Yeah, in the Bostrom sense of something irreversibly destroying all Earth-originating intelligent life or irreversibly preventing it from colonizing other planets it isn’t; but then neither is thermonuclear war—several hundred millions, possibly billions of people would likely survive one.
It is still going to kill a fairly significant number of us, and it still requires giving up something for prevention; if you can’t discuss it reasonably, then note that you are even less capable of discussing any issues that trigger more fear or require larger change.
It is an existential risk to continued personal existence of many persons, who live without air conditioning. Things don’t need to be existential risks at the civilization level, to have massive expected dis-utilities. There are many people who don’t put any utility to the civilization itself, beyond the combination of individual utilities.
I’m unclear as to what sort of cataclysm you think would be prevented by...air conditioning. You might want to form a more complete model of what various sources say will happen under different warming scenarios.
I’m unclear as to what sort of cataclysm you think would be prevented by...air conditioning.
Death of a person. (times many). We don’t have uploading yet. Everyone’s memories are gone when they are dead. All that they know, all that they experienced, just gone. Only small shards remain.
In the short term, you can save many more lives with $100,000 worth of mosquito nets in malaria-infected areas than with $100,000 worth of air conditioners (or anything else). And in the long term, air conditioners will be pretty useless at fighting the worst-case scenario effects of AGW (say, rising sea levels) -- if anything, as long as fossil fuels are used to power them, they only make it worse.
Of course, but you can at same time provide the mosquito nets, stop continuing AGW, and the like, with only a rather modest decrease in quality of life in the west. The developed countries consume somewhere between 80% and 90% of natural resources (if you factor in resources spent making your computer in china). I’m not even sure what you guys think you are going to get out of e.g. FAI. You might get more friendliness than you want.
The fact that it may be not worth fighting AGW doesn’t imply anything about validity of AGW itself, by the way, or the dis-utility of AGW. What ever is the reason, there is the world of people living close to equator, without means to cool themselves, that is a fact, and if you can’t do anything about a fact, doesn’t make it any less of a fact.
I do think we should reduce the crap out of our fossil fuel consumption as soon as possible, probably more than most people around here do (and I’m baffled from the apparent near-taboo-ness of AGW-related discussions on LW, too). I was just pointing out that ‘because people in warm countries would be more likely to die from hyperthermia since they don’t have air conditioners’ is nowhere near the main reason for that.
Well, its a complex problem. They pretty much don’t have anything for coping with climate change, forget the aircons, they don’t have clean water, et cetera, and nobody’s ever going to take them as refugees. The aircon was figuratively speaking, a sort of exaggerated understatement. The whole fossil issue is really 80%..90% just the west burning fossils like there’s no tomorrow; rest of the world uses little resources. (That’s generally a taboo topic around westerners, but i don’t care about that. The thing is, the people are not only dying because you won’t share, people are dying directly because of your positive action. There is a strong bias to consider the inaction to be lesser way to commit evil. A few degrees can kill a lot of people via many mechanisms)
Still not seeing how it is even strawman, btw. I was listing a broader category of people (those without aircon), which includes any narrow categories of people (those who lack clean water, sufficient food, …… (and aircon) for example). Furthermore those without aircon (or heating) themselves contribute rather little to the warming (both directly and indirectly), so it is pretty damn bad deal for them. I have not, however, implied that the suggested course of action consists of giving them aircon, or that stopping the AGW is the ‘cheapest’ thing you could do to help, or the like. That’s you guys making strawmans. In so much as you can understand that your leisure activities produce CO2, which results in warming, which kills off people somewhere else in the world—by direct action, akin to having fun and throwing a glass bottle out of moving vehicle and killing someone—you should think hard about somehow compensating them for this.
Maybe there’s so much fun in throwing a bottle out of a moving vehicle, and you’re so rich, that you don’t want to give this up and would rather pay. But compensate you must.
People here have a way of taking anything more literally than any other online community I interacted with. I don’t know if it is Aspergers, or rationality, or local rule to be extremely literal, or what.
Well, a reasonable custom is to assume that the side you disagree with, has something not completely idiotic to say; if you are not to do that, then no amount of clarity ever helps.
All that they know, all that they experienced, just gone. Only small shards remain.
People here generally do know what is meant by “death”. But currently the global epidemic of e.g. death by old age is much more widespread, much more lethal, much more unnoticed in comparison to its relative disutility than the most likely dangers of AGW.
We already know of cheap ways to terraform and cool down our planet if we need to.
Fighting global warming would probably save some, perhaps many lives. But ask yourself:
Instead of what?
At what cost?
Have you read the core sequences? If not I suggest you read up on optimal philanthropy. I also suggest you learn to reflexively on the 5 second level learn include or at least remind yourself of opportunity cost.
Global warming is not an existential risk regardless of its truth value.
