So what do you mean when you say that the "risk is proven"?
If by "the risk is proven" you mean there's more than a 0% chance of an event happening, then there are almost an infinite number of such risks. There is certainly more than a 0% risk of humanity facing severe problems with an unaligned AGI in the future.
If it means the event happening is certain (100%), then neither a meteorite impact (of a magnitude harmful to humanity) nor the actual use of nuclear weapons fall into this category.
If you're referring only to risks of events that have occurred at least once in the past (as inferred from your examples), then we would be unprepared for any new risks.
In my opinion, it's much more complicated. There is no clear-cut category of "proven risks" that allows us to disregard other dangers and justifiably see those concerned about them as crazy radicals.
We must assess each potential risk individually, estimating both the probability of the event (which in almost all cases will be neither 100% nor 0%) and the potential harm it could cause. Different people naturally come up with different estimates, leading to various priorities in preventing different kinds of risks.
Nukes and meteorites have very few components that are hard to predict. One goes bang almost entirely on command and the other follows Newton's laws of motion. Neither actively tries to effect any change in the world, so the risk is only "can we spot a meteorite early enough". Once we do, it doesn't try to evade us or take another shot at goal. A better example might be covid, which was very mildly more unpredictable than a meteor, and changed its code very slowly in a purely random fashion, and we had many historical examples of how to combat.
RandomLensman|2 years ago
ludwik|2 years ago
If by "the risk is proven" you mean there's more than a 0% chance of an event happening, then there are almost an infinite number of such risks. There is certainly more than a 0% risk of humanity facing severe problems with an unaligned AGI in the future.
If it means the event happening is certain (100%), then neither a meteorite impact (of a magnitude harmful to humanity) nor the actual use of nuclear weapons fall into this category.
If you're referring only to risks of events that have occurred at least once in the past (as inferred from your examples), then we would be unprepared for any new risks.
In my opinion, it's much more complicated. There is no clear-cut category of "proven risks" that allows us to disregard other dangers and justifiably see those concerned about them as crazy radicals.
We must assess each potential risk individually, estimating both the probability of the event (which in almost all cases will be neither 100% nor 0%) and the potential harm it could cause. Different people naturally come up with different estimates, leading to various priorities in preventing different kinds of risks.
richardw|2 years ago