Thanks for voicing this sentiment I had upon reading the original comment. My impression was that negative utilitarian viewpoints / things of this sort had been trending for far longer than cousin_it’s comment might suggest.
The article isn’t specifically negative utilitarian, though—even classical utilitarians would agree that having astronomical amounts of suffering is a bad thing. Nor do you have to be a utilitarian in the first place to think it would be bad: as the article itself notes, pretty much all major value systems probably agree on s-risks being a major Bad Thing:
All plausible value systems agree that suffering, all else being equal, is undesirable. That is, everyone agrees that we have reasons to avoid suffering. S-risks are risks of massive suffering, so I hope you agree that it’s good to prevent s-risks.
Thanks for voicing this sentiment I had upon reading the original comment. My impression was that negative utilitarian viewpoints / things of this sort had been trending for far longer than cousin_it’s comment might suggest.
The article isn’t specifically negative utilitarian, though—even classical utilitarians would agree that having astronomical amounts of suffering is a bad thing. Nor do you have to be a utilitarian in the first place to think it would be bad: as the article itself notes, pretty much all major value systems probably agree on s-risks being a major Bad Thing: