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The Precipice explores the science behind the risks we face. It puts them in the context of the greater story of humanity: showing how ending these risks is among the most pressing moral issues of our time.
What is the Precipice? The Precipice is the era in which we live—where existential risk is unsustainably high. I date the start of the Precipice to the detonation of the first atomic bomb, in 1945, when humanity first gained the power to threaten its own destruction.
Buy the book today from your favourite booksellers, or listen to the audiobook narrated by the author. 'The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity' is out now.
Syllabus — The Precipice. This is a sample syllabus on existential risk, intended as a helpful resource for people developing courses on existential risk — in schools, universities, independent reading groups, or elsewhere.
Toby has advised the World Health Organization, the World Economic Forum, the US National Intelligence Council, and the UK Prime Minister’s Office. Toby Ord is a Senior Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University, where he works on the big picture questions facing humanity.
Resources for individuals interested in safeguarding humanity’s future. A wealth of quotations on existential risk from across the ages. A selection of articles and books for those interested in exploring some of the book’s content in more detail.
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These are the known mistakes appearing in various editions of The Precipice. If you find any further errors, please email: errata@theprecipice.com. All Editions. p. 75 — I cited a central estimate for the frequency of Toba-sized eruptions as 1 in 80,000 years. The correct figure, as given in endnote 35, is 1 in 800,000 years.
Inferior in power, inferior in that moral quality of self-control, we shall look up to them as the acme of all that the best and wisest man can ever dare to aim at. A universal refusal to propagate the human species would be the greatest of conceivable crimes from a Utilitarian point of view.
Further Reading — The Precipice. A guide to some of the most important writings on existential risk, which also appears in the book: Bertrand Russell & Albert Einstein (1955). ‘The Russell-Einstein Manifesto’.
