I like “quality risks” (q-risks?) and think this is more broadly appealing to people who don’t want to think about suffering-reduction as the dominantly guiding frame for whatever reason. Moral trade can be done with people concerned with other qualities, such as worries about global totalitarianism due to reasons independent of suffering such as freedom and diversity.
It’s also relatively more neglected than the standard extinction risks, which I am worried we are collectively Goodharting on as our focus (and to a lesser extent, focus on classical suffering risks may fall into this as well). For instance, nuclear war or climate change are blatant and obvious scary problems that memetically propagate well, whereas there may be many q-risks to future value that are more subtle and yet to be evinced.
Tangentially, this gets into a broader crux I am confused by: should we work on obvious things or nonobvious things? I am disposed towards the latter.
I like “quality risks” (q-risks?) and think this is more broadly appealing to people who don’t want to think about suffering-reduction as the dominantly guiding frame for whatever reason. Moral trade can be done with people concerned with other qualities, such as worries about global totalitarianism due to reasons independent of suffering such as freedom and diversity.
It’s also relatively more neglected than the standard extinction risks, which I am worried we are collectively Goodharting on as our focus (and to a lesser extent, focus on classical suffering risks may fall into this as well). For instance, nuclear war or climate change are blatant and obvious scary problems that memetically propagate well, whereas there may be many q-risks to future value that are more subtle and yet to be evinced.
Tangentially, this gets into a broader crux I am confused by: should we work on obvious things or nonobvious things? I am disposed towards the latter.