This was originally posted on Nathaniel's and Nuno's substacks (Pending Survival and Forecasting Newsletter, respectively). Subscribe here and here!

Discussion is also occurring on the EA Forum here (couldn't link the posts properly for technical reasons).

When the Effective Altruism, Bay Area rationality, judgemental forecasting, and prediction markets communities think about risk, they typically do so along rather idiosyncratic and limited lines. These overlook relevant insights and practices from related expert communities, including the fields of disaster risk reduction, safety science, risk analysis, science and technology studies—like the sociology of risk—and futures studies.

To remedy this state of affairs, this document—written by Nathaniel Cooke and edited by Nuño Sempere—(1) explains how disaster risks are conceptualised by risk scholars, (2) outlines Normal Accident Theory and introduces the concept of high-reliability organisations, (3) summarises the differences between “sexy” and “unsexy” global catastrophic risk (GCR) scenarios, and (4) [...]

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Outline:

(02:00) 1. Disaster Risk Models

(03:21) 1.1 The Determinants of Risk

(09:34) 1.2 Exposure

(10:31) 1.3 Pressure and Release

(12:35) 1.4 The Disaster Cycle

(14:39) 1.5 Complexity and Causation

(18:01) 2 Normal Accidents and High-Reliability Organisations

(23:30) 3 Sexy and Unsexy Risks

(26:11) 4 Forecasting, Foresight, and Futures

(28:55) 4.1 Forecasting

(34:01) 4.2 Foresight

(39:12) 4.3 Futures Studies

(42:21) Conclusion

The original text contained 10 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

Source:

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.