Talk:Global catastrophic risk

Split History section off to Human extinction#History

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was no consensus. Chidgk1 (talk) 13:35, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

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I suggest to reduce this section and keep all history about human extinction there. Only thoughts about global catasptrophic rick and existentional risk should be kept in this history.--Geysirhead (talk) 18:21, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose for the same reason the discussion above "Merge with Human extinction" was opposed. They are arbitrary distinctions, one can not speak of a global catastrophic risk without also discussing the possibility of human extinction. Since we have no idea to what degree any catastrophic risk will lead. -- GreenC 18:49, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Previous discussion does not apply here, it was about a merge, not split.--Geysirhead (talk) 10:33, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

So Global catastrophic risk#History and Human extinction#History were nearly identical, word for word, 3 subsections long. The only exceptions were reference formatting, a slight difference in order of sentences, and the fact that the "Human extinction" copy had some sentences that were not in the "Global catastrophic risk" copy. Since the copy on "Global catastrophic risk" section only discussed the history of thinking about human extinction, I dropped it from that article completely after syncing it up with the other version. If we want a "history of thinking about human extinction" section in Global catastrophic risk, it should follow Wikipedia:Summary style and be a lot shorter. Or maybe the articles should just be merged; that depends on other sections. -- Beland (talk) 01:25, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Category errors & redirect issues: Creating a new "Omnicide" page?

Posting this on both the 'Human extinction' page and the 'Global catastrophic risk' page to suggest the creation of either 1. an 'Omnicide' page 2. a separate 'Existential risk' page and/or 3. Retitling the 'global catastrophic risk' page.

There are some gnarly issues with the terminology in this constellation of pages & page redirects: 'Human extinction' covers...human extinction. Whereas omnicide, properly understood in the context of the literature on this subject, refers to the extinction of all terrestrial life. We can concede that while these may be potentially related domains they are meant to describe consequentially and meaningfully distinct outcomes. Human extinction is, so to speak, a sub-domain of what is being referred to in the word 'omnicide'--as a header it doesn't even remotely cover what is meant to be called up in the word omnicide. Meanwhile 'mass-extinction' no longer has the right ring because most people entering middle-age who have had access to a K-12 education have been aware that we're living through a mass-extinction since they were young children. Mass-extinction begins to sound like a normative element in other words and is more likely to be associated with ancient, pre-human events as opposed to evoking the threat of a future event without example in terrestrial history.

Meanwhile, "existential risk" redirects to "global catastrophic risk." The distinction here is even more subtle but it's still a problem. Existential risk refers to all of the following: 1. the risk of omnicide 2. the risk of human extinction 3. the risk of a civilizational collapse so severe that would evacuate the meaning or desirability of a continuity of human life. <<The modifying phrase here is important. Civilizational collapse, historically, encompasses plenty of situations that might have been experienced as desirable or less severe than the sort of situation that's being gestured towards in the term existential risk. As a term for this constellation of existential threats 'global catastrophic risk' appears to discount or downplay or fall short of the extremity of these potentials. "Global catastrophic risk" sounds like it could just as easily be applied to the risk of the bond market collapsing as to, say for example, the extinction of all terrestrial life. As a description of omnicide or even of existential risk the header "global catastrophic risk" shades into classical apocalyptic thinking--the end is conceived as potentially redemptive. Conceiving of or talking about the actual cessation of all terrestrial life without the implication of cyclic reinvention or hanging onto the possibility of a silver lining is avoided and repressed by apocalyptic thinking. Clarifying distinctions between these styles of thought about the complex of issues relating to omnicide or to existential risk requires some sort of revision in this space.

The reworking of *either* Human extinction page or the Global catastrophic risk page to cover what is being discounted, downplayed or missed in this conversation might end up being extensive, difficult to negotiate or even uncalled for since these pages do manage to cover what the terms in their titles describe--they just don't describe omnicide or adequately deal with the maximal extremity of what is being described. Really, it seems to me, the most appropriate move would be to make a new, separate Existential Risk page that has a slightly different emphasis and organization than the Global Catastrophic Risk page. But this is likely to be somewhat duplicative of the Global catastrophic risk page. Therefore: maybe a new Omnicide page? But that term is more exotic. Either option seems worth pursuing.

So the question, I'm raising is: Should we look into re-titling and revising the Global catastrophic risk page or creating a new omnicide page?

  ThomasMikael (talk) 18:10, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

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