[Linkpost] “Research: People do not allocate enough resources to risks with lower probability of survival” by Adam Elga

[Study authors: Adam Elga, Jian-Qiao Zhu, Thomas L. Griffiths]

Summary: When asked to divide a fixed budget to fight several independent existential risks, experimental participants did not allocate enough resources to the risks with lowest probability of survival.

Excerpts:

if we face catastrophes with survival probabilities of 4% and 40%, it is more valuable to increase the probability of surviving the first catastrophe from 4% to 9% than it is to increase the probability of surviving the second catastrophe from 40% to 80% (since we care about the product of the survival probabilities and 9% ⋅ 40% > 4% ⋅ 80%). This dependence of optimal allocations on baseline chances of survival is a distinctive and somewhat counterintuitive feature of situations in which incentives are multiplicative (Lewis et al., 2023; Lewis & Simmons, 2020). [Reference added 2025-08-24: Ord 2020, Appendix D]

But

on average people allocated [...]

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First published:

August 25th, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nwS7CyjziwxM76MrE/research-people-do-not-allocate-enough-resources-to-risks

Linkpost URL:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106216

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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