6. An Analysis and Evaluation of Methods Currently Used to Quantify the Likelihood of Existential Hazards

This chapter calls for a more critical deliberation of the methodological selection and implementation used to inform existential risk research. The authors achieve this by carrying out an examination of the methods used to make claims about the likelihood of hazards, rating each one according to four criteria: the rigour of the method, the ability to handle uncertainty, accessibility for researchers, and utility for communication and policy purposes. Different methods such as analytical, modelling based, subjective, and structured approaches to Existential Risk Studies are each examined and compared against each other. This allows for the best, most well-suited, methodologies to be identified, and for the authors to foster a greater awareness of the variety of methods available to existential risk researchers.