Fwiw, I think wild animal suffering and s-risks were reasonably widely discussed amongst longtermists earlier than 2015. 

It would seem reasonably surprising to me if when we collonised the galaxies we spread wild animal suffering as it is on earth, so that doesn't feel like a strong reason to try to avoid human extinction to me (even aside from the reason you point to). 

S-risks do seem like a stronger reason to care less about extinction. On the other hand, the strongest arguments for the plausibility of s-risks seem to do with AI alignment to me, rather than with humans holding power. So increased emphasis on s-risks doesn't seem to me like it would explain the trend I'm pointing to. 

That does seem like a more plausible lock in event than many. But I'd have tentatively expected that we'd send off space probes reasonably early, such that as technology gets better we can overtake the original ones. I guess a significant speed up of technological development would make a difference here though. Interested in how this affects your thinking?

Interesting, I don't think I noticed that trend between 10 years ago and 2 years ago. 

Cool!

I agree that in deciding how much to prioritise averting extinction vs improving worlds in which we persist, it's important to think about the difference in value between (non-existence)(default survival)(actual utopia). But that argument has been around a long while. I think Ben Garfinkel was advancing the idea that (actual utopia) - (default survival) might be much larger than (default survival) - (non-existence) in the late 2010s. I'm interested in what's changed that's affected discourse. It's possible the answer is 'more people have read arguments of this form'. But in that case people who had already read those arguments should update less than if the change is eg us getting more info about how difficult alignment is.

Interesting that you don't come across many people these days who still identify as longtermist, that's pretty different from my experience. I think it feels more intuitive to me to identify as 'longtermist' than 'effective altruist'. The former is a claim about my values (people in the future matter morally) whereas the latter is behavioural and feels presumptuous (how altruistic really am I? Am I effective at it even when I try?). But I guess I'm in the minority on that!

I was intending to pick out a group of people who have for years identified as EAs and longtermists but have changed what they've worked on. I was thinking it was clear in talking about EAs deprioritising a thing that I meant the ones who prioritised that highly initially, but I see how that's confusing - I'll edit to clarify. 

Good point, thanks!

Thanks for the links!

Thank you - in a world that does often feel scary and full of suffering, it's inspiring to remember what we can and have so far achieved. 

Better luck next time