Breakdown of existential risks

Can you expand on what dynamical laws and deterministic dynamics mean? Also, how is one checking if there is a research community? My understanding is that a fair number of geologists study Yellowstone for example but supervolcanoes have a "no" next to them. Also, what does "obsolete" mean in the third column?

I really don't understand the row for climate change. What exactly is meant by "inference" in the data column? I don't know what you want to count as data, but it seems to me that the data with respect to climate change include increasingly good direct measurements of temperature and greenhouse gas concentrations over the last hundred years or so, whatever goes into the basis of relevant physical and chemical theories (like theories of heat transfer, cloud formation, solar dynamics, and so forth), and measurements of proxies for temperature and greenhouse gas concentrations in the distant past (maybe this is what "inference" is supposed to mean?).

I also don't understand the "?" under probability distribution. Are the probability distributions at stake here distributions over credences? If so, then they can be estimated for most any scientist, at least. Are the distributions over frequencies? Then frequencies of what? I suspect we could estimate distributions for lots of climate related things, like severe storms or droughts or record high temperatures. I would be somewhat surprised if such distributions have not already been estimated by climate scientists. Is the issue about calibration? Then the answer seems to be a qualified yes. Groups like the IPCC give probabilistic statements based on their climate models. The climate models could be checked at least on past predictions, e.g. by looking at what the models from 2000 predicted for the period 2001-2011. We might not get a very good sense of how well calibrated the models are, but if the average temperature for each month, say, is a separate datum, then we could check the models by seeing how many of the months fall into the claimed 95% confidence bands, for example. (And just putting down confidence bands in the models should tell you that the climate scientists think that the distribution can be estimated for some sense of probability.)

Good work!

Perhaps you could put this into a google doc so that you can comment on each of the cells.

Why does the table indicate that we haven't observed pandemics the same way we've observed wars, famines, and earth impactors?

Why does superintelligence require global coordination? Apparently all one needs to do is to develop an FAI, and the rest will take care of itself.

Is there an updated version of this table?

How are "global computer failures" an existential risk? Sure, it would suck, but it wouldn't be the end of the world.

And what are "physics threats"?

I would also like to see a column with strategies for mitigating the thread, beyond "requires global coordination". For example the solution against bioweapons would be regulation and maybe countermeasure research, while against supernovae there isn't much we can do.