3 ms·
A grazed knee is bad, being mashed in a pileup is bad. There are degrees of badness, which seems something you have ignored when asking "Maybe all existential r
by zasdffaa 4y ago
A grazed knee is bad, being mashed in a pileup is bad. There are degrees of badness, which seems something you have ignored when asking "Maybe all existential risks are bad?"
Perhaps I misunderstood you?
- whimsicalism 4y agoExistential risk = extinction of humanity. I'm not sure how there are degrees of extinction of humanity that are bad.
- zasdffaa 4y agoI misunderstood you, apologies, point taken. But not agreed with. 'Asteroid sometime' != 'climate change happening now'. So degree is not in size but likelihood. Also climate change is independent of phat rock from space, it does not exclude it.
- whimsicalism 4y agoI agree with you, but I don't think spending a small amount of resources on a less likely but still 1% in next 1000 years existential risk is a bad resource allocation or a "distraction"
- zasdffaa 4y agoso "1% in next 1000"? No, I still don't get you, I mean that figure's blatant nonsense, it would just about have guaranteed a hit in the past million years (0.99 ^ 1,000 = chance of not being hit ~= 4.3E-5). from wiki "a comet of sufficient size to cause human extinction could impact the Earth, though the annual probability may be less than 10 ^ −8" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_catastrophe_scenarios#Asteroid_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_catastrophe_scenarios#A...
- whimsicalism 4y agoYou're absolutely right - a total brain fart, I was thinking of the risk of an Aphophis style collision [0], but this would not be existential at all. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis
- zasdffaa 4y agoIt happens, no worries!