World targets in megadeaths: the superforecasters give their opinion

The current issue of the Economist reports on a survey of 89 'superforecasters', defined as 'general-purpose prognosticators with a record of making accurate predictions on all sorts of topics, from election results to the outbreak of wars.' They were asked to estimate the likelihood that an unspecified event, such as an AI-caused extinction or a nuclear war, would kill 10% or more of the world's population (or around 800 million people) before the year 2100. The superforecasters gave that event a probability of 9%. 

Nine percent is worryingly high, but quite plausible. We could speculate on the type of event most likely to bring about such a catastrophe, but it's more important to see if we can find a way of forestalling it. 

I think the answer might be to use the Social Policy Bond concept to prevent any sort of catastrophe from happening for a sustained period. The issuers of such Disaster Prevention Bonds need have no knowledge of the relative likelihoods of known or unforseeable catastrophic events. Neither would they have to pre-judge, with our current limited scientific knowledge, the most efficient ways of ensuring our survival. Instead, the bond mechanism could target the sustained avoidance of any - unspecified - catastrophe. It would do so in a way that encourages the exploration and investigation of all threats, known and new, impartially. Policymakers would not (and, anyway, could not) try to calculate how dangerous each threat is. That would be left to bondholders, who would have powerful incentives to do so continuously, which is necessary because the most likely type of catastrophe will change over time. Investors in the bonds would be rewarded only if they can successfully adapt to rapidly changing events and our ever-expanding knowledge.

This is a stark contrast to the current approach; the one that has led to highly intelligent men and women giving our survival such a gloomy prognosis. The people who are currently working in favour of humanity do so in ways that, while worthy of great respect, are doing so within a system that is heavily weighted to favour the short-term goals of large organisations, including governments, that have little incentive or capacity to care about the long-term future of the whole of humanity. It's very regrettable, and Disaster Prevention Bonds, issued with sufficient backing, could change all that. With sufficient backing from governments, corporations, non-governmental organisations and philanthropists, they could encourage more people and more resources into activities that would help reduce the likelihood of catastrophe.