Are you including just the extinction of humanity in your definition of x-risk in this comment or are you also counting scenarios resulting in a drastic loss of technological capability?
Why? This is highly non-obvious. To reach our current technological level, we had to use a lot of non-renewable resources. There’s still a lot of coal and oil left, but the remaining coal and oil is harder to reach and much more technologically difficult to reliably use. That trend will only continue. It isn’t obvious that if something set the tech level back to say 1600 that we’d have the resources to return to our current technology level.
It’s been discussed repeatedly here on Less Wrong, and in many other places. The weight of expert opinion is on recovery, and I think the evidence is strong. Most resources are more accessible in ruined cities than they were in the ground, and more expensive fossil fuels can be substituted for by biomass, hydropower, efficiency, and so forth. It looks like there was a lot of slack in human development, e.g. animal and plant breeding is still delivering good returns after many centuries, humans have been adapting to civilization over the last thousands of years and would continue to become better adapted with a long period of low-fossil fuel near-industrial technology. And for many catastrophes knowledge from the previous civilization would be available to future generations.
It’s been discussed repeatedly here on Less Wrong, and in many other places. The weight of expert opinion is on recovery
Can you give sources for this? I’m particularly interested in the claim about expert opinion, since there doesn’t seem to be much discussion in the literature of this. Bostrom has mentioned it, but hasn’t come to any detailed conclusion. I’m not aware of anyone else discussing it.
Most resources are more accessible in ruined cities than they were in the ground
Right. This bit has been discussed on LW before in the context of many raw metals. The particularly good example is aluminum which is resource intensive and technically difficult to refine, but is easy to use once one has a refined a bit. That’s been discussed before, and looking around for such discussion I see that you and I discussed that here, but didn’t discuss the power issue in general.
I think you are being optimistic about power. Hydropower and biomass while they can exist with minimal technology (and in fact, the first US commercial power plant outside New York was hydroelectric), they both have severe limitations as power methods. Hydroelectric power can only be placed in limited areas, and large-scale grids are infrastructurally difficult and require a lot of technical coordination and know-how . That’s why the US grids were separate little grids until pretty late. And using hydroelectric power would further restrict the locations that power can be produced, leading to much more severe inefficiences in the grid (due to long-term power transmission and the like). There’s a recent good book, Maggie Koerth Baker’s “Before the Lights Go Out”. , which discusses the difficulties and complexities in electric grids which also discusses in detail the historical problems with running grids. They are often underestimated.
Similarly, direct biomass is not generally as energy dense as coal or oil. You can’t easily use biomass to power trains or airplanes. The technology to make synthetic oil was developed in the 1940s but it is inefficient, technically difficult, and requires a lot of infrastructure.
I also think you are overestimating how much can be done with efficiency at a low tech level. Many of the technologies that can be made more efficient (such as lightbulbs) require a fair bit of technical know-how to use the more efficient version. Thus for example, while fluorescent lights are not much more technically difficult than incandescents, CFLs’ are much more technically difficult.
And efficiency bites you a bit in another direction as well: If your technology is efficient enough, then you don’t have as much local demand on the grid, and you don’t get the benefits of the economies of scale that you get. This was historically a problem even when incandescent light-bulbs were in use- in the first forty years of electrificiation, the vast majority of electric companies failed.
It looks like there was a lot of slack in human development, e.g. animal and plant breeding is still delivering good returns after many centuries
We’re using much more careful and systematic methods of breeding now, and the returns are clearly diminishing- we’re not domesticating new crops, just making them marginally more efficient. It is only large returns because the same plants and animals are in such widespread use.
And for many catastrophes knowledge from the previous civilization would be available to future generations.
This is true for some catastrophes but not all, and I’m not at all sure it will be true for most.. Most humans have minimal technical know-how beyond their own narrow areas. I’m curious to hear more about how you reach this conclusion.
This may be worth expanding into a discussion post; I can’t remember any top-level posts devoted to this topic, and I reckon it’s important enough to warrant at least one. Your line of argument seems more plausible to me than CarlShulman’s (although that might change if CS can point to specific experts and arguments for why a technological reset could be overcome).
Thus for example, while fluorescent lights are not much more technically difficult than incandescents, are much more technically difficult if one wants them to be cheaper and more efficient than incandescents.
I find the focus on x-risks as defined by Bostrom (those from which Earth-originating intelligent life will never, ever recover) way too narrow. A situation in which 99% of humanity dies and the rest reverts to hunting and gathering for a few millennia before recovering wouldn’t look much brighter than that—let alone one in which humanity goes extinct but in (say) a hundred million years the descendants of (say) elephants create a new civilization. In particular, I can’t see why we would prefer the latter to (say) a civilization emerging on Alpha Centauri—so per the principle of charity I’ll just pretend that instead of “Earth-originating intelligent life” he had said “descendants of present-day humans”.
Early Singularity. Everyone currently living is saved.
Late Singularity. Nearly everyone currently living dies anyway.
Very late Singularity, or “Semi-crush”. everyone currently living dies, and most of our yet to be born descendants (up to the second renaissance) will die as well. There is a point however were everyone is saved.
Crush. Everyone will die, now and for ever. Plus, humanity dies with our sun.
If you most value those currently living, that’s right, it doesn’t make much difference. But if you care about the future of humanity itself, a Very Late Singularity isn’t such a disaster.
