I agree with the second sentence (the recommendation, in particular of “explosion scenarios”).
As for the first, my agreement is partial. One could say “overview of intelligence explosion”, but only if one is thinking of “explosion” specifically as a nominalization of the verb “explode”. (Example: “Fireworks commonly explode” → “The explosion of fireworks is a common occurence”.) In this case the phrase “intelligence explosion” would be analogous to a phrase like “product development” (and one can certainly speak of an “overview of product development”). This is however a fairly rare (and rather technical-sounding) usage. The more common meaning of “explosion” is “instance of something exploding”, as in “I just saw a huge explosion!”. With this meaning, “overview of intelligence explosion” is completely wrong, just like “overview of extinction event” would be.
Like you (I suspect), I initially read the phrase with the second meaning, and it sounded awful at first, before the other interpretation occurred to me a second or two later. This suggests sticking to the second sense of “explosion”, and writing “overview of intelligence explosion scenarios”.
Thanks. I did consider the other meaning. Note that in “product development”, a product is being developed, while in “intelligence explosion”, intelligence is exploding. That doesn’t by itself make the interpretation impossible; “intelligence explosion” could instead be analogous to “product evolution”, say. But the distracting interpretation where intelligence is being exploded made the interpretation of “explosion” as a nominalization of “explode” seem even more unnatural, as did the use elsewhere of “an intelligence explosion” and “the intelligence explosion”. (Likewise, in the case of “the explosion of fireworks”, at first I read that as fireworks being exploded and not fireworks exploding, but there it doesn’t matter, because fireworks being exploded makes sense.)
I agree with the second sentence (the recommendation, in particular of “explosion scenarios”).
As for the first, my agreement is partial. One could say “overview of intelligence explosion”, but only if one is thinking of “explosion” specifically as a nominalization of the verb “explode”. (Example: “Fireworks commonly explode” → “The explosion of fireworks is a common occurence”.) In this case the phrase “intelligence explosion” would be analogous to a phrase like “product development” (and one can certainly speak of an “overview of product development”). This is however a fairly rare (and rather technical-sounding) usage. The more common meaning of “explosion” is “instance of something exploding”, as in “I just saw a huge explosion!”. With this meaning, “overview of intelligence explosion” is completely wrong, just like “overview of extinction event” would be.
Like you (I suspect), I initially read the phrase with the second meaning, and it sounded awful at first, before the other interpretation occurred to me a second or two later. This suggests sticking to the second sense of “explosion”, and writing “overview of intelligence explosion scenarios”.
Thanks. I did consider the other meaning. Note that in “product development”, a product is being developed, while in “intelligence explosion”, intelligence is exploding. That doesn’t by itself make the interpretation impossible; “intelligence explosion” could instead be analogous to “product evolution”, say. But the distracting interpretation where intelligence is being exploded made the interpretation of “explosion” as a nominalization of “explode” seem even more unnatural, as did the use elsewhere of “an intelligence explosion” and “the intelligence explosion”. (Likewise, in the case of “the explosion of fireworks”, at first I read that as fireworks being exploded and not fireworks exploding, but there it doesn’t matter, because fireworks being exploded makes sense.)
Thanks. Note that in “product development”, the product is being developed, whereas in “intelligence explosion”, intelligence is not being exploded.