1. You can’t reason based on track record in the same way you can with normal predictions.
2. The stakes are extremely high. Being wrong on normal predictions rarely matters as much.

Why?

Regarding point one, reasoning based on track record:

Normally, a type of prediction being wrong again and again will lead you to dismiss that type of prediction. For instance, if every year (for some reason), experts predict that your country will soon have the highest math scores in the world, and yet each year it is ranked 50th in such scores, eventually, you (rightly) ignore the experts.

However, with extinction risks, this kind of reasoning doesn’t quite work. In all possible universes, those who predict the extinction of their species will be wrong right up until extinction happens. The predictions can, at most, be right only once.

Consider two worlds: one where humans go extinct in 2030 and one where they don’t ever go extinct (or go extinct only much later). What would you observe in 2029 regarding past predictions of extinction in these two worlds?

Well, in both worlds you’d observe that all past extinction predictions had failed up until that point. (If anything, I’d anticipate having MORE past extinction predictions fail in the world where extinction happens in 2030 since there would be more evidence of potential extinction in that world, all else equal.)

Therefore, the reasoning that “we’ve had a lot of past extinction predictions and they’ve always failed, therefore extinction is unlikely” is not a good argument – you’d witness these failed predictions in both such worlds (and perhaps even more of them in the world where extinction happens soon).

This makes predictions of extinction a special class of prediction.

To dismiss arguments about extinction risk, it’s necessary to engage with the actual arguments themselves, as they can’t be dismissed as a group due to past failed predictions. While near misses can tell you about the probability of some extinction risks (e.g., times when nuclear war nearly broke out or asteroid near impacts), failed predictions are not very informative.

Regarding point two, the enormous stakes:

Extinction, most people will agree, would be incredibly bad. For that reason, they don’t have to be very likely to be worth taking very, very seriously.

In a world where there were millions of distinct, plausible extinction risks, the large number of them would suggest that each one is (a priori) not that likely to end the species, and in such a world, it might be silly to invest much in these kinds of concerns (unless a smaller number of much more likely ones could be identified).

But that’s not the world we live in. There are only around 13 plausible human extinction risks – and in this short list, some of them aren’t even really plausible (when considered as a potential cause of literally ALL humans dying out). Here’s the list, in no particular order (if I missed any, let me know):

1. Advanced AI technology
2. Nuclear war or the invention of new destructive weapons
3. Pathogens (e.g., human-engineered viruses)
4. Asteroids, extreme solar flares, supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, or other cosmological events
5. A mega volcano, mega earthquake, dramatic change in the earth’s magnetic field, or another major geological event
6. Advanced nanotech (e.g., grey goo) or synthetic biology
7. The second coming of various figures according to different religions, or god(s) or demons ending the world or terminating our species
8. Simulators (if we’re living in a simulation) ending the world or our species
9. Aliens from other planets
10. Runaway climate change/extreme climate shifts, or sudden ecosystem collapse
11. Physics experiments (e.g., related to vacuum stability) gone wrong or that were purposely carried out to end humanity
12. Universal environmental contaminates turning out to be deadly or to cause infertility
13. Extreme population decline until no reproduction takes place (e.g., following an event that greatly reduces the world population)

Obviously, some of these are much less probable than others. And maybe you think some of these are ridiculous. Okay, cross those out. What about the others?

Given the incredible stakes, the short size of the list, and humanity’s (in my view, bizarre and irrational) unwillingness to protect its own future, all of these are worth investing much more in than humanity currently does. Obviously, it could be stupid for humanity to invest so much in preventing extinction that it’s seriously impaired. But we invest so little, it’s almost absurd.

I don’t think that predictions of extinction can be easily dismissed, despite all prior such predictions being wrong – they don’t work like other predictions do and are much higher stakes.

This piece was first written on February 13, 2025, and first appeared on my website on April 9, 2025.

