Understood, I apologise for misunderstanding your position on fossils fuels. I feel there was a specific attempt from my side to interpret it with that meaning, even if the example used didn’t necessarily implied it was something you endorse, and that it was due to a negative gut reaction I had while reading what you wrote.
We seem to agree on the general principles that humanity technological level will not stay the same for the next hundred years, and that some level of the changes we are producing on the environment are to be avoided to improve mankind future’s condition.
I do feel that allowing the actions of humanity to destroy every part of the environment that hasn’t been proved useful is an engagement in an extremely reckless form of optimism, though.
It’s certainly part of the attitude that got us to the point where being careful with our effect on current temperature levels and avoiding to loose most of our water resources has become a pretty difficult global challenge.
From what I read on industrial regulations so far, in most nations pollutants functionally have to be proven harmful before it can be considered forbidding their release in the environment, and I’m 100% sure it’s at least the current approach in the country most users from this site are.
All in all, our species is nowhere near the point to be immune from the feedbacks our environment can throw at us. By our actions, one third of current animal and vegetable species are currently going extinct.
That is one huge Chesterton Fence we’re tearing down. We simply don’t know in how many way such a change on the system we’re living in can go wrong for us.
I’d agree that the greatest “currently existing risks to my survival” are natural causes. I intend this category as “risks that are actively killing people who are living in similar conditions to my own now”.
However, if we talk about the main “future risks to my survival”, as in “risks that currently are killing a low number of people similar to me, but that could kill a lot more in future years in which I’ll be alive” then I feel that, even if AI mismanagement takes first place, climate change takes the second, and that it augments considerably the chances of the first.
While riots and food shortages are indeed examples I choose by pure gut level evaluation of “scariness” and are too specific to me to put my money on if I should bet on the causes of my death, I don’t feel at all optimistic about the way our society will react to climate change.
Migratory fluxes and violent conflicts a lot smaller than what we’ll certainly see were enough to send the European Union dangerously close to falling apart in a bunch of nationalistic states. Change enough our environment, and wide-scale wars and a new wave of totalitarian governments stop to be an unlikely reality, since in times of fear and unrest people are more likely to regard the principles behind them as positive. All these factors seem to reinforce each other as far as I know.
Even by assuming the situation won’t go as bad as total warfare and rampant totalitarianism, I would bet on a significant degeneration in the political scenario, moving away from international cooperation and toward nationalism and short term interests considerations only, and I don’t really see any reason that a bunch of such states, that are fighting for resources, facing wide scale crisis, scared of what each other will do and have lost most of their ability to cooperate with each other are less likely to botch AI horribly and kill us all.
About the suggestions for lowering our resource consumptions since it’s currently too high: it’s unarguable that we are burning through a ridiculous amount of resources that are producing practically no improvement in our chances of survival or even marginally improving the quality of our life. We could easily keep the same amount of comforts and life expectancy while consuming a lot less resources.
Our economical system has simply not enough incentives for efficiency, shrinking our resources consumption without sacrificing quality of life and life expectancy is perfectly doable and it’s imperative to augment our chances of long term survival.
Lastly, given the current trend of society, statements close to “keeping in check mankind consumption of resources and it’s impact on the environment it’s not a priority” are a lot more dangerous than statements close to “let’s toss industry out of the windows and go back to the caves”. Clearly going too far in either of those directions would hurt, but going too much in the first direction is a possibility a lot more likely at the present moment, while I don’t see any real chance for the second kind of statements to change society toward a pre-technological or pre-industrial site.
The de-growth movement (which, if I remember correctly, it’s based on the proven fact that economic growth, after a certain threshold, offers basically no improvement to quality of life, and that first world has long passed that threshold, so we should focus on things that aren’t economic growth), also doesn’t strike me as a threat to my quality of life or my long term survival comparable to underestimating the impact of environmental damages or of over-consumption of resources before the point when mankind hits a positive singularity.
I also don’t see any real chance of this site moving toward an anti-technological or anti-science trend. Those trends do seem dangerous and likely in the general populace, but for the risks I’ve stated above I think they should be opposed by informing people on the benefits of technology and science, rather than of the industrial system.
