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To say that climate change is not an "existential risk" is not the same as saying that it's not a massive problem, or that we should not address it, right?
by NumberWangMan 3y ago
To say that climate change is not an "existential risk" is not the same as saying that it's not a massive problem, or that we should not address it, right?
- handoflixue 3y agoCorrect. An existential risk is something that threatens to wipe out all of humanity - "extinction risk" would probably be a better term.
- Lutger 3y agoAccording to the article, in longtermism 'existential risk' is something more specific: everything that threatens our long term 'potential'. So if becoming 'a multi planetary species' as Musk puts it is an essential part of our potential, destroying in whatever way our capability of achieving that is putting us at an existential risk. Not because we might all die on this planet, but just for the very reasons that we stay stuck here at the limits of earth.
- handoflixue 3y agoExistential Risk includes the edge-case that we might damage civilization so badly that we're trapped on this planet until the sun goes supernova, yes. Or become nothing more than pets to some AI. But it's a pretty niche edge case - if we meaningfully continue as a species, expanding out into space seems pretty inevitable. And, honestly, I don't think anyone really views the edge case of "we collapsed back to medieval times" as a good ending. In particular, there's nothing about our "long term potential" that requires us to get off Earth today, or even in the next century or two - that's why it's called long-term potential.
- helen___keller 3y agoThis is the same thing as extinction. If humans don’t escape earth, then with probability 1 we will go extinct relatively soon (relative to the lifetime of the universe). If not from a standard extinction event like meteors and volcanoes, then from the sun going supernova (ETA 5 billion years)