Well, I agree with it. Yudkowksy and S/A both seem to view the world through the lense of “let’s do everything possible to a) reach singularity and b) get singularity right” which I think is the only rational perspective based on their beliefs about singularity (and utilitarianism). The amount of value associated with the singularity makes everything else insignificant in comparison.
Well, I agree with that. The question is, does Trump as president increase the probability of human extinction, and why? Bear in mind that Peter Theil, who has donated a lot of money to MIRI, supports Trump, so its not as clear-cut as all the smart people being on the same side of this issue.
I wrote an extensive reply, but then decided that it was too political and I guess opinionated. Here is a shorter version
I think the risk of extinction definitely goes up under Trump. The two X-risks I see being affected by the president are
Climate Change
Nuclear War
Trump is bad for both for obvious reasons. Moreover, the Supreme Court nominees probably have indirect consequences on c/c aswell. Note also that those can’t be reversed in four years.
Lastly, the argument that a Trump presidency will cause a true progressive to be elected in four years is I think sound, and it is the best argument, but it might happen anyway. Bernie Sanders got 46% of the vote with age as the most important demographic factor. Just based on math, he’d probably win in four years. The same could be true for Warren or whoever it will be.
Re Climate change, I agree with Kawoomba, with the caviat that GW could provoke conflict which causes an indirect X-risk.
Interestingly, the Green party candidate said Clinton is worse for nuclear war. Maybe she’s wrong, but I don’t think the issue is as obvious as you think it is.
Moreover, the Supreme Court nominees probably have indirect consequences on c/c aswell.
I though the Supreme Court dealt more with civil rights stuff. How will they affect CC?
That is not a caviat. That makes it an X-Risk. It is utterly irrelevant whether c/c leads to extinction directly or indirectly, what matters is the probability that it does in fact lead to extinction. If you want to argue that the probability is lower because it requires a longer causal chain, that would be a different point.
Supreme Court: for one, it was responsible for Bush coming into office instead of Al Gore. That impacted c/c massively. I would agree that this is a scenario unlikely to happen again, and I am not an expert on Supreme Court matters, hence why I said ‘maybe’. My suspicion is that, because political spectra are so heavily labeled, everything that shifts the discourse significantly also impacts every other issue.
I think Stein is full of crap in that regard. I’ve followed her pretty closely, and my reading is that she wants to distance herself from Hillary as much as possible for political reasons, but also won’t quite go as far as to claim Trump is better in general.
You can always find some people who back any position. But the idea that Clinton is worse for nuclear war is frankly kind of silly. Some things don’t have to be complicated. One person gets provoked by Tweets in the middle of the night and has repeatedly demonstrated ignorance about foreign policy, the other is the most establishment politician possible, and yes, the system as we have it has avoided using nukes for a long time. Sure it could have been luck, but that’s not the plausible explanation.
( I would agree that the median of Clinton’s foreign policy would have been more violent than that of Trump. That is backed by evidence. But that’s not the question. )
So are you saying you think that in a universe with 8 years of Al Gore instead of 8 years of bush, X-risks have even odds on average? That seems very unlikely.
Yes, I am saying I think neither Gore nor Bush nor any other president is going to make any significant difference to the probability of the human race being wiped out, as long as the probability is your reasonable subjective estimate.
Also, my statement was about Supreme Court appointments, which are even less likely to make a difference. But they make a big difference to culture, which is what politics is about. That is why I said this is about being mindkilled—bad Supreme Court justices = bad cultural effects = the worst thing in the world = existential risk.
Conservative judges → ban abortion → increased crime → government spends more energy trying to stop crime and less on FAI reserch → paperclips
But we’re into the realm of tiny minute one-in-a-million probabilities here. Altering Supreme Court appointments is not exactly the most effective way to fight x-risk by any stretch of the imagination.
Something like that could happen, but someone could just as easily come up with some opposite chain of events. And saying that you could still make an overall estimate of which is more likely is no different from saying that you can choose which religion is best for Pascal’s wager.
It is very strange to me that claiming c/c is an X-risk is the position that requires explaining, rather than the opposite (as is the amount of scepsis/shading thrown at c/c on LW in general). Afaik (correct me if I’m wrong) the future of humanity institute also treats it as an X-risk, though they assign a lower probability to it than to other ones. That is my view aswell, I think c/c is likely to kill several billion people overall before we stop it, and might also lead to extinction.
As for how that would happen, I imagine a sceanario of nation wide collapse, caused by mass migration due to flooding and hunger. Alternatively, it could escalate chaos and cause nukes to be used without leading to total collapse.
I think c/c is likely to kill several billion people overall before we stop it, and might also lead to extinction.
Scientific consensus is that warming under 2 degrees c could be good, warming over that is bad. Worst case scenario is that we will hit that around 2060. Many forecast the singularity as most likely to happen in the 2040s, but even if that is over optimistic, solar panels are halving in cost per watt each decade. Naively extrapolating, by 2060 solar power should be 20x cheaper, so even if the singularity is delayed we should still be able to move most of the economy onto clean energy even without subsidies long before we reach dangerous levels of warming.
