Beyond existential risk

Abstract

Bostrom’s Maxipok principle suggests reducing existential risk should be the overwhelming focus for improving humanity’s long-term prospects. But this rests on an implicitly dichotomous view of future value, where most outcomes are either near-worthless or near-best. Against Maxipok, we argue it is possible to substantially influence the long-term future by other channels than reducing existential risk — including how values, institutions, and power distributions become locked in.