Worried about being on the other side of the debate than both Robin and Carl.
I guess I was thinking of Nick Bostrom giving a speech praising the existing private space industry, and that adding some legitimacy to the claim that private spaceflight is for the greater good. In fact exactly this mechanism (with Stephen Hawking advocating instead of Nick) is actually contributing to the resurgence of space that we do have.
This mechanism is cheap, and it diverts resources from places where they clearly do absolutely no good for existential risks, to somewhere where they do some small amount of good.
You could also advocate the construction of an underground shelter, but as others have commented, this has emotional connotations of selfishness, so although you get more risk reduction per unit money, you get less per unit advocacy (maybe).
Worried about being on the other side of the debate than both Robin and Carl.
I guess I was thinking of Nick Bostrom giving a speech praising the existing private space industry, and that adding some legitimacy to the claim that private spaceflight is for the greater good. In fact exactly this mechanism (with Stephen Hawking advocating instead of Nick) is actually contributing to the resurgence of space that we do have.
This mechanism is cheap, and it diverts resources from places where they clearly do absolutely no good for existential risks, to somewhere where they do some small amount of good.
You could also advocate the construction of an underground shelter, but as others have commented, this has emotional connotations of selfishness, so although you get more risk reduction per unit money, you get less per unit advocacy (maybe).