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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

Jul 24, 2021

The trauma perspective (both institutional and personal) is really interesting, thanks!

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Nicholas Schiefer

@nschiefer

Jul 24, 2021

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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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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I've never thought about the possibility that we might just... lose the will/resilience/desire to keep going, rather than gallantly rebuilding. That's some serious stuff, and as you say probably much more likely than total extinction.

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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.

11:31 PM · Jul 24, 2021Twitter Web App

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strong endorse the intergenerational trauma perspective, btw. seems very real and extremely bad.

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and

actually I think just reading/pondering this is updating my overall felt badness ratings 🤔 specifically that I think I hadn't priced in the trauma properly. thanks!

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Nicholas Schiefer

@nschiefer

Jul 25, 2021

Definitely agree that a sufficiently bad life can be worse than not existing, yeah. Existence is pretty good though? I think we might have slightly different thresholds in mind but nothing really qualitatively different.