I think there’s another element to this: moral judgement. Genocide is seen as an active choice. Somebody (or some group) is perpetrating this assault, which is horrible and evil. Many views of extinction don’t have a moral agent as the proximal cause—it’s an accident, or a fragile ecosystem that tips over via distributed little pieces, or something else that may be horrible but isn’t evil.
Ignorant destruction is far more tolerated than intentional destruction, even if the scales are such that the former is the more harmful.
It shouldn’t matter to those who die, but it does matter to the semi-evolved house apes who are pontificating about it at arms’ length.
I agree that this explains at least some of it, it was one of the hypotheses I considered, but it still didn’t sound exactly right.
After all, most of the people that this post describes would (I presume, again, no hard statistical data) assume that a genocide was not accidental (and proceed to find where to assign blame). Maybe that’s enough to explain why x-risks like asteroid or ecosystem collapse are treated like acts of God, but in a general case of misfortune the same people would quickly look for a guilty party, even when one doesn’t exist. Which makes me sceptical this explanation is the full story, as most AGI-apocalypse scenarios have plenty of folks to potentially blame. The question then remains of why they would presume ignorance and not willful risk-taking in this particular case, which is what I tried to address here.
The question then remains of why they would presume ignorance and not willful risk-taking in this particular case, which is what I tried to address here.
Oh, willful risk-taking ALSO gets a pass, or at least less-harsh judgement. The distinction is between “this is someone’s intentional outcome” for genocide, and “this is an unfortunate side-effect” for x-risk.
I think there’s another element to this: moral judgement. Genocide is seen as an active choice. Somebody (or some group) is perpetrating this assault, which is horrible and evil. Many views of extinction don’t have a moral agent as the proximal cause—it’s an accident, or a fragile ecosystem that tips over via distributed little pieces, or something else that may be horrible but isn’t evil.
Ignorant destruction is far more tolerated than intentional destruction, even if the scales are such that the former is the more harmful.
It shouldn’t matter to those who die, but it does matter to the semi-evolved house apes who are pontificating about it at arms’ length.
I agree that this explains at least some of it, it was one of the hypotheses I considered, but it still didn’t sound exactly right.
After all, most of the people that this post describes would (I presume, again, no hard statistical data) assume that a genocide was not accidental (and proceed to find where to assign blame). Maybe that’s enough to explain why x-risks like asteroid or ecosystem collapse are treated like acts of God, but in a general case of misfortune the same people would quickly look for a guilty party, even when one doesn’t exist. Which makes me sceptical this explanation is the full story, as most AGI-apocalypse scenarios have plenty of folks to potentially blame. The question then remains of why they would presume ignorance and not willful risk-taking in this particular case, which is what I tried to address here.
Oh, willful risk-taking ALSO gets a pass, or at least less-harsh judgement. The distinction is between “this is someone’s intentional outcome” for genocide, and “this is an unfortunate side-effect” for x-risk.