I do think ‘catastrophic suffering risk’ is an odd one, because it’s really not intuitive that a ‘catastrophic suffering risk’ is less bad than a ‘suffering risk’. I guess I just find it weird that something as bad as a genuine s-risk has such a pedestrian name, compared to ‘existential risk’, which I think is an intuitive and evocative name that gets across the level of bad-ness pretty well.
I think what happens in my head is that ‘s-risk’ denotes a similarity to x-risks while ‘catastrophic suffering risk’ denotes a similarity to catastrophic risks, making the former feel more severe than the latter, but I agree this is odd.
One quick question—when you say an s-risk creates a future with negative value, does that make it worse than an x-risk? As in, the imagined future is SO awful that the extinction of humanity would be preferable?
Yep, for me that feels like a natural place to put the bar for an s-risk.
I think what happens in my head is that ‘s-risk’ denotes a similarity to x-risks while ‘catastrophic suffering risk’ denotes a similarity to catastrophic risks, making the former feel more severe than the latter, but I agree this is odd.
Yep, for me that feels like a natural place to put the bar for an s-risk.