So are you saying you think that in a universe with 8 years of Al Gore instead of 8 years of bush, X-risks have even odds on average? That seems very unlikely.
Yes, I am saying I think neither Gore nor Bush nor any other president is going to make any significant difference to the probability of the human race being wiped out, as long as the probability is your reasonable subjective estimate.
Also, my statement was about Supreme Court appointments, which are even less likely to make a difference. But they make a big difference to culture, which is what politics is about. That is why I said this is about being mindkilled—bad Supreme Court justices = bad cultural effects = the worst thing in the world = existential risk.
Conservative judges → ban abortion → increased crime → government spends more energy trying to stop crime and less on FAI reserch → paperclips
But we’re into the realm of tiny minute one-in-a-million probabilities here. Altering Supreme Court appointments is not exactly the most effective way to fight x-risk by any stretch of the imagination.
Something like that could happen, but someone could just as easily come up with some opposite chain of events. And saying that you could still make an overall estimate of which is more likely is no different from saying that you can choose which religion is best for Pascal’s wager.
The idea that Supreme Court appointments cause existential risk is one of the most obvious examples of being mind killed that I have ever seen.
So are you saying you think that in a universe with 8 years of Al Gore instead of 8 years of bush, X-risks have even odds on average? That seems very unlikely.
Yes, I am saying I think neither Gore nor Bush nor any other president is going to make any significant difference to the probability of the human race being wiped out, as long as the probability is your reasonable subjective estimate.
Also, my statement was about Supreme Court appointments, which are even less likely to make a difference. But they make a big difference to culture, which is what politics is about. That is why I said this is about being mindkilled—bad Supreme Court justices = bad cultural effects = the worst thing in the world = existential risk.
Well, its possible that e.g.
Conservative judges → ban abortion → increased crime → government spends more energy trying to stop crime and less on FAI reserch → paperclips
But we’re into the realm of tiny minute one-in-a-million probabilities here. Altering Supreme Court appointments is not exactly the most effective way to fight x-risk by any stretch of the imagination.
Something like that could happen, but someone could just as easily come up with some opposite chain of events. And saying that you could still make an overall estimate of which is more likely is no different from saying that you can choose which religion is best for Pascal’s wager.