[tshaddox]

If you think there are very long term existential threats we can’t protect against without massive technological advances, or if there might be existential threats we don’t know about yet, you probably don’t want a relatively static society regardless of how internally stable and comfortable it seems to be. We probably need to up our game a lot to even be safe from existential threats we know about, like asteroid/comet impacts. And what about supernovae? And what about stuff that might be even less frequent that we don’t even know about?

I guess what I’m saying is that optimizing for stability and comfort almost certainly is at odds with optimizing for longevity. Unless we eventually have some good reason to think that we’ve discovered all the long-term existential threats and are protected against them.

[pmitow]

Human civilization is only 6,000 years old. Worrying about supernovae and comets is really jumping the gun. Our biggest danger -- by many orders of magnitude -- is ourselves.

[tshaddox]

Everything I said applies just as well to existential threats caused by humans!