A review by schumachr
The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity by Toby Ord

1.0

i had to read this book for the my required environmental and technological ethics class, so i’m prefacing this review by saying that i did not voluntary read this book and i am uninterested in the study of ethics as a whole. i think ord’s exploration of existential risks and humanity-destroying catastrophes is interesting, but i think he neglects that each of these catastrophes will generally have a build-up that will affect marginalized groups more than others and that we can’t ignore the smaller problems to focus on the big ones. it is necessary to study and understand events that could destroy humanity and our planet, but we can’t do that at the expense of the current populations, especially those that are being faced with more pertinent issues like war, poverty, et cetera. this book is not my cup of tea and i hopefully won’t have to read any of his works again.