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.
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.