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People make suboptimal decisions about existential risks.

Adam Elga1, Jian-Qiao Zhu2, Thomas L Griffiths3

  • 1Department of Philosophy, Princeton University, United States of America.

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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

People struggle to allocate resources effectively for existential risks. They underinvest in lower-probability threats, despite understanding risk responsiveness, due to a flawed intuition for multiplicative decision-making crucial for humanity's survival.

Keywords:
Existential riskHeuristicsRationalityResource allocation

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Area of Science:

  • Decision science
  • Risk management
  • Existential risk studies

Background:

  • Maximizing humanity's survival probability against existential risks involves multiplicative objectives, unlike typical additive decision problems.
  • Understanding human decision-making under uncertainty for low-probability, high-impact events is critical for effective resource allocation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To derive the optimal strategy for resource allocation to maximize survival probability across multiple existential risks.
  • To evaluate how individuals make decisions in scenarios with multiplicative objectives and identify systematic biases.

Main Methods:

  • Derivation of the optimal solution for a multiplicative objective function concerning survival probabilities.
  • Experimental evaluation of human decision-making with 2,072 participants presented with resource allocation choices for existential risks.

Main Results:

  • Participants demonstrated sensitivity to risk responsiveness but exhibited conservative decision-making.
  • Insufficient resources were allocated to risks with lower probabilities of survival, indicating a systematic bias.
  • This pattern persisted even when survival probabilities were explicitly emphasized.

Conclusions:

  • Human intuition systematically falters when dealing with multiplicative objectives inherent in existential risk mitigation.
  • Individuals may require explicit guidance or training to overcome biases in allocating resources for long-term survival probabilities.