If we do not reach existential security the future population is much smaller accordingly and gets less weight in my considerations. I take concerns around extinction risks seriously—but they are an argument against longtermism, not in favour of it. It just seems really weird to me to jump from ‘extinction risks are rising so much, we must prioritize them!’ to ‘there is lots of value in the long-term future’. The latter is only true if we manage to get rid of those extinction risks.
I don’t understand. It seems that you could see the value of the long term future being unrelated to the probability of x risk. Then, the more you value the long term future, the more you value improving x risk.
I think a sketch of the story might go: let’s say your value for reaching the best final state of the long term future is “V”.
If there’s a 5%, 50%, or 99.99% risk of extinction, that doesn’t affect V (but might make us sadder that we might not reach it).
Generally (e.g. assuming that x risk can be practically reduced) it’s more likely you would work on x-risk as your value of V is higher.
It seems like this explains why the views are correlated, “extinction risks are rising so much, we must prioritize them!” and “there is lots of value in the long-term future”. So these views aren’t a contradiction.
Am I slipping in some assumption or have I failed to capture what you envisioned?
I don’t understand. It seems that you could see the value of the long term future being unrelated to the probability of x risk. Then, the more you value the long term future, the more you value improving x risk.
I think a sketch of the story might go: let’s say your value for reaching the best final state of the long term future is “V”.
If there’s a 5%, 50%, or 99.99% risk of extinction, that doesn’t affect V (but might make us sadder that we might not reach it).
Generally (e.g. assuming that x risk can be practically reduced) it’s more likely you would work on x-risk as your value of V is higher.
It seems like this explains why the views are correlated, “extinction risks are rising so much, we must prioritize them!” and “there is lots of value in the long-term future”. So these views aren’t a contradiction.
Am I slipping in some assumption or have I failed to capture what you envisioned?