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timtyler comments on Existential Risk and Public Relations - Less Wrong
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Lack of interest in existential risk reduction makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective. As I have previously explained:
"Organisms can be expected to concentrate on producing offspring - not indulging paranoid fantasies about their whole species being wiped out!"
Most people are far more concerned about other things - for perfectly sensible and comprehensible reasons.
This is a bizarre digression from the parent comment. You're already having this exact conversation elsewhere in the thread!
It follows from - "This seems to assume that existential risk reduction is the only thing people care about." - and - "I disagree." - People do care about other things. They mostly care about other things.
Your last sentence seems true.
I think I also buy the evolved-intelligence-should-be-myopic argument, even though we have only one data point, and don't need the evolutionary argument to lend support to what direct observation already shows in our case.
So, I can't see why this is downvoted except that it's somewhat of a tangent.
Well, I wasn't really claiming that "evolved-intelligence-should-be-myopic".
Evolved-intelligence is what we have, and it can predict the future - at least a little:
Even if the "paranoid fantasies" have consderable substance, would still usually be better (for your genes) to concentrate on producing offspring. Averting disaster is a "tragedy of the commons" situation. Free riding - and letting someone else do that - may well reap the benefits without paying the costs.