Re:The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”
by JoshTriplett on Tuesday August 03, 2021 @11:43PM
(#28056987)
> It's a bit, uh, odd to complain about associating an idea with it's proponents
Not when they're non-representative proponents used to advance an inaccurate sensationalized viewpoint.
That viewpoint is completely opposite of the reality of people thinking about existential risks. The people thinking about existential risks decades ago would have been working on climate change. Now, climate change is in the mainstream consciousness, and though there still isn't enough being done about it, it hardly needs more attention. So it's also reasonable to ask, what problems will have mainstream attention many years from now but we'll wish we'd started working on today?
It's a bit, uh, odd to complain about associating an idea with it's proponents. That's what most people do with most ideas. It seems like a lot of arguments being made here have the quality of "the authors are unfairly summarizing the arguments being actually made ... rather than taking the whole thing as a light-hearted experiment with no consequences if you don't want them...."