Robin Hanson: Doomsday theories must predict smaller testable events
QuintinPope5 · x · 2026-11-16
Economist Robin Hanson argues that virtually all theories predicting huge, possibly world-ending events also predict many smaller related events, usually following a power-law distribution. So, he says, don't claim your big theory has no testable consequences short of the catastrophic event — the smaller predictions should be checkable now. The argument is frequently aimed at AI doomer narratives.
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