On the sign of X-risk reduction

Disconnected essays fully or partly related to whether human survival and expansion is overall better or worse from an impartial perspective.

I wrote them over the years. I started trying to help answer the question, with a particular focus on questioning the consensus in favor of X-risk reduction in the Effective Altruism community. I ended up arguing that we can’t answer it and must remain agnostic.

Fu­ture tech­nolog­i­cal progress does NOT cor­re­late with meth­ods that in­volve less suffering

Model­ing the (dis)value of hu­man sur­vival and ex­pan­sion

Why we may ex­pect our suc­ces­sors not to care about suffering

Op­ti­mistic Longter­mism and Sus­pi­cious Judg­ment Calls

Dis­cus­sions of Longter­mism should fo­cus on the prob­lem of Unawareness