six." He

calculates that anthropogenic risks (such as nuclear war, climate change, and rogue AI) outweigh natural ones (such as asteroids and supervolcanoes) by a factor of 1000. It's a major, detailed work -- an important book that can serve either as an average-length semi-popularization, if one just reads the main text, or as somewhat of a scholarly tome, if one takes care to also read all the meaty endnotes (and the 7 appendices).

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LibraryThing member bookboy804

The premise of this book is that humanity's future's (potentially) so bright [we] gotta wear shades. Therefore, we must plan for and avoid potential existential risks that could make this bright future impossible to achieve. I give this effort 4 stars because it's well written, researched and

documented. Over 200 pages are devoted to detailed notes, appendices, bibliography and an index, which is a definite plus in a work of this type. Clearly this book is well researched and thought out. However, I find the premise that Humanity is an entity with agency and the capacity to be harmed by an existential crisis unconvincing, even if only metaphorical. I'm much more concerned with problems not considered as existential threats by this author: basically problems that cause actual suffering to actual living, sentient beings who no doubt number in the trillions.

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