Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by lorenzorhoades 2679 days ago
> a lot more low-lying fruit that is being neglected in terms of improving our overall odds of survival.

Can you elaborate? You talking politically?

1 comments

I'm not sure what you mean by that. The most immediate threat to the survival of civilization is climate change, and we are doing less than we could to stop it at the moment in no small measure because of politics. There's also a significant threat from medium-sized asteroids that could be addressed fairly cheaply (a few billion dollars) and isn't. Nuclear war is an entirely political threat. World-wide famine is a possibility, but that is much more likely to kill us by leading to a nuclear war than it is to kill us directly.

Beyond that, I just don't see any credible existential threats.