The Fanaticism Trap

Dr. Marcus Wendell, a utilitarian philosopher at the University of Chicago, has spent the last eighteen months calculating the expected value of preventing a single asteroid impact with a one-in-four-billion probability of extinction. The calculation yielded $847 trillion. Wendell's grant application to the National Science Foundation, submitted in March, proposed spending $14 million annually to develop what he termed 'impact mitigation infrastructure,' though the filing makes clear that no asteroid has been detected, no trajectory modeled, and no telescope aimed at the relevant patch of sky. The NSF is currently reviewing the application. Wendell did not respond to requests for comment, but his faculty webpage now lists his office hours as 'by appointment only, 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week.'

The logic is airtight within its own frame. Multiply an infinitesimal probability by a sufficiently large outcome—civilization's survival, the prevention of suffering for billions—and the expected value towers over any terrestrial spending. A one-in-a-trillion chance of saving humanity justifies any budget. A one-in-a-quadrillion chance justifies more. The mathematics does not discriminate between rigorous threat assessment and what a neuroscientist might recognize as catastrophic thinking. Wendell's colleague, Dr. Sarah Chen, a decision theorist in the same department, published a response paper titled 'Pascal's Wager as Institutional Policy,' which she declined to discuss beyond a single email: 'I am not speaking to the press about my colleague's work. I am not speaking to the press about asteroid probabilities. I am not speaking to the press.'

The problem compounds when small probabilities begin to nest. Wendell has since filed a second NSF grant, this one requesting $22 million to study the risk of a simultaneous asteroid impact and solar flare event—a conjunction he estimates at one-in-four-hundred-billion, yielding an expected utility of $3.2 quadrillion. A colleague in the physics department, who asked not to be named, noted that 'the sun doesn't work that way,' but did not elaborate. Wendell's office calendar, obtained through a FOIA request, shows back-to-back meetings with university counsel between 2 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. on Tuesdays. The topic line reads: 'Funding Mechanism Review.'

The utilitarian calculus is theoretically sound. A rational agent maximizes expected value. But expected value, when multiplied across enough catastrophic scenarios, produces a decision landscape where any spending is justified and no spending is ever enough. By Wendell's own mathematics, a one-in-quintillion risk justifies whatever resources one can command. Last month, he requested university administration approve the conversion of his departmental storage closet into a 'dedicated scenario-modeling workspace.' The request was approved. He has not yet vacated the space. His graduate students report that he now begins each seminar by asking them to identify threats with probabilities below one-in-a-septillion. When pressed for examples, he becomes agitated. 'That's the point,' he said, according to one student's notes. 'There are no examples. That's what makes them real.'

The university's provost released a statement Thursday: 'We are committed to rigorous scholarship in all its forms, including high-impact research on catastrophic risk. Dr. Wendell's work is under review.' She did not specify what kind of review, or by whom, or whether that review had begun. Wendell's third grant application, submitted to the Department of Energy last week, proposes an annual budget of $340 million to fund 'infrastructure redundancy against civilizational black swan events,' which the filing defines as 'any event with a probability between zero and one.' The Department of Energy has not yet responded.