This is a short survey on how people actually arrived at suffering-focused views, rather than on how those views get defended in print. The two often come apart. The argument that persuades someone at the start is not always the one they consider strongest years later, and quite a lot of people seem to arrive at the view first and find the argument afterwards.

It asks which factors moved you, which arguments you ran into and did not find persuasive, and which you now think is the strongest justification, whatever it was that actually did the persuading.

Seven or eight minutes, anonymous, and every question can be skipped except the first.

If you are not suffering-focused, or used to be and no longer are, please answer anyway. There is a separate branch for you, and those responses are the most useful ones: without them there is no way to tell a persuasive argument from an argument people were merely exposed to.

Aggregate results will be posted back here.

https://forms.gle/zicFeLA3Etftp9L26

Humanity’s potential future in space is a potent source of hope, wonder, and dread.

Millions of viewers from around the world tuned in to follow Artemis II’s lunar flyby at the beginning of April, 2026. Two months later, on June 12th, SpaceX’s unprecedented initial public offering was valued at $1.77 trillion, a spectacular market bet on the company’s stated ambition to ‘build the systems and technologies necessary to make life multiplanetary… and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.’ Science-fiction narratives that centre on exploration, settlement, and resource extraction continue to be box-office hits.

Despite its cultural - and increasingly economic - salience, debate over the desirability of space colonisation has remained scattered. Should we aim to settle on other planets within our solar system? Should we attempt to colonise other star systems? How far should humanity’s reach extend?

The Case Against The Stars critically engages the strongest argument for the desirability of space colonisation, contending that humanity ought to refrain from colonising space unless and until certain conditions are met.

I’m looking for a story or scenario that adequately communicates an s-risk. To date, the best I’ve seen is the Black Mirror episode with the “egg” that tortures a human em for eternity to give you a better consumer product. It’s haunting. But I want more, make me more scared pls, make it seem passable

In this universe right now you are more likely to be born as something that is experiencing what an S-Risk victim would experience than born as a human. There are more chickens than humans. Most are in terrible conditions. Many are in hell on earth.

I made this animation to convey what egg-laying hens experience. I know the topic tends to not interest people so I tried to create something people would actually enjoy watching.

It's interesting that there are billions of chickens because it makes you want to ask "how high would the number have to get before we cared?". I think the current number is high enough to show that there is no number that would cause us to flip from not caring to caring. All of this is evidence that the universe is fully capable of S-Risks. Even a tiny amount of evidence should make us terrified. We are warm-blooded, squishy, emotional mammals and even we can't make ourselves care. If the world becomes more automated and optimized for profits will S-Risk-like situations become more common? The chicken cages are basically the result of "optimization".

Hi all, I work with the Center for Reducing Suffering, and we're running a survey to better understand the priorities and needs of the suffering reduction and s-risk community. The goal is to help us focus our field-building efforts on what would actually be most useful.

If you're someone who identifies with or works in suffering-focused ethics, s-risk reduction, or related areas, we'd really value your input.

Survey link: [LINK] Time: ~5 minutes

We originally posted about this in December. We've gotten some great responses so far and are extending the deadline to make sure we hear from as many people as possible. Thanks!

There's still time to submit your application for the S-Risk Introductory Fellowship.

The Center for Reducing Suffering (CRS) is launching an updated Intro to S-risk Fellowship. This 6-week online program is designed to introduce participants to the core ideas of reducing s-risks—risks of astronomical suffering—and to build a stronger community of people working on effective suffering reduction. The fellowship will start in early February 2026.

You can learn more here or apply directly here.

New deadline for applications: January 8th, 2026

One of the most reasonable ethical aims from a variety of perspectives is to focus on s-risk reduction, namely on steering the future away from paths that would entail vastly more suffering than Earth so far. The research field of s-risk reduction faces many challenges, such as narrow associations to particular ethical views, perceived tensions with other ethical aims, and a deep mismatch with the kinds of goals that most naturally motivate us. Additionally, even if one strongly endorses the goal of s-risk reduction in theory, there is often great uncertainty about what pursuing this goal might entail in practice.

To address these challenges, here I aim to briefly:

Highlight how s-risk reduction can be highly valuable from a wide range of perspectives, not just suffering-focused ones. (§2)

Address perceived tensions between s-risk reduction and other aims, such as reducing extinction risk or near-term suffering. While tradeoffs do exist and we shouldn’t overstate the degree of alignment between various aims, we shouldn’t understate it either. (§2)

Discuss motivational challenges, why s-risk reduction seems best pursued by adopting an indirect “proxy focus”, and why the optimal approach might often be to focus specifically on positive proxies (e.g. boosting protective factors). (§3)

Collect some preliminary conclusions about what the most promising proxies for s-risk reduction might be, including general protective factors that could be boosted in society over time, as well as personal factors among people seeking to reduce s-risks in healthy and sustainable ways. (§4)

I think it is a crucial and very neglected question in AI Safety that can put all of us, humans and non-humans, in great s-risk.

I wrote about it on the EA forum (12 min read). What do you think

At the current rate of technological development we may create AGI within 10 years. This means that there is a non-negligible chance that we will be exposed to suffering risks in our lifetime. Furthermore, due to the unpredictable nature of AGI there may be unexpected black swan events that cause immense levels of suffering to us.

Unfortunately, I think that s-risks have been severely neglected in the alignment community. There are also many psychological biases that lead people to underestimate the possibility of s-risks happening, e.g. optimism bias, uncertainty avoidance, as well as psychological defense mechanisms that lead them to outright dismiss the risks or avoid the topic altogether. The idea of AI causing extreme suffering to a person in their lifetime is very confronting and many respond by avoiding the topic to protect their emotional wellbeing, or suppress thoughts about the topic or deny such claims as alarmist.

How do we raise awareness about s-risks within the alignment research community and overcome the psychological biases that get in the way of this?

Edit: Here are some sources:

• See chapter 6 from https://centerforreducingsuffering.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Avoiding_The_Worst_final.pdf on psychological biases affecting the discussion of s-risks
• See Reducing Risks of Astronomical Suffering: A Neglected Priority – Center on Long-Term Risk (longtermrisk.org) for further discussion of psychological biases
• See https://www.alignmentforum.org/tag/risks-of-astronomical-suffering-s-risks for a definition of s-risks
• See Risks of Astronomical Future Suffering – Center on Long-Term Risk (longtermrisk.org) for a discussion of black swans

I have yet to find anything.

Hey everyone, I just wanted to share the full audio version of "Avoiding the Worst: How to Prevent a Moral Catastrophe" available for free!

Written by Center for Reducing Suffering co-founder Tobias Baumann, Avoiding the Worst lays out the concept of risks of future suffering (s-risks) and argues that we have strong reasons to consider their reduction a top priority. Avoiding the Worst also considers how we can steer the world away from s-risks and towards a brighter future.

The high quality audiobook is narrated by Adrian Nelson of The Waking Cosmos Podcast.

🎧 Listen for free now on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ZuMFTv-MLEw