Minor point: I don’t think it’s strictly true that reducing risks of undesirable lock-ins is robustly good no matter what the expected value of the future is. It could be that a lock-in is not good, but it prevents an even worse outcome from occurring.
I included other existential risks in order to counter the following argument: “As long as we prevent non-s-risk-level undesirable lock-ins in the near-term, future people can coordinate to prevent s-risks.” This is a version of the option value argument that isn’t about extinction risk. I realize this might be a weird argument for someone to make, but I covered it to be comprehensive.
But the way I wrote this, I was pretty much just focused on extinction risk. So I agree it doesn’t make a lot of sense to include other kinds of x-risks. I’ll edit this now.
Thanks :) Good point.
Minor point: I don’t think it’s strictly true that reducing risks of undesirable lock-ins is robustly good no matter what the expected value of the future is. It could be that a lock-in is not good, but it prevents an even worse outcome from occurring.
I included other existential risks in order to counter the following argument: “As long as we prevent non-s-risk-level undesirable lock-ins in the near-term, future people can coordinate to prevent s-risks.” This is a version of the option value argument that isn’t about extinction risk. I realize this might be a weird argument for someone to make, but I covered it to be comprehensive.
But the way I wrote this, I was pretty much just focused on extinction risk. So I agree it doesn’t make a lot of sense to include other kinds of x-risks. I’ll edit this now.