I suggest making clearer that these are one researcher's rough estimates. Otherwise I think it gives a false sense of precision. Maybe by titling the infographic "Rough guess at global catastrophic risks from The Precipice" or similar.
This looks great! And I agree with Aslan that the minesweeper edition feels very different and I am glad you created it.
One note: existential risks are a distinct concept to both extinction risks and global catastrophic risks. Table 6.1 in Toby's book describes existential risks which is what you are depicting here - existential risks include extinction risk but also the risk that humanity will turn into a permanent dystopia as well as permanent civilisational collapse (but humanity lives on).
Global catastrophic risks are different again: they are risks that kill at least 10% of the human population.
I've been reading Toby Ord's thoughtful book, The Precipice. In it, he estimates there's a 1 in 6 chance of humanity not surviving the next century. He has a table that summarizes the main sources of risk as he sees them that I thought could be more sharable and comparable if it were put into a diagram. So I made the following diagram in Illustrator (here's the file if you want to play with it). If this seems like a useful thing to do, I'd love to get feedback on how it can be improved:
Here's another version, that I set up more like minesweeper with 100 possible futures:
There is a lot of research and data that went into Toby's estimates, so the downside of making a diagram that's less accurate since it will not be wrapped in all of the context from the book, but the upside is that it's potentially more sharable. (this seems to be an unanswered question) But it could still work as a good conversation starter for those thinking about cause prioritization and longtermism.
AI Use Note: Main body text entirely human written. Claude (Opus 4.8) helped develop models of animal life histories in the appendix.
Cross-posted from Good Structures.
Executive Summary
* Animal advocates sometimes make claims like “there are X of this animal...
“How long have you been v*g*n?”
This is one of the most common icebreakers at animal protection events. It’s a baseline assumption, and it mostly holds true: if you’re out advocating for animals not to be tortured or abused, realistically these days you are v**n, or close. And it makes for good conversation. It seems fairly safe to assume when you meet strangers.
But this assumption is hurting the movement in a way which we don’t always notice: someone new comes into the sp...
Summary
Back in November 2023 I posted here to launch Spiro and raise our first $198k. Two and a half years later this is an update and a fundraiser for the next step.
The short version: we've now reached over-5,900 people with TB preventive medicine, including over 3,000 children under five years old. Our early results have held up well an...
I suggest making clearer that these are one researcher's rough estimates. Otherwise I think it gives a false sense of precision. Maybe by titling the infographic "Rough guess at global catastrophic risks from The Precipice" or similar.