You shouldn’t spoil the movie: imagine going to a movie that has a lot of good parts, but you don’t enjoy those good parts because while they’re happening, you keep thinking about the fact that the movie will eventually end. If it doesn’t make sense to do that in a movie, then it makes even less sense to do that in your life. You may find it helpful to simply note when disruptive thoughts about death occur and remind yourself at those times that they are counterproductive if they are distracting you from enjoying “the movie.”

Death doesn’t harm you while living or dead: if a person is alive, then death has not reached them yet, so a person’s death cannot harm that person while they are still living. If a person is dead, then they do not exist, and so can experience no harm. Hence your own death cannot harm you either when you are living or when you are dead. So if death is a harm to you, it is a harm to you during those seconds or minutes when you are transitioning from alive to dead, but at least that period is very short-lived and has not happened yet.

Death is bearable: if it is not death itself that you fear, but rather the suffering that sometimes comes before death, keep in mind that very, very few people commit suicide upon nearing death, suggesting that the suffering that sometimes comes before slow deaths is probably very rarely truly intolerable (unless the barrier to committing suicide is very high).

You are incredibly lucky to exist at all: you may not feel it every day (or even most days), but the fact that you exist is an extremely lucky chance occurrence. Consider, for instance, that male ejaculate contains on average about 280 million sperm, and that if ANY of these had fertilized your mother’s egg other than the one that did, you would not exist right now. And that’s just one of a vast number of coincidences that were required for you to be born.

It could be worse: there are probably quite a few things worse than total oblivion (hell, for instance, or just being tortured for years). To me, this contrast effect (comparing death to even worse things) makes me feel better about death itself since it is merely oblivion and could be worse.

Your impact can live on: the things you choose to do while alive can impact distant generations living long after you are gone, even if you are not a famous scientist or influential politician. For instance, if you have children, then the way you treat them will have effects on how they treat their children and hence how their children treat their own children, etc. (at least, assuming the world doesn’t end before then). Or, if over a span of a number of years you end up giving ten thousand dollars to malaria prevention, it could very well save a person’s life, which could have long-term positive consequences for that person’s parents and spouse and friends and children. More generally, there are ripple effects for many actions that you take, which end up having second-order and third-order consequences that could extend long past your lifespan.

Full acceptance can make it easier: instead of fighting mentally against the reality that you will die, truly accepting that it will happen and then focussing on how to live your life with this constraint can be less upsetting in the long run. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should give in to dying soon: you should still do everything you can to extend your life while fully accepting that it is eventually inevitable.

We’re in this together: remember that everyone who was born more than 125 years ago is now dead, that this is something all humans face, and that (unless some truly remarkable new technology is invented, which I’m hoping for, but which is a long shot) we all share this hardship. Talk to others about how they come to peace with death. Lean on them. You don’t need to go it alone.

You can have one hell of a ride: even though the ride must end, you can make it a damn good one. With hard work and some luck, you can have a truly amazing and meaningful time while you’re here.

Finiteness does not mean meaninglessness: occasionally, people find that the fact that things will end makes everything feel meaningless. But if you believe this is true, that implies that you believe things would only be meaningful if they lasted forever. I don’t know about you, but this intuitively feels false to me. My gut says the opposite is true, at least in the sense that finiteness imbues greater meaning to each minute, making time more precious.

Death is a reminder to deeply savor: because of death, we should make an extra effort to try to savor the taste of every bite of chocolate, the feeling on our skin when we walk outside into nice weather, the coziness of being indoors when it’s raining, the excitement of each deep connection we make with other human beings, the start of our favorite song, the smell of fresh air, and the thrill of grasping a new idea. If you lived forever, you could consume each of these things an infinite number of times, but you only have a finite number of each of them left, so experience them as fully and completely as you can manage.

Death is bad, but you can find peace with it: don’t get me wrong, death is NOT a good thing (except in the rare instances where it cuts a bad existence short). It is undeniably bad because it causes good things (things that we value) to cease. One day of happy, meaningful, altruistic life lived is better than just one hour of it, and one year of it is better still (all else held equal). Even if there are a few problems that death makes simpler, like overcrowding and avoiding the stagnation of ideas, in the absence of death, we could find better solutions for these problems. But even accepting that death is truly bad, it is something we can learn to be at peace with.
Consider returning to the list above when you feel your own mortality weighing on you heavily, and see which of these framings you find most helpful.

