ORCID Profile
0000-0003-4644-016X
Current Organisation
University of Oxford
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Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 30-07-2019
DOI: 10.1038/S41598-019-47540-7
Abstract: We evaluate the total probability of human extinction from naturally occurring processes. Such processes include risks that are well characterized such as asteroid impacts and supervolcanic eruptions, as well as risks that remain unknown. Using only the information that Homo sapiens has existed at least 200,000 years, we conclude that the probability that humanity goes extinct from natural causes in any given year is almost guaranteed to be less than one in 14,000, and likely to be less than one in 87,000. Using the longer track record of survival for our entire genus Homo produces even tighter bounds, with an annual probability of natural extinction likely below one in 870,000. These bounds are unlikely to be affected by possible survivorship bias in the data, and are consistent with mammalian extinction rates, typical hominin species lifespans, the frequency of well-characterized risks, and the frequency of mass extinctions. No similar guarantee can be made for risks that our ancestors did not face, such as anthropogenic climate change or nuclear/biological warfare.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 11-12-2019
DOI: 10.1038/S41598-019-55816-1
Abstract: An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Date: 03-2005
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 06-03-2015
DOI: 10.1017/S0953820815000059
Abstract: Prioritarianism is the moral view that a fixed improvement in someone's well-being matters more the worse off they are. Its supporters argue that it best captures our intuitions about unequal distributions of well-being. I show that prioritarianism sometimes recommends acts that will make things more unequal while simultaneously lowering the total well-being and making things worse for everyone ex ante. Intuitively, there is little to recommend such acts and I take this to be a serious counterex le for prioritarianism.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 22-10-2020
DOI: 10.1002/HEC.4177
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Date: 06-02-2014
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Date: 24-05-2018
DOI: 10.1093/OSO/9780190648879.003.0007
Abstract: Peter Singer argues that middle-class members of affluent countries have an obligation to give away almost all their income to fight poverty in the developing world. Others, however, argue that this view is too demanding : it is asking more of us than morality truly requires. This chapter proposes a weaker principle, the very weak principle of sacrifice: Most middle-class members of affluent countries ought, morally, to use at least 10 percent of their income to effectively improve the lives of others. This principle is not very demanding at all, and therefore the “demandingness” objection has not even pro tanto force against it.
Publisher: IEEE
Date: 2002
Publisher: Philosophy Documentation Center
Date: 2020
Abstract: A major problem for interpersonal aggregation is how to compare utility across in iduals a major problem for decision-making under normative uncertainty is the formally analogous problem of how to compare choice-worthiness across theories. We introduce and study a class of methods, which we call statistical normalization methods, for making interpersonal comparisons of utility and intertheoretic comparisons of choice-worthiness. We argue against the statistical normalization methods that have been proposed in the literature. We argue, instead, in favor of normalization of variance: we claim that this is the account that most plausibly gives all in iduals or theories ‘equal say’. To this end, we provide two proofs that variance normalization has desirable properties that all other normalization methods lack, though we also show how different assumptions could lead one to axiomatize alternative statistical normalization methods.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-2010
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 14-07-2018
DOI: 10.1111/NOUS.12264
Publisher: WORLD SCIENTIFIC
Date: 10-2007
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 04-09-2008
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 04-09-2008
DOI: 10.1080/15265160802248146
Abstract: It is often claimed that from the moment of conception embryos have the same moral status as adult humans. This claim plays a central role in many arguments against abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem cell research. In what follows, I show that this claim leads directly to an unexpected and unwelcome conclusion: that natural embryo loss is one of the greatest problems of our time and that we must do almost everything in our power to prevent it. I examine the responses available to those who hold that embryos have full moral status and conclude that they cannot avoid the force of this argument without giving up this key claim.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 17-01-2018
DOI: 10.1038/S41598-018-19194-4
Abstract: We introduce new theoretical insights into two-population asymmetric games allowing for an elegant symmetric decomposition into two single population symmetric games. Specifically, we show how an asymmetric bimatrix game ( A , B ) can be decomposed into its symmetric counterparts by envisioning and investigating the payoff tables ( A and B ) that constitute the asymmetric game, as two independent, single population, symmetric games. We reveal several surprising formal relationships between an asymmetric two-population game and its symmetric single population counterparts, which facilitate a convenient analysis of the original asymmetric game due to the dimensionality reduction of the decomposition. The main finding reveals that if (x,y) is a Nash equilibrium of an asymmetric game ( A , B ), this implies that y is a Nash equilibrium of the symmetric counterpart game determined by payoff table A , and x is a Nash equilibrium of the symmetric counterpart game determined by payoff table B . Also the reverse holds and combinations of Nash equilibria of the counterpart games form Nash equilibria of the asymmetric game. We illustrate how these formal relationships aid in identifying and analysing the Nash structure of asymmetric games, by examining the evolutionary dynamics of the simpler counterpart games in several canonical ex les.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2006
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Date: 07-2006
DOI: 10.1086/505233
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 13-04-2021
DOI: 10.1017/S095382082100011X
Abstract: The Repugnant Conclusion is an implication of some approaches to population ethics. It states, in Derek Parfit's original formulation, For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better, even though its members have lives that are barely worth living. (Parfit 1984: 388)
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
No related grants have been discovered for Toby Ord.