The universe is vast, so it seems there is a lot of room for variation even within the subset of risks involving astronomical quantities of suffering. How much, in your opinion, do s-risks vary in severity? Relatedly, what are your grounds for singling out s-risks as the object of concern, rather than those risks involving the most suffering?
I agree that s-risks can vary a lot (by many orders of magnitude) in terms of severity. I also think that this gradual nature of s-risks is often swept under the rug because the definition just uses a certain threshold (“astronomical scale”). There have, in fact, been some discussions about how the definition could be changed to ameliorate this, but I don’t think there is a clear solution. Perhaps talking about reducing future suffering, or preventing worst-case outcomes, can convey this variation in severity more than the term ‘s-risks’.
Regarding your second question, I wrote up this document a while ago on whether we should focus on worst-case outcomes, as opposed to suffering in median futures or 90th-percentile-badness-futures (given that those are more likely than worst-cases). However, this did not yield a clear conclusion, so I consider this an open question.
The universe is vast, so it seems there is a lot of room for variation even within the subset of risks involving astronomical quantities of suffering. How much, in your opinion, do s-risks vary in severity? Relatedly, what are your grounds for singling out s-risks as the object of concern, rather than those risks involving the most suffering?
I agree that s-risks can vary a lot (by many orders of magnitude) in terms of severity. I also think that this gradual nature of s-risks is often swept under the rug because the definition just uses a certain threshold (“astronomical scale”). There have, in fact, been some discussions about how the definition could be changed to ameliorate this, but I don’t think there is a clear solution. Perhaps talking about reducing future suffering, or preventing worst-case outcomes, can convey this variation in severity more than the term ‘s-risks’.
Regarding your second question, I wrote up this document a while ago on whether we should focus on worst-case outcomes, as opposed to suffering in median futures or 90th-percentile-badness-futures (given that those are more likely than worst-cases). However, this did not yield a clear conclusion, so I consider this an open question.