Yes! Thank you for this. Pascal’s Muggings have to posit paranormal/supernatural mechanisms to work. But x-risk isn’t like that. Big difference which people seem to overlook. And Pascal’s Muggings involve many orders of magnitude smaller chances than even the most pessimistic x-risk outlooks.
I agree with your second point but not your first. Also it’s possible you mean “optimistic” in your second point: if x-risks themselves are very small, that’s one way for the change in probability as a result of our actions to be very small.
Yes! Thank you for this. Pascal’s Muggings have to posit paranormal/supernatural mechanisms to work. But x-risk isn’t like that. Big difference which people seem to overlook. And Pascal’s Muggings involve many orders of magnitude smaller chances than even the most pessimistic x-risk outlooks.
I agree with your second point but not your first. Also it’s possible you mean “optimistic” in your second point: if x-risks themselves are very small, that’s one way for the change in probability as a result of our actions to be very small.
I mean pessimism about the importance of x-risk research, which is more or less equivalent to optimism about the future of humanity. Similar idea.