Yeah, in the Bostrom sense of something irreversibly destroying all Earth-originating intelligent life or irreversibly preventing it from colonizing other planets it isn’t; but then neither is thermonuclear war—several hundred millions, possibly billions of people would likely survive one.
We don’t often discuss thermonuclear war in LessWrong either.
Yes, probably it’s not going to destroy all ape-originated intelligent life, provided it doesn’t set off
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event
It is still going to kill a fairly significant number of us, and it still requires giving up something for prevention; if you can’t discuss it reasonably, then note that you are even less capable of discussing any issues that trigger more fear or require larger change.
It is an existential risk to continued personal existence of many persons, who live without air conditioning. Things don’t need to be existential risks at the civilization level, to have massive expected dis-utilities. There are many people who don’t put any utility to the civilization itself, beyond the combination of individual utilities.
I’m unclear as to what sort of cataclysm you think would be prevented by...air conditioning. You might want to form a more complete model of what various sources say will happen under different warming scenarios.
Death of a person. (times many). We don’t have uploading yet. Everyone’s memories are gone when they are dead. All that they know, all that they experienced, just gone. Only small shards remain.
In the short term, you can save many more lives with $100,000 worth of mosquito nets in malaria-infected areas than with $100,000 worth of air conditioners (or anything else). And in the long term, air conditioners will be pretty useless at fighting the worst-case scenario effects of AGW (say, rising sea levels) -- if anything, as long as fossil fuels are used to power them, they only make it worse.
Of course, but you can at same time provide the mosquito nets, stop continuing AGW, and the like, with only a rather modest decrease in quality of life in the west. The developed countries consume somewhere between 80% and 90% of natural resources (if you factor in resources spent making your computer in china). I’m not even sure what you guys think you are going to get out of e.g. FAI. You might get more friendliness than you want.
The fact that it may be not worth fighting AGW doesn’t imply anything about validity of AGW itself, by the way, or the dis-utility of AGW. What ever is the reason, there is the world of people living close to equator, without means to cool themselves, that is a fact, and if you can’t do anything about a fact, doesn’t make it any less of a fact.
I do think we should reduce the crap out of our fossil fuel consumption as soon as possible, probably more than most people around here do (and I’m baffled from the apparent near-taboo-ness of AGW-related discussions on LW, too). I was just pointing out that ‘because people in warm countries would be more likely to die from hyperthermia since they don’t have air conditioners’ is nowhere near the main reason for that.
Well, its a complex problem. They pretty much don’t have anything for coping with climate change, forget the aircons, they don’t have clean water, et cetera, and nobody’s ever going to take them as refugees. The aircon was figuratively speaking, a sort of exaggerated understatement. The whole fossil issue is really 80%..90% just the west burning fossils like there’s no tomorrow; rest of the world uses little resources. (That’s generally a taboo topic around westerners, but i don’t care about that. The thing is, the people are not only dying because you won’t share, people are dying directly because of your positive action. There is a strong bias to consider the inaction to be lesser way to commit evil. A few degrees can kill a lot of people via many mechanisms)
So were you, like, strawmanning yourself? :-/
Still not seeing how it is even strawman, btw. I was listing a broader category of people (those without aircon), which includes any narrow categories of people (those who lack clean water, sufficient food, …… (and aircon) for example). Furthermore those without aircon (or heating) themselves contribute rather little to the warming (both directly and indirectly), so it is pretty damn bad deal for them. I have not, however, implied that the suggested course of action consists of giving them aircon, or that stopping the AGW is the ‘cheapest’ thing you could do to help, or the like. That’s you guys making strawmans. In so much as you can understand that your leisure activities produce CO2, which results in warming, which kills off people somewhere else in the world—by direct action, akin to having fun and throwing a glass bottle out of moving vehicle and killing someone—you should think hard about somehow compensating them for this.
Maybe there’s so much fun in throwing a bottle out of a moving vehicle, and you’re so rich, that you don’t want to give this up and would rather pay. But compensate you must.
People here have a way of taking anything more literally than any other online community I interacted with. I don’t know if it is Aspergers, or rationality, or local rule to be extremely literal, or what.
If you don’t understand why this is, (largely local rule/custom) I would recommend reading or rereading the words sequence.
Well, a reasonable custom is to assume that the side you disagree with, has something not completely idiotic to say; if you are not to do that, then no amount of clarity ever helps.
People here generally do know what is meant by “death”. But currently the global epidemic of e.g. death by old age is much more widespread, much more lethal, much more unnoticed in comparison to its relative disutility than the most likely dangers of AGW.
We already know of cheap ways to terraform and cool down our planet if we need to.
Fighting global warming would probably save some, perhaps many lives. But ask yourself:
Instead of what?
At what cost?
Have you read the core sequences? If not I suggest you read up on optimal philanthropy. I also suggest you learn to reflexively on the 5 second level learn include or at least remind yourself of opportunity cost.