Understood, I apologise for misunderstanding your position on fossils fuels. I feel there was a specific attempt from my side to interpret it with that meaning, even if the example used didn’t necessarily implied it was something you endorse, and that it was due to a negative gut reaction I had while reading what you wrote.
We seem to agree on the general principles that humanity technological level will not stay the same for the next hundred years, and that some level of the changes we are producing on the environment are to be avoided to improve mankind future’s condition.
I do feel that allowing the actions of humanity to destroy every part of the environment that hasn’t been proved useful is an engagement in an extremely reckless form of optimism, though.
It’s certainly part of the attitude that got us to the point where being careful with our effect on current temperature levels and avoiding to loose most of our water resources has become a pretty difficult global challenge.
From what I read on industrial regulations so far, in most nations pollutants functionally have to be proven harmful before it can be considered forbidding their release in the environment, and I’m 100% sure it’s at least the current approach in the country most users from this site are.
All in all, our species is nowhere near the point to be immune from the feedbacks our environment can throw at us. By our actions, one third of current animal and vegetable species are currently going extinct.
That is one huge Chesterton Fence we’re tearing down. We simply don’t know in how many way such a change on the system we’re living in can go wrong for us.
I’d agree that the greatest “currently existing risks to my survival” are natural causes. I intend this category as “risks that are actively killing people who are living in similar conditions to my own now”.
However, if we talk about the main “future risks to my survival”, as in “risks that currently are killing a low number of people similar to me, but that could kill a lot more in future years in which I’ll be alive” then I feel that, even if AI mismanagement takes first place, climate change takes the second, and that it augments considerably the chances of the first.
While riots and food shortages are indeed examples I choose by pure gut level evaluation of “scariness” and are too specific to me to put my money on if I should bet on the causes of my death, I don’t feel at all optimistic about the way our society will react to climate change.
Migratory fluxes and violent conflicts a lot smaller than what we’ll certainly see were enough to send the European Union dangerously close to falling apart in a bunch of nationalistic states. Change enough our environment, and wide-scale wars and a new wave of totalitarian governments stop to be an unlikely reality, since in times of fear and unrest people are more likely to regard the principles behind them as positive. All these factors seem to reinforce each other as far as I know.
Even by assuming the situation won’t go as bad as total warfare and rampant totalitarianism, I would bet on a significant degeneration in the political scenario, moving away from international cooperation and toward nationalism and short term interests considerations only, and I don’t really see any reason that a bunch of such states, that are fighting for resources, facing wide scale crisis, scared of what each other will do and have lost most of their ability to cooperate with each other are less likely to botch AI horribly and kill us all.
About the suggestions for lowering our resource consumptions since it’s currently too high: it’s unarguable that we are burning through a ridiculous amount of resources that are producing practically no improvement in our chances of survival or even marginally improving the quality of our life. We could easily keep the same amount of comforts and life expectancy while consuming a lot less resources.
Our economical system has simply not enough incentives for efficiency, shrinking our resources consumption without sacrificing quality of life and life expectancy is perfectly doable and it’s imperative to augment our chances of long term survival.
Lastly, given the current trend of society, statements close to “keeping in check mankind consumption of resources and it’s impact on the environment it’s not a priority” are a lot more dangerous than statements close to “let’s toss industry out of the windows and go back to the caves”. Clearly going too far in either of those directions would hurt, but going too much in the first direction is a possibility a lot more likely at the present moment, while I don’t see any real chance for the second kind of statements to change society toward a pre-technological or pre-industrial site.
The de-growth movement (which, if I remember correctly, it’s based on the proven fact that economic growth, after a certain threshold, offers basically no improvement to quality of life, and that first world has long passed that threshold, so we should focus on things that aren’t economic growth), also doesn’t strike me as a threat to my quality of life or my long term survival comparable to underestimating the impact of environmental damages or of over-consumption of resources before the point when mankind hits a positive singularity.
I also don’t see any real chance of this site moving toward an anti-technological or anti-science trend. Those trends do seem dangerous and likely in the general populace, but for the risks I’ve stated above I think they should be opposed by informing people on the benefits of technology and science, rather than of the industrial system.