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