<story><title>We&apos;re Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/were-underestimating-the-risk-of-human-extinction/253821/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mseebach</author><text>&lt;i&gt;There are so many people that could come into existence in the future if humanity survives this critical period of time---we might live for billions of years, our descendants might colonize billions of solar systems, and there could be billions and billions times more people than exist currently. Therefore, even a very small reduction in the probability of realizing this enormous good will tend to outweigh even immense benefits like eliminating poverty or curing malaria, which would be tremendous under ordinary standards.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s really an interesting moral discussion - it&apos;s like an extension of the &quot;sacrifice one person to save five&quot; classical dilemma, but I really can&apos;t agree with his flippant assertion that our moral obligation to the unborn future billions eclipses that to our obligation to help our contemporaries. And he&apos;s not even talking about preserving the planet for the future generations, he&apos;s merely concerned with them being born in the first place.&lt;p&gt;Also, his argument has the same short-coming as the &quot;sacrifice&quot; dilemma: We cannot know for sure that a certain action will have a certain outcome - or that any action taken was actually the cause of the outcome.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lincolnq</author><text>&quot;unborn future billions&quot; sounds so... abstract.&lt;p&gt;Think of Petrov: &lt;a href=&quot;http://lesswrong.com/lw/8f0/existential_risk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://lesswrong.com/lw/8f0/existential_risk/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;We effectively credit him with saving the world. If it weren&apos;t for him, most of us might not be around. I consider him a hero. From a moral perspective I would rather be him than Bill Gates, who has greatly reduced suffering and disease in the modern world. Just because of the impact on the future.</text></comment>
<story><title>We&apos;re Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/were-underestimating-the-risk-of-human-extinction/253821/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mseebach</author><text>&lt;i&gt;There are so many people that could come into existence in the future if humanity survives this critical period of time---we might live for billions of years, our descendants might colonize billions of solar systems, and there could be billions and billions times more people than exist currently. Therefore, even a very small reduction in the probability of realizing this enormous good will tend to outweigh even immense benefits like eliminating poverty or curing malaria, which would be tremendous under ordinary standards.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s really an interesting moral discussion - it&apos;s like an extension of the &quot;sacrifice one person to save five&quot; classical dilemma, but I really can&apos;t agree with his flippant assertion that our moral obligation to the unborn future billions eclipses that to our obligation to help our contemporaries. And he&apos;s not even talking about preserving the planet for the future generations, he&apos;s merely concerned with them being born in the first place.&lt;p&gt;Also, his argument has the same short-coming as the &quot;sacrifice&quot; dilemma: We cannot know for sure that a certain action will have a certain outcome - or that any action taken was actually the cause of the outcome.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>angersock</author><text>That&apos;s the problem of reasoning on timescales of civilizations, yeah? You can&apos;t really pay attention to transient effects and still make meaningful policies.&lt;p&gt;For example, consider how many people died mining coal in the past couple of centuries, or how many natives died when colonizing forces spread them diseases or outright committed genocide.&lt;p&gt;Sure, it&apos;s awful, but would the world really be a better place if America were limited to some traders on the East coast? Or if England had never really gotten the Industrial Revolution thing figured out?&lt;p&gt;We can&apos;t really reason in human terms when talking about the species writ large.</text></comment>