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Notes -
Hermits are not a promising way to avoid human extinction.
These are definitely vulnerable extinction events, including those more likely than large asteroids.
I'm not saying that a pandemic is a huge x-risk event, but rather that it's easy to underrate its connection with x-risk if one just looks at first-order impacts.
Agreed. "What would happen if the Thing had reached civilization?" has been one of my favourite daydream questions recently, but the Thing makes most sense as a specially engineered bioweapon developed by a very advanced intelligence.
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