Thank you for this article, Michael! I like seeing the different mainline definitions of existential risk and catastrophe alongside each other, and having some common misunderstandings clarified.
Just a minor comment:
That said, at least to me, it seems that “destruction of humanity’s longterm potential” could be read as meaning the complete destruction. So I’d personally be inclined to tweak Ord’s definitions to:
An existential catastrophe is the destruction of the vast majority of humanity’s long-term potential.
An existential risk is a risk that threatens the destruction of the vast majority of humanity’s long-term potential.[4]
Ord was presumably going for brevity in his book, and I think his definition succeeds quite well! I don’t think generally adding 4 words to Ord’s short nice definition would be worth it. There’s other details that could be expanded on as well (like how we can mostly consider the definition in Bostrom 2012 to be a more expanded one). Expanding helps with discussing a particular point, though.
Thank you for this article, Michael! I like seeing the different mainline definitions of existential risk and catastrophe alongside each other, and having some common misunderstandings clarified.
Just a minor comment:
Ord was presumably going for brevity in his book, and I think his definition succeeds quite well! I don’t think generally adding 4 words to Ord’s short nice definition would be worth it. There’s other details that could be expanded on as well (like how we can mostly consider the definition in Bostrom 2012 to be a more expanded one). Expanding helps with discussing a particular point, though.