Page "Human extinction" Paragraph 90

Leslie ( 1996 ) discusses the survivorship bias ( which he calls an " observational selection " effect on page 139 ) he says that the a priori certainty of observing an " undisasterous past " could make it difficult to argue that we must be safe because nothing terrible has yet occurred.

He quotes Holger Bech Nielsen ’ s formulation: “ We do not even know if there should exist some extremely dangerous decay of say the proton which caused eradication of the earth, because if it happens we would no longer be there to observe it and if it does not happen there is nothing to observe .” ( From: Random dynamics and relations between the number of fermion generations and the fine structure constants, Acta Pysica Polonica B, May 1989 ).