[goolulusaurs]

Consider two different scenarios:

1) Throughout history many people have predicted the world would soon end, and the world did not in fact end.

2) Throughout history no one predicted the world would soon end, and the world did not in fact end.

The fact that the real world is aligned with scenario 1 is more an indication that there exists a pervasive human cognitive bias to think that the world is going to end, which occasionally manifests itself in the right circumstances (apocalypticism).

[staunton]

That argument is still invalid because in scenario 2 we would not be having this discussion. No conclusions can be drawn from such past discourse about the likelihood of definite and complete extinction.

Not that, I hope, anyone expected a strong argument to be had there. It seems reasonably certain to me that humanity will go extinct one way or another eventually. That is also not a good argument in this situation.

[goolulusaurs]

It depends on what you mean by "this discussion", but I don't think that follows.

If for example, we were in scenario 2 and it was still the case that a large number of people thought AI doomsday was a serious risk, then that would be a much stronger argument for taking the idea of AI doomsday seriously. If on the other hand we are in scenario 1, where there is a long history of people falling prey to apocalypticism, then that means any new doomsday claims are also more likely to be a result of apocalypticism.

I agree that is is likely that humans will go extinct eventually, but I am talking specifically about AI doomsday in this discussion.

[haswell]

> If on the other hand we are in scenario 1, where there is a long history of people falling prey to apocalypticism, then that means any new doomsday claims are also more likely to be a result of apocalypticism.

If you're blindly evaluating the likelihood of any random claim without context, sure.

But like the boy who cried wolf, there is a potential scenario where the likelihood that it's not true has no bearing on what actually happens.

Arguably, claims about doomsday made now by highly educated people are more interesting than claims made 100/1000/10000 years ago. Over time, the growing collective knowledge of humanity increases and with it, the plausibility of those claims because of our increasing ability to accurately predict outcomes based on our models of the world.

e.g. after the introduction of nuclear weapons, a claim about the potentially apocalyptic impact of war is far more plausible than it would have been prior.

Similarly, we can now estimate the risk of passing comets/asteroids, and if we identify one that's on a collision course, we know that our technology makes it worth taking that risk more seriously than someone making a prediction in an era before we could possible know such things.