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Nicholas Schiefer
@nschiefer
Do you find any existential risk concerns compelling? I'm tend to be pretty nervous about "prevent very bad but very unlikely things from happening" arguments, but I also feel various 20th century close calls with nuclear weapons were... way too close for comfort.
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Nicholas Schiefer
@nschiefer
Gotcha. I'm pretty curious about the partial extinction risk: what makes it basically as bad as total extinction? Is it a "future humans matter much less than current humans" perspective (or a really high discount rate), or something else?
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Nicholas Schiefer
@nschiefer
I agree that partial extinction is real, and that existential risk is uniquely, uh, "fun" to talk about, and therefore requires extra hygiene. I think reasonable people can disagree about the worth of living after losing e.g., most of a family.
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Nicholas Schiefer
@nschiefer
Replying to
@nschiefer
I don't have the hubris to say that *I* would be that resilient, but I am very grateful that some of my ancestors (some of whom did lose ~their entire family and possibly, like, almost their entire village?) found a way to keep going.
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Nicholas Schiefer
@nschiefer
I dunno how I would rate it personally. I think I'd hope that I could keep future humans in mind, who would only suffer in the shadow of that horror rather than experience it directly. And that seems better than not existing, at least.
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