Good luck parsing that claim on the first try. Reducing the probability of extinction by 1/1000000000^2% is worth 1000000000 human lives? Ok so I guess you’re trying to say 1 human life is worth a billionth of a percent chance of extinction.
The author here isn’t exactly praising this perspective but has the audacity to write
> Hey, maths doesn’t lie
Which is utterly idiotic and such a misleading thing to say. This isn’t math, it’s a thick layer of hand wavey assumptions and tiny sprinkling of math to throw it together.
It’s not like we have any way of actually forming any probability distributions of outcomes for the unforseeable future outcomes so the whole thing is moot. In general however, short term prosperity is likely to compound into better outcomes more than anything.