The boundary between disagreement about whether something is real and different preferences about the costs of mitigation are, alas, somewhat porous. E.g., when there was debate about the dangers of smoking, you were much less likely to think there was a lot of danger if you were either a smoker or an employee of a tobacco company than if you were neither of those things.
I don’t know how strong this effect is in the domain of existential risk; it might depend on what things one counts as existential risks.
The boundary between disagreement about whether something is real and different preferences about the costs of mitigation are, alas, somewhat porous. E.g., when there was debate about the dangers of smoking, you were much less likely to think there was a lot of danger if you were either a smoker or an employee of a tobacco company than if you were neither of those things.
I don’t know how strong this effect is in the domain of existential risk; it might depend on what things one counts as existential risks.