Two things that can both be true: 1. The world is getting better, by most metrics of human well-being 2. The risk of a major catastrophe is going up over time Yet I often see ppl try to dismiss 2 by saying "The doomsayers are wrong, things are getting better, [argument for 1]"
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I'm not sure i understand; it kinda sounds like you're saying we shouldn't worry about things like nuclear war, because even if tons of ppl die, future generations won't care? I'm sure that can't be what you're saying, though, I must be misreading
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Or maybe you're assuming that the ppl worried about catastrophes like nuclear war are proposing we stop economic growth in order to prevent it? And you're saying that's not a good tradeoff? If so, I probably agree, I just don't think that's the tradeoff anyone is proposing
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I'm glad I'm not on 1918 Twitter. "What if -- and I am aware that this is crazy, but run with it -- what if I can *imagine* -- Oh God, please don't kill me -- a United States which could be involved in a war for 15 years and that would be bad but not The End Of Things."
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Shouldn't we avoid generalizing from reduced cost spread of e.g. war, naturally-occurring plagues wrt overall risk of catastrophe, for the same reasons that future humans with good climate change solutions shouldn't look to climate change when there's a death ray pointed at them?
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Considering 2 as 2a (cost spread of catastrophic event rn) x 2b (risk of catastrophic event rn), it's plausible to me that 1 is improving while 2a & 2b are both worsening. But even if you think 2a is increasingly mitigated by 1, 2b does seem largely orthogonal to 1 & on the rise
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