[ExI] boomerang

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2011-12-26 03:04, spike wrote:
> When we talk about global catastrophe, probability 0.1 – 1%, it isn’t
> clear how the term is defined. How would we know if we are having a
> catastrophe? Who gets to call it?

Ja, the categories are tricky. All humans being dead is straightforward 
enough, but what about being replaced with something else? Or that 
humans persist for all eternity, but never reach their true potential - 
they all just watch reality soaps? Or that infinite value and thought is 
acquired in finite time, and afterwards there is nothing?

There are some tricky definitional points here. Nick wrestles with them 
in his latest paper on the topic ( 
http://www.existential-risk.org/concept.pdf ), but in the end I think it 
is one of those "you recognize it when you see it" cases.

 From my perspective an economic downturn or dark age even lasting a 
century or more is not really that serious. Sure, it is 
trans-generational but it is endurable (see the diagram on page 5 of 
Nick's paper) - life during a depression might not be that fun, but it 
is still liveable. Birds still sing, people fall in love and one can 
discover and change things. Tyler Cowan had some good points about it in 
his "The Great Stagnation", where among other things he noted that 
thanks to the Internet we got a much more endurable economic downturn - 
it is possible to get fun and value for nearly free.

The real reason to try to prevent long downturns in the GCR/xrisk 
perspective is that having more resources and a more optimistic outlook 
makes people better able to stop emerging risks. If we see an asteroid 
coming but cannot afford a prevention mission we are hosed. Wealth does 
not make us much happier, but it helps make us more secure.

-- 
Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford University