Having estimates of irrecoverable civilizational collapse is extremely important because it determines whether nuclear risks and pandemics are X-risks or non-existential global catastrophic risks. So I'd love to have people's thoughts on this, especially from people who have thought about it. It doesn't matter if it's a rough estimate.
The only investigation I know of is Luisa Rodriguez's one and my understanding was that she didn't put a lot of weight on it but it seems like it's an argument that seems important in other thinker's worldviews (e.g Toby Ord mentioned this in a private discussion to explain the high probability he gives to biorisks being an X-risk) so I'd like to get a better sense on people's view on that question:
What's the likelihood of irrecoverable civilizational collapse if 90% of the human population dies?
This question feels similar in spirit to the one I asked a couple weeks ago, "Odds of recovering values after collapse?", so OP you might be interested in checking out that question and the responses to it.
Thanks!
Do you think that biorisks/nuclear war could plausibly cause us never to recover our values? What's the weight you give to such a scenario?
(I want to know if the weight you put on "worse values" is due to stable totalitarianism due to new technologies or due to collapse -> bad people win).
(DM'ed you)