“Citation Index suggests that virtually nothing has been written about the cost effectiveness of reducing human extinction risks,” and Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg noted, in a personal communication, that there are orders of magnitude more papers on coleoptera—the study of beetles—than “human extinction.” Anyone can confirm this for themselves with a Google Scholar search: coleoptera gets 245,000 hits, and “human extinction” gets fewer than 1,200.”
I am not saying that nobody cares. The issue was raised because you said:
This seems to assume that existential risk reduction is the only thing
people care about. I doubt I am the only person who wants more from
the universe than eliminating risk of humans going extinct.
...and someone disagreed!!!
People do care about other things. They mostly care about other things. And the reason for that is pretty obvious—if you think about it.
That’s what Tim could have said. His post may have got a better reception if he left off:
I mean, I most certainly do care and the reasons are obvious. p(wedrifid survives | no human survives) = 0
What I mean is things like:
“Citation Index suggests that virtually nothing has been written about the cost effectiveness of reducing human extinction risks,” and Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg noted, in a personal communication, that there are orders of magnitude more papers on coleoptera—the study of beetles—than “human extinction.” Anyone can confirm this for themselves with a Google Scholar search: coleoptera gets 245,000 hits, and “human extinction” gets fewer than 1,200.”
http://www.good.is/post/our-delicate-future-handle-with-care/
I am not saying that nobody cares. The issue was raised because you said:
...and someone disagreed!!!
People do care about other things. They mostly care about other things. And the reason for that is pretty obvious—if you think about it.
Wow… this was my tangent? Then “WOO! Whatever point I was initially making!”, or something.