Now that I think about it, I care both about those currently living and about humanity itself, but with a small but non-zero discount rate (of the order of the reciprocal of the time humanity has existed so far). Also, I value humanity not only genetically but also memetically, so having people with human genome but Palaeolithic technocultural level surviving would be only slightly better for me than no-one surviving at all.
Are you including just the extinction of humanity in your definition of x-risk in this comment or are you also counting scenarios resulting in a drastic loss of technological capability?
I expect losses of technological capability to be recovered with high probability.
Why? This is highly non-obvious. To reach our current technological level, we had to use a lot of non-renewable resources. There’s still a lot of coal and oil left, but the remaining coal and oil is harder to reach and much more technologically difficult to reliably use. That trend will only continue. It isn’t obvious that if something set the tech level back to say 1600 that we’d have the resources to return to our current technology level.
It’s been discussed repeatedly here on Less Wrong, and in many other places. The weight of expert opinion is on recovery, and I think the evidence is strong. Most resources are more accessible in ruined cities than they were in the ground, and more expensive fossil fuels can be substituted for by biomass, hydropower, efficiency, and so forth. It looks like there was a lot of slack in human development, e.g. animal and plant breeding is still delivering good returns after many centuries, humans have been adapting to civilization over the last thousands of years and would continue to become better adapted with a long period of low-fossil fuel near-industrial technology. And for many catastrophes knowledge from the previous civilization would be available to future generations.
Can you give sources for this? I’m particularly interested in the claim about expert opinion, since there doesn’t seem to be much discussion in the literature of this. Bostrom has mentioned it, but hasn’t come to any detailed conclusion. I’m not aware of anyone else discussing it.
Right. This bit has been discussed on LW before in the context of many raw metals. The particularly good example is aluminum which is resource intensive and technically difficult to refine, but is easy to use once one has a refined a bit. That’s been discussed before, and looking around for such discussion I see that you and I discussed that here, but didn’t discuss the power issue in general.
I think you are being optimistic about power. Hydropower and biomass while they can exist with minimal technology (and in fact, the first US commercial power plant outside New York was hydroelectric), they both have severe limitations as power methods. Hydroelectric power can only be placed in limited areas, and large-scale grids are infrastructurally difficult and require a lot of technical coordination and know-how . That’s why the US grids were separate little grids until pretty late. And using hydroelectric power would further restrict the locations that power can be produced, leading to much more severe inefficiences in the grid (due to long-term power transmission and the like). There’s a recent good book, Maggie Koerth Baker’s “Before the Lights Go Out”. , which discusses the difficulties and complexities in electric grids which also discusses in detail the historical problems with running grids. They are often underestimated.
Similarly, direct biomass is not generally as energy dense as coal or oil. You can’t easily use biomass to power trains or airplanes. The technology to make synthetic oil was developed in the 1940s but it is inefficient, technically difficult, and requires a lot of infrastructure.
I also think you are overestimating how much can be done with efficiency at a low tech level. Many of the technologies that can be made more efficient (such as lightbulbs) require a fair bit of technical know-how to use the more efficient version. Thus for example, while fluorescent lights are not much more technically difficult than incandescents, CFLs’ are much more technically difficult.
And efficiency bites you a bit in another direction as well: If your technology is efficient enough, then you don’t have as much local demand on the grid, and you don’t get the benefits of the economies of scale that you get. This was historically a problem even when incandescent light-bulbs were in use- in the first forty years of electrificiation, the vast majority of electric companies failed.
We’re using much more careful and systematic methods of breeding now, and the returns are clearly diminishing- we’re not domesticating new crops, just making them marginally more efficient. It is only large returns because the same plants and animals are in such widespread use.
This is true for some catastrophes but not all, and I’m not at all sure it will be true for most.. Most humans have minimal technical know-how beyond their own narrow areas. I’m curious to hear more about how you reach this conclusion.
This may be worth expanding into a discussion post; I can’t remember any top-level posts devoted to this topic, and I reckon it’s important enough to warrant at least one. Your line of argument seems more plausible to me than CarlShulman’s (although that might change if CS can point to specific experts and arguments for why a technological reset could be overcome).
Is there a typo in this sentence?
Yes. Intended to be something like:
On what timescale?
I find the focus on x-risks as defined by Bostrom (those from which Earth-originating intelligent life will never, ever recover) way too narrow. A situation in which 99% of humanity dies and the rest reverts to hunting and gathering for a few millennia before recovering wouldn’t look much brighter than that—let alone one in which humanity goes extinct but in (say) a hundred million years the descendants of (say) elephants create a new civilization. In particular, I can’t see why we would prefer the latter to (say) a civilization emerging on Alpha Centauri—so per the principle of charity I’ll just pretend that instead of “Earth-originating intelligent life” he had said “descendants of present-day humans”.
It depends on what you value. I see 3 situations:
Early Singularity. Everyone currently living is saved.
Late Singularity. Nearly everyone currently living dies anyway.
Very late Singularity, or “Semi-crush”. everyone currently living dies, and most of our yet to be born descendants (up to the second renaissance) will die as well. There is a point however were everyone is saved.
Crush. Everyone will die, now and for ever. Plus, humanity dies with our sun.
If you most value those currently living, that’s right, it doesn’t make much difference. But if you care about the future of humanity itself, a Very Late Singularity isn’t such a disaster.
Now that I think about it, I care both about those currently living and about humanity itself, but with a small but non-zero discount rate (of the order of the reciprocal of the time humanity has existed so far). Also, I value humanity not only genetically but also memetically, so having people with human genome but Palaeolithic technocultural level surviving would be only slightly better for me than no-one surviving at all.