You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Dentin comments on How to sign up for Alcor cryo - Less Wrong Discussion

32 Post author: oge 26 April 2015 02:51AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (31)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Dentin 27 April 2015 04:12:05PM 1 point [-]

I believe I used a fairly small number for civilizational collapse and extinction, on the order of ten to fifteen percent. I just don't find such doomsday scenarios that likely or plausible.

It may be that my background and upbringing have inured me to it - I've seen the end of the world not happen far too many times in my lifetime:

  • Communists failed to conquer everyone
  • There was no nuclear war/nuclear winter with russia
  • The UN new world order didn't enslave everyone
  • The end times due to the second coming of christ haven't happened at least a dozen times
  • y2k didn't cause problems
  • 2012 was just retarded
  • There has been no superflu
  • The stock market has become more stable over time, not less
  • Peak oil happened and nobody even noticed
  • There was no hard AI takeoff

There's probably more if I stop to think about it.

At the moment, I find biotech to be the most likely existential threat, with general civilization collapse and strong AI the next two major candidates.