I agree with the general thrust of this post—at least the weak version that we should consider this to be an unexplored field, worth putting some effort into. But I strong disagree with the sentiment here:
maybe we’re closer to the “ceiling” on Survival than we are to the “ceiling” of Flourishing.
Most people (though not everyone) thinks we’re much more likely than not to Survive this century. Metaculus puts *extinction* risk at about 4%; a survey of superforecasters put it at 1%. Toby Ord put total existential risk this century at 16%.
Not that I disagree with their estimates (if anything I’d guess they’re too high), but because ‘extinction this century’ is a tiny fraction of the amount of time in which we could go extinct before going interstellar. There’s any number of Very Bad Things that could happen to us this century or soon thereafter which could substantially reduce our probability of surviving long term (in particular, of getting to a state where we can survive the expansion of our sun).
I agree with the general thrust of this post—at least the weak version that we should consider this to be an unexplored field, worth putting some effort into. But I strong disagree with the sentiment here:
Not that I disagree with their estimates (if anything I’d guess they’re too high), but because ‘extinction this century’ is a tiny fraction of the amount of time in which we could go extinct before going interstellar. There’s any number of Very Bad Things that could happen to us this century or soon thereafter which could substantially reduce our probability of surviving long term (in particular, of getting to a state where we can survive the expansion of our sun).
I responded to a Jack’s similar thought here.