PANTHEON
ExploreBuild My Library
© 2026 Pantheon — an atlas of the ideas that shaped how we think.
book2020

The Precipice

Disciplines:
philosophy
ethics
ethics/longtermism
ai safety/existential risk

Summary

Toby Ord's 2020 analysis of existential risks facing humanity — cataloguing threats (AI misalignment, engineered pandemics, nuclear weapons, climate change, asteroids) by probability and arguing that avoiding existential catastrophe is the highest moral priority.

Core Contribution

Creates the systematic existential risk taxonomy — The Precipice provides the most rigorous single-volume treatment of all major existential risks, with probability estimates and a philosophical framework (longtermism) for why existential risk reduction deserves to be the highest priority in effective altruism.

Historical Influences

Derek Parfit Nick Bostrom

Intellectual Lineage

Toby Ord Hachette

Allied Works

Superintelligence What We Owe the Future The End of the World

Contemporaries & Peers

No recorded contemporaries.

Minds Influenced

Effective altruism longtermism

Intellectual Posterity

The Precipice Existential risk taxonomy Longtermism

Discussing

The Precipice

Ask anything about The Precipice — their ideas, influences, contradictions, legacy.

Sign in to start a conversation.