_Originally released January 2021._ Imagine that humanity has two possible futures ahead of it: Either we’re going to have a huge future, in which trillions of people ultimately exist, or we’re going to wipe ourselves out quite soon, thereby ensuring that only around 100 billion people ever get to live. Maybe we should put more of our resources into avoiding apparent extinction threats like nuclear war and pandemics. But on the other hand, maybe the "doomsday argument" shows we’re incredibly unlikely to achieve a long and stable future no matter what we do, and we should forget the long term and just focus on the here and now instead.

There are many critics of this theoretical doomsday argument, and it may be the case that it logically doesn’t work. This is why today's guest Ajeya Cotra — senior research analyst at Open Philanthropy — spent time investigating it, with the goal of ultimately making better philanthropic grants.

In this conversation, Ajeya and Rob discuss both the doomsday argument and the challenge Open Phil faces striking a balance between taking big ideas seriously, and not going all-in on philosophical arguments that may turn out to be barking up the wrong tree entirely.

In this episode:
• Rob's intro [00:00:00]
• Worldview diversification [00:08:45]
• Science and policy funding [00:23:10]
• Fairness agreements [00:27:50]
• Next best worldviews [00:41:05]
• Pragmatic reasons to spread across different areas [00:47:39]
• Effective size of the long-term future [00:57:19]
• The doomsday argument [01:09:37]
• The simulation argument [01:16:58]
• AI timelines report [01:29:24]
• Recent AI developments [01:39:28]
• Four key probability distributions [01:46:54]
• Most likely ways to be wrong [02:11:43]
• Biggest challenges with writing big reports [02:17:09]
• Last dollar project [02:25:28]
• What it’s like working at Open Phil [02:45:18]

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The 80,000 Hours Podcast features unusually in-depth conversations about the world’s most pressing problems and what you can do to solve them.

Learn more, read the summary and find the full transcript on the 80,000 Hours website:
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