Against Maxipok - by Will MacAskill and Guive Assadi

Existential risk isn’t everything

This is a summary of “Beyond Existential Risk”, by Will MacAskill and Guive Assadi. The full version is available on our website. Bostrom’s Maxipok principle suggests reducing existential risk should be the overwhelming focus for those looking to improve humanity’s long-term prospects. This rests on an implicitly dichotomous view of future value, where most outcomes are either near-worthless or near-best. We argue against the dichotomous view, and against Maxipok. In the coming century, values, institutions, and power distributions could become locked-in. But we could influence what gets…

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