Beginner’s guide to reducing s-risks – Center on Long-Term Risk

Suffering risks, or s-risks, are “risks of events that bring about suffering in cosmically significant amounts” (Althaus and Gloor 2016).1 This article will discuss why the reduction of s-risks could be a candidate for a top priority among altruistic causes aimed at influencing the long-term future. The number of sentient beings in the future might be astronomical, and certain cultural, evolutionary, and technological forces could cause many of these beings to have lives dominated by severe suffering. S-risks might result from unintended consequences of pursuing large-scale goals (“incidental s-risks”), intentional harm by intelligent beings with influence over many resources (agential), or processes that occur without agents’ intervention (natural) (Baumann 2018a). Efforts to reduce s-risks generally consist of researching factors that […]