Is it worth taking a 1 in 100,000 chance of dying , in order to experience the novel thrill of sky diving? Is a 1 in 500,000 chance of death worth it to go bungee jumping?

It’s hard to know whether these risks are reasonable, because numbers like 100,000 or 500,000 feel so abstract to us. To think more clearly about these numbers, it helps to get our intuitions engaged.

We can start by figuring out the daily risk of dying that we automatically face every day. My “death calculator” tool above will compute yours, as estimated from your gender and age. For instance, in the United States, a 30 year old man has about a 1 in 260,000 chance of dying tomorrow whereas a 30 year old woman has about a 1 in 583,000 chance. A 55 year old man has a 1 in 46,000 chance of dying on any given day and a 55 year old woman a 1 in 79,000 chance. Note that while it’s extremely difficult to estimate a person’s life span (since future technological and societal changes may radically alter how long people live), estimating how likely a person is to die in the next day is much more accurate and straightforward.

Once you’ve used the tool to calculate your own chance of dying tomorrow, you can start thinking about the risk of dangerous activities relative to how much risk you already take each day (merely by going about normal activities). In particular, you can calculate how many total days worth of risk an activity involves. So for instance, if you are a 30 year old male, and ride 100 miles on a motorcycle tomorrow, then you’ll experienced 11.2 days worth of risk of dying tomorrow, rather than a single normal day of risk.

To do the calculation of how many days of risk you’re taking in a day where you do the dangerous activity, simply calculate the following: Start with the probability that you die in a normal day, add to it the probability that you die from doing the risky activity, and then divide the result by the probability that you die in a normal day.

So for instance, if you were to go BASE jumping tomorrow (an activity that appears to have about a 1 in 2,300 chance of death), and if you normally have a 1 in 100,000 chance of dying in a given day (for instance, you’re a 46 year old man) then you’d be taking on ((1/2300)+(1/100000))/(1/100,000) = 44.5 days worth of ordinary daily risk tomorrow, instead of just 1 day of risk.

Would that be worth it? For some people, it might be possible it is worth BASE jumping once in their in life. But suppose you were to go BASE jumping 20 times over the next year, on 20 different days. Then rather than consuming 365 days of typical risk that year (as a 46 year old man), you’d be taking on about 1235 days worth of risk, an additional roughly 2.4 years of risk! It’s hard to imagine that being worth it, even if BASE jumping is incredibly enjoyable. Of course, there is also a high risk of injury, aside from the risk of death.

Below is a table with estimates of the chance of dying from doing various activities.

Taking a 340 mile road trip on occasion with friends seems very reasonable. For instance, a 30 year old male will only be doubling his risk of dying that day, and a 30 year old female will be taking on about 3.3 days of her usual daily risk. But taking a job as a taxi driver in a suburban area or a long distance courier, driving 340 miles most days, would be much more risky. A 30 year old male who took such a job would be doubling his risk of dying every day. Another way to think about it is that despite being a 30 year old male, he would living with the daily risk of a 43 year old male. Similarly, a 30 year old male who decided to go BASE jumping one day, would be living that day with the daily risk of death of an 88 year old man.

So what risks are worth taking? It’s ultimately a subjective question. But thinking in terms of how much you’re increasing your ordinary daily risk, and converting risks into the daily risk of people of different ages, can make these abstract numbers more intuitive. And stronger intuition can help us reason more sanely about our choices.

Disclaimer: these numbers come from the internet, so if you want to be confident about any of them, you should double check them using a reliable source. Note also that actual death rates will depend on a variety of factors, including the amount of experience you have doing that activity and the location where you are doing it. Furthermore, note that for many of these activities there are risks of injury, in addition to risk of death, but I’ve only considered risk of death in this analysis. Be very cautious before deciding to engage in any dangerous activity!