By the way, I find the “less than maximum potential” operationalizations to call for especially high probability estimates
Yeah, I deliberately steered clear of ‘less than maximum potential’ in the survey (with help from others’ feedback on my survey phrasing). Losing a galaxy is not, on its own, an existential catastrophe, because one galaxy is such a small portion of the cosmic endowment (even though it’s enormously important in absolute terms). In contrast, losing 10% of all reachable galaxies would be a clear existential catastrophe.
Yeah, I deliberately steered clear of ‘less than maximum potential’ in the survey (with help from others’ feedback on my survey phrasing). Losing a galaxy is not, on its own, an existential catastrophe, because one galaxy is such a small portion of the cosmic endowment (even though it’s enormously important in absolute terms). In contrast, losing 10% of all reachable galaxies would be a clear existential catastrophe.