How many existential risks are competing for our attention, brainpower, and funding? Let's brainstorm. * Asteroid impact * Solar flare * Epidemic of an infectious pathogen * Climate change * Artificial intelligence * Nuclear war That's all I got, and yes I think we should prepare for all of them.
The hard part is deciding what "prepare" means. Any money and time devoted to the asteroid threat is denied to pathogens, including malaria. If the only criteria for spending resources on a problem are 1) it could cause humans to go extinct and 2) we cannot prove that it is impossible, then the list will grow endlessly, with no guarantee that we have thought of everything: · supervolcano · grey goo · nearby supernova/hypernova · anoxic event · particle accelerator mishap · hostile alien invasion · wrath of a supreme being It's not easy, but I think we must do some kind of cost-benefit analysis before dedicating significant resources to improbable doomsday scenarios.