Diego Caleiro · 2014-09-19 · EA Forum
Another angle is assuming that X-risk indeed trumps all other problems but that it can be reduced more efficiently by doing things other than figuring out the most desirable order. It may be that there are yet unknown anthropogenic X-risks, in which case focus on locating ways in which humans could soon destroy themselves would be more valuable than solving the known ones. An argument for that may take this form:
A) There are true relevant unknown facts about the Dung Beetle
B) Our bayesian shift on how many unknown unknowns are left in a domain should roughly correlate with amount of research that has already been done in a topic.
C) Substantially more research has been done on Dung Beetles than existential risks.
Conclusion: There are true unknown relevant facts about X-risk
'Relevant' here would range over [X-risks] which would mean either a substantial revision of conditional probabilites on different X-risks or else just a substantial revision on the whole network once an unkown risk is accounted for.
So getting the order right would be less relevant than spending resources on finding unknown unkowns.
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