Option B: Nuclear war that kills 99% of human beings
Option C: Nuclear war that kills 100% of humanity
He claims that the difference between C and B is greater than between B and A. The idea being that option C represents a destruction of 100% of present day humanity andall future value. But if weâre confident that future value will be fulfilled by aliens whether we destroy ourselves or not then there isnât much of a jump between B and C.
While Grabby Aliens considerations may make our cosmic endowment much smaller than if the universe was empty (and Iâd be interested in some quantitative estimates about that (related)) I think your conclusion above is very likely still false.[1]
The difference between C and B is still much greater than the difference between B and A. To see why, consider that the amount of value that humanity could create in our solar system (let alone in whatever volume of space in our galaxy or galactic neighborhood we could reach before we encounter other grabby aliens) in the near future in a post-AGI world completely dwarfs the amount of value we are creating each year on Earth currently.
[1] Technically you said âif weâre confident that future value will be fulfilled by aliens whether we destroy ourselves or notâ, but thatâs just begging the question, so I replied as if you had written âIf weâre confident there are aliens only a few light-years away (with values roughly matching ours)â in that place instead.
You are right but we arenât comparing extinction risk reduction to doing nothing, we are comparing it to other interventions such as s-risk reduction. If the value propositions are sufficiently close, this is insanely relevant as this could reduce extinction risk value by an order of magnitude or more, depending on your priors of grabby alien formation.
While Grabby Aliens considerations may make our cosmic endowment much smaller than if the universe was empty (and Iâd be interested in some quantitative estimates about that (related)) I think your conclusion above is very likely still false.[1]
The difference between C and B is still much greater than the difference between B and A. To see why, consider that the amount of value that humanity could create in our solar system (let alone in whatever volume of space in our galaxy or galactic neighborhood we could reach before we encounter other grabby aliens) in the near future in a post-AGI world completely dwarfs the amount of value we are creating each year on Earth currently.
[1] Technically you said âif weâre confident that future value will be fulfilled by aliens whether we destroy ourselves or notâ, but thatâs just begging the question, so I replied as if you had written âIf weâre confident there are aliens only a few light-years away (with values roughly matching ours)â in that place instead.
You are right but we arenât comparing extinction risk reduction to doing nothing, we are comparing it to other interventions such as s-risk reduction. If the value propositions are sufficiently close, this is insanely relevant as this could reduce extinction risk value by an order of magnitude or more, depending on your priors of grabby alien formation.