Thanks, I just found myself thinking 'Australia seems to be a large net exporter of EAs', being in that category myself, so then went looking for data on where EAs are from or live now. That's a reasonable hypothesis, and is perhaps consistent with the fact that there is more variance in EA-ness of smaller countries. I am guessing there isn't a particularly deep reason Estonia has more EAs than Latvia and Lithuania, for instance, and just for historically contingent reasons there happened to be some good organisers in Estonia a while ago? Overall I suppose I don't want to infer too much from this data, but indeed it is interesting to theorise, we would just need more/better information to test various explanatory hypotheses.

True!
Of course if we had all the data we could run a fancier statistical test. I suppose my observation is limited to the fact that the English-speaking vs European ranges seem similar rather than e.g. all the Anglosphere countries being distinctly higher than all the European countries.

sure, for e.g. China or any large-ish country this works, but as soon as population <1 million or so the range would be very wide - e.g. Iceland presumably has some EA presence but it would be strange to put it at the top without knowing the actual data. If I wanted to spend more time on this I think just asking for the raw data would be best (I am unsure if they would give it to me, and I haven't tried).

Thanks, makes sense, I think I roughly agree with these takes. I think I wanted to write about this version of the argument in particular as I think the resource-based and technological obsoletion of farming animals arguments have mostly already been made. Unsurprising perhaps if the better arguments are already made first and the secondary arguments are left!

True, I don't have access to the raw data sadly, only to the data from the EA Survey forum post which has a minimum number of EAs cutoff.

Thanks, interesting ideas. I overall wasn't very persuaded - I think if we prevent an extinction event in the 21st century, the natural assumption is that probability mass is evenly distributed over all other futures, and we need to make arguments in specific cases as to why this isn't the case. I didn't read the whole dialogue but I think I mostly agree with Owen.

Good point, I think if X-risk is very low it is less urgent/important to work on (so the conditional works in that direction I reckon). But I agree that the inverse - if X-risk is very high, it is very urgent/important to work on - isn't always true (though I think it usually is - generally bigger risks are easier to work on).

Thanks, fixed. I was basing this off of Table 1 (page 20) in the original but I suppose Leopold meant the release year there.

I have now published my summary.

(tagging people who reacted 'helpful': @MvK @michel @David Mathers @SamiM @JWS @Ariel Simnegar @DC @Ben Snodin @Mo Putera @EffectiveAdvocate )

fyi for everyone interested in Leopold's report but intimidated by it's length, I am currently writing a detailed summary, and expect to post it to the Forum in the next day or two. I will update this comment once I have done so.