The term āglobal catastrophic riskā (GCR) is increasingly used in the scholarly community to refer to a category of threats that are global in scope, catastrophic in intensity, and non-zero in probability (Bostrom and Cirkovic, 2008). [...] The GCR framework is concerned with low-probability, high-consequence scenarios that threaten humankind as a whole (Avin et al., 2018; Beck, 2009; Kuhlemann, 2018; Liu, 2018)
(Personally, I donāt think I like that second sentence. Iām not sure what āthreaten humankindā is meant to mean, but Iām not sure Iād count something that e.g. causes huge casualties on just one continent, or 20% casualties spread globally, as threatening humankind. Or if I did, Iād be meaning something like āthreatens some humansā, in which case Iād also count risks much smaller than GCRs. So this sentence sounds to me like itās sort-of conflating GCRs with existential risks.)
Sears writes:
(Personally, I donāt think I like that second sentence. Iām not sure what āthreaten humankindā is meant to mean, but Iām not sure Iād count something that e.g. causes huge casualties on just one continent, or 20% casualties spread globally, as threatening humankind. Or if I did, Iād be meaning something like āthreatens some humansā, in which case Iād also count risks much smaller than GCRs. So this sentence sounds to me like itās sort-of conflating GCRs with existential risks.)