Draft talk:Existential risk

Edit attribution

I accidentally made a bunch of edits to the draft while logged out of my account. To keep attribution accurate, I reverted these edits, then reapplied them from my account. Apologies for making the changelog look so untidy. — Vermeer dawn (talk) 10:52, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

FYI, you can just go to an old revision (click on the date), edit it, and then submit to revert to that revision. WeyerStudentOfAgrippa (talk) 12:27, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Submission

@Vermeer dawn: IMO, the content here is already above average for Wikipedia and would stand as a live article. The article could continue expanding after going live. WeyerStudentOfAgrippa (talk) 17:13, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

———@WeyerStudentOfAgrippa: Thanks for the feedback. Good point. I will tidy up some of the referencing and then submit, rather than spending any more time on new content. Could also use a lead section. Vermeer dawn (talk) 07:22, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

———@WeyerStudentOfAgrippa: submitted for review. Thanks for all the help! Vermeer dawn (talk) 14:33, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Next steps

——@GreenC, Robert McClenon, and WeyerStudentOfAgrippa: I think we need to reach consensus on three distinct questions, each of which must be answered before turning to the next:

1) Should there be an ‘existential risk’ wiki?

2) Is this draft ready to be published on Wikipedia, and if not, what changes should be made to it?

3) How should we deal with the overlap between Global catastrophic risk and Draft: Existential risk wikis?

1. Should there be an ‘existential risk’ wiki?

@GreenC:: “Wikipedia follows trends it does not lead”. I agree with this, but think that the trends point clearly towards it being not only notable enough to have its own wiki, but more deserving than ‘global catastrophic risk’:

• Google Trends: “existential risk” gets 4x the search traffic over the past 5 years.
• Google Search: “existential risk” has 10x the search results than "global catastrophic risk”
• Google Scholar: 4,910 papers containing “existential risk”; 543 containing “global catastrophic risk”
• Across Wikipedia articles, there are 626 instances of "existential risk", vs. 551 of "global catastrophic risk"
• Even the Global catastrophic risk wiki contains more uses of ‘existential risk’ (30) than of ‘global catastrophic risk’ (27)

@GreenC:: “Future of Humanity Institute ... are the one's publishing books and papers differentiating themselves around this term”

• As per above, the term is clearly used more by the public, academics, and on Wikipedia.
• Also note that Nick Bostrom coined the term ‘global catastrophic risk’ too, and FHI hosted the first major conference on the topic. I see no reason to be suspicious of institutional partiality for one or other term.

@GreenC:: “Understood by who, Nick Bostrom and FHI. It's a false dichotomy, name which institutions are studying global catastrophic risks who then exclude permanent damage or the impacts on descendants. No one studying Global Catastrophic Risks is limiting their studies to ephemeral damage to current generations, it's an artificial distinction. If this distinction was real we should have no trouble seeing other institutions using it this way.”

• I don't think this is a great way of drawing distinctions.
  • A nearby analogy - there is a clear conceptual distinction between ‘extinction’ (the complete termination of a species on Earth) and ‘biodiversity loss’ (a more general term including dramatic declines in population, local extinction, etc.).
  • Most ongoing work by conservationists doesn’t distinguish between extinction proper and biodiversity loss— the drivers of both are similar, the strategies to tackle them will often be the same, they are important for similar reasons. Those concerned with biodiversity loss certainly don’t limit their studies to local or incomplete population loss.
  • Nonetheless, Extinction and Biodiversity loss, have (and deserve, in my view) separate Wikipedia pages, because they are conceptually distinct, and treated as such by researchers. The Extinction wiki includes a great deal of content that would be ill-suited to the Biodiversity loss wiki — e.g. the sections on History of scientific understanding; Mass extinctions; and Definition.

As already noted, the other organizations using this term are not doing so with with the definition this article provides, they are using it in a way that is synonymous with the broader communities usage of Global Catastrophic Risk. The existence of the term on Google search is completely meaningless, there is overlap between this term and GCR there is no clear distinction. This can be seen in this article itself, which is largely mirroring the same content in GCR, which is why everyone is concerned about a fork. Look, we have articles about topics, what we name that topic can be a matter of discussion but we don't duplicate the same topic just because people call it different things. -- GreenC 16:54, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Human extinction may be a conceptually closer topic to existential risk than GCR. I elaborate at Talk:Human extinction#Existential risk draft. WeyerStudentOfAgrippa (talk) 17:54, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

2. Is this draft ready to be published on Wikipedia, and if not, what changes should be made to it?

Conflicts / subject matter expertise

• I do work at FHI, and FHI has produced a substantial fraction of the most well-cited existential risk literature.
• I believe I’ve adhered closely to the advice for expert editors. Note that I haven’t cited any of my own work in the wiki (I have no published papers on existential risk).
• I am happy to privately share some identifying information (my name, job title, etc.) with individual editors, but would rather not do so publicly.

Neutrality and reliable third-party sourcing

• If the article does not yet meet the standards, then I’d be delighted to get specific feedback, and to work with others to help it reach a satisfactory level, including by citing more widely.
  • By my count, 11 of the 37 referenced sources are to FHI-affiliated work (and 23 of 56 individual citations).
  • This is comparable to sections 1–3 of the Global catastrophic risk wiki (which cover similar terrain), in which 18 of 42 individual citations are to FHI-affiliated work.

Right so the last thing we need is another article overly reliant on the POVs of Bostrom and FHI, we need to reduce and diversify with other POVs. There are many organizations slicing and dicing this field, but Global catastrophic risk is by far the most common usage for this topic and the most neutral. Bostrom's 2008 definition is interesting, but it's unclear it is established in the field broadly speaking. The mere usage of the term "existential risk" in Google search is meaningless, the word existed prior to Bostrom, many are using it without a clear or consistent definition, it's synonymous with GCR. As you say the terms cover "similar terrain". -- GreenC 17:30, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Content and other feedback

In general, I'd love more feedback on the article so that we can collaboratively get it into a state ready for publication.

3. How should we deal with the overlap between ‘Global Catastrophic Risk’ and ‘Existential risk’ wikis?

This depends greatly on the answers to the above, so I suggest waiting until we make progress on these before tackling this. I would be very happy to work with others to improve the quality and coherence of this area of Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vermeer dawn (talk • contribs)

@GreenC and Robert McClenon: See the above by User:Vermeer dawn.

I believe the conditions for Template:Ping were not met in the original post. (I did not receive a notification.) WeyerStudentOfAgrippa (talk) 16:42, 18 August 2020 (UTC)