I think these questions are pretty bad at us. Counterfactuals are confusing regardless, but very complex states of the universe and actions of tens of thousands of significant people (and billions of unknown-influence) are truly impossible to model well enough to know what “could have happened” even means.
I asked a similar question about WWI rather than x-risk. It seems that we are pretty bad at these kinds of questions
I think these questions are pretty bad at us. Counterfactuals are confusing regardless, but very complex states of the universe and actions of tens of thousands of significant people (and billions of unknown-influence) are truly impossible to model well enough to know what “could have happened” even means.
One butterfly flapping its wings just right instead of the way it actually did.