āAriel Conn: [...] I was hoping you could quickly go over a reminder of what an existential threat is and how that differs from a catastrophic threat and if thereās any other terminology that you think is useful for people to understand before we start looking at the extreme threats of climate change.ā
Simon Beard: So, we use these various terms as kind of terms of art within the field of existential risk studies, in a sense. We know what we mean by them, but all of them, in a way, are different ways of pointing to the same kind of outcome ā which is something unexpectedly, unprecedentedly bad. And, actually, once youāve got your head around that, different groups have slightly different understandings of what the differences between these three terms are.
So, for some groups, itās all about just the scale of badness. So, an extreme risk is one that does a sort of an extreme level of harm; A catastrophic risk does more harm, a catastrophic level of harm. And an existential risk is something where either everyone dies, human extinction occurs, or you have an outcome which is an equivalent amount of harm: Maybe some people survive, but their lives are terrible. Actually, at the Center for the Study of Existential Risk, we are concerned about this classification in terms of the cost involved, but we also have coupled that with a slightly different sort of terminology, which is really about systems and the operation of the global systems that surround us.
Most of the systems ā be this physiological systems, the worldās ecological system, the social, economic, technological, cultural systems that surround those institutions that we build on ā they have a kind of normal space of operation where they do the things that you expect them to do. And this is what human life, human flourishing, and human survival are built on: that we can get food from the biosphere, that our bodies will continue to operate in a way thatās consistent with and supporting our health and our continued survival, and that the institutions that weāve developed will still work, will still deliver food to our tables, will still suppress interpersonal and international violence, and that weāll basically, weāll be able to get on with our lives.
If you look at it that way, then an extreme risk, or an extreme threat, is one that pushes at least one of these systems outside of its normal boundaries of operation and creates an abnormal behavior that we then have to work really hard to respond to. A catastrophic risk is one where that happens, but then that also cascades. Particularly in global catastrophe, you have a whole system that encompasses everyone all around the world, or maybe a set of systems that encompass everyone all around the world, that are all operating in this abnormal state thatās really hard for us to respond to.
And then an existential catastrophe is one where the systems have been pushed into such an abnormal state that either you canāt get them back or itās going to be really hard. And life as we know it cannot be resumed; Weāre going to have to live in a very different and very inferior world, at least from our current way of thinking.ā (emphasis added)
From an FLI podcast interview with two researchers from CSER:
āAriel Conn: [...] I was hoping you could quickly go over a reminder of what an existential threat is and how that differs from a catastrophic threat and if thereās any other terminology that you think is useful for people to understand before we start looking at the extreme threats of climate change.ā
Simon Beard: So, we use these various terms as kind of terms of art within the field of existential risk studies, in a sense. We know what we mean by them, but all of them, in a way, are different ways of pointing to the same kind of outcome ā which is something unexpectedly, unprecedentedly bad. And, actually, once youāve got your head around that, different groups have slightly different understandings of what the differences between these three terms are.
So, for some groups, itās all about just the scale of badness. So, an extreme risk is one that does a sort of an extreme level of harm; A catastrophic risk does more harm, a catastrophic level of harm. And an existential risk is something where either everyone dies, human extinction occurs, or you have an outcome which is an equivalent amount of harm: Maybe some people survive, but their lives are terrible. Actually, at the Center for the Study of Existential Risk, we are concerned about this classification in terms of the cost involved, but we also have coupled that with a slightly different sort of terminology, which is really about systems and the operation of the global systems that surround us.
Most of the systems ā be this physiological systems, the worldās ecological system, the social, economic, technological, cultural systems that surround those institutions that we build on ā they have a kind of normal space of operation where they do the things that you expect them to do. And this is what human life, human flourishing, and human survival are built on: that we can get food from the biosphere, that our bodies will continue to operate in a way thatās consistent with and supporting our health and our continued survival, and that the institutions that weāve developed will still work, will still deliver food to our tables, will still suppress interpersonal and international violence, and that weāll basically, weāll be able to get on with our lives.
If you look at it that way, then an extreme risk, or an extreme threat, is one that pushes at least one of these systems outside of its normal boundaries of operation and creates an abnormal behavior that we then have to work really hard to respond to. A catastrophic risk is one where that happens, but then that also cascades. Particularly in global catastrophe, you have a whole system that encompasses everyone all around the world, or maybe a set of systems that encompass everyone all around the world, that are all operating in this abnormal state thatās really hard for us to respond to.
And then an existential catastrophe is one where the systems have been pushed into such an abnormal state that either you canāt get them back or itās going to be really hard. And life as we know it cannot be resumed; Weāre going to have to live in a very different and very inferior world, at least from our current way of thinking.ā (emphasis added)