Merely pulling the trigger less often doesn't change the inevitability of doom. [...] One of the most important uses of technology is to counteract disasters and to recover from disasters, both from foreseen and unforeseen evil. Therefore, the speed of progress itself is one of the things that is a defense against catastrophe.

The idea is: if you're going to pull the trigger once every 100 years, instead of once every 5, and it's a 2% chance of doom each time, you're still doomed eventually. Any static society is doomed in that way. The delays don't help anything because nothing is changing in the mean time, so eventually doom happens.

The attitude of not making progress, but just trying to sustain a fixed lifestyle forever, cannot work. Even if the chance of doom per year is made low, there is some chance so it will have to destroy them eventually. There's nothing to stop it from doing so.

It's only in a dynamic society creating new knowledge and progress that lasting longer matters to whether you're doomed eventually, b/c in that extra time more progress is made.