I don’t talk to many people who still identify as longtermist, but as someone who does, I recently wrote thesearguments for why longtermists should be less extinction-focused.
The tl;dr is that I think that beyond extinction there are predictable patterns, related to entropy, that provide more nuanced ways to estimate the cost of lesser catastrophes—and that while assessing their cost precisely is unfeasible, we have no basis for thinking they’re negligible compared to extinction.
I don’t talk to many people who still identify as longtermist, but as someone who does, I recently wrote these arguments for why longtermists should be less extinction-focused.
The tl;dr is that I think that beyond extinction there are predictable patterns, related to entropy, that provide more nuanced ways to estimate the cost of lesser catastrophes—and that while assessing their cost precisely is unfeasible, we have no basis for thinking they’re negligible compared to extinction.