I certainly think that global warming is a risk we should monitor, and keep funding research into solar panels, but I really don’t think it needs to be a priority.
Scientific consensus is that warming under 2 degrees c could be good, warming over that is bad.
There’s no such consensus. There is a consensus (which may be more political than scientific in nature) that below two degrees is somewhat safe, globally and on average (locally, not necessarily; ask the island nations of the Pacific). And my impression is that more recent research has suggested that two degrees may be worse than previously though.
Naively extrapolating, by 2060 solar power should be 20x cheaper, so—we should still be able to move most of the economy onto clean energy even without subsidies long before we reach dangerous levels of warming.
Naively. I think solar currently accounts for less than one percent of global energy consumption. With CO2 levels still on the rise, there’s a long way to go before the world economy is rid of fossils, and we don’t know if solar and other renewables can actually scale high and fast enough. There are reasons to suspect they can’t. Plus, with renewables like solar, we would also need to be able to store electricity on a massive scale, and that may not be possible either.
Edit: Whoah, −3 with no responses. Now I get why LessWrong shuns politics.
It is very strange to me that claiming c/c is an X-risk is the position that requires explaining, rather than the opposite (as is the amount of scepsis/shading thrown at c/c on LW in general).
I IPCC summary for policy makers doesn’t say that policy makers should be worried about global warming causing human extinction.
The position of treating c/c as an X-risk is either treating it as a risk with p<0.01 or it’s a position of skepticism of the IPCC scientific consensus.
This doesn’t match with the information I have gathered. I would hope you are right – if you are, it is at best still a simplified stance. c/c already causes chaos in some parts of the world and will continue to do so. That can and will cause interventions which adds fuel to international tensions.
The narrative you are laying out seems to be possible, but there are also numerous ways in which c/c can lead to extinction.
Well, I agree with that. The question is, does Trump as president increase the probability of human extinction, and why? Bear in mind that Peter Theil, who has donated a lot of money to MIRI, supports Trump, so its not as clear-cut as all the smart people being on the same side of this issue.
I wrote an extensive reply, but then decided that it was too political and I guess opinionated. Here is a shorter version
I think the risk of extinction definitely goes up under Trump. The two X-risks I see being affected by the president are
Climate Change
Nuclear War
Trump is bad for both for obvious reasons. Moreover, the Supreme Court nominees probably have indirect consequences on c/c aswell. Note also that those can’t be reversed in four years.
Lastly, the argument that a Trump presidency will cause a true progressive to be elected in four years is I think sound, and it is the best argument, but it might happen anyway. Bernie Sanders got 46% of the vote with age as the most important demographic factor. Just based on math, he’d probably win in four years. The same could be true for Warren or whoever it will be.
Re Climate change, I agree with Kawoomba, with the caviat that GW could provoke conflict which causes an indirect X-risk.
Interestingly, the Green party candidate said Clinton is worse for nuclear war. Maybe she’s wrong, but I don’t think the issue is as obvious as you think it is.
I though the Supreme Court dealt more with civil rights stuff. How will they affect CC?
That is not a caviat. That makes it an X-Risk. It is utterly irrelevant whether c/c leads to extinction directly or indirectly, what matters is the probability that it does in fact lead to extinction. If you want to argue that the probability is lower because it requires a longer causal chain, that would be a different point.
Supreme Court: for one, it was responsible for Bush coming into office instead of Al Gore. That impacted c/c massively. I would agree that this is a scenario unlikely to happen again, and I am not an expert on Supreme Court matters, hence why I said ‘maybe’. My suspicion is that, because political spectra are so heavily labeled, everything that shifts the discourse significantly also impacts every other issue.
I think Stein is full of crap in that regard. I’ve followed her pretty closely, and my reading is that she wants to distance herself from Hillary as much as possible for political reasons, but also won’t quite go as far as to claim Trump is better in general.
You can always find some people who back any position. But the idea that Clinton is worse for nuclear war is frankly kind of silly. Some things don’t have to be complicated. One person gets provoked by Tweets in the middle of the night and has repeatedly demonstrated ignorance about foreign policy, the other is the most establishment politician possible, and yes, the system as we have it has avoided using nukes for a long time. Sure it could have been luck, but that’s not the plausible explanation.
( I would agree that the median of Clinton’s foreign policy would have been more violent than that of Trump. That is backed by evidence. But that’s not the question. )
It was luck that Vasili Arkhipov was at the submarine when the two other officials wanted to launch nuclear weapons.
When that bomber crashed in the US and 3 of 4 mechanism that have to be activated for the nuclear weapon failed it was luck that not all four failed.
Petrov might have acted differently.
The idea that Supreme Court appointments cause existential risk is one of the most obvious examples of being mind killed that I have ever seen.
So are you saying you think that in a universe with 8 years of Al Gore instead of 8 years of bush, X-risks have even odds on average? That seems very unlikely.
Yes, I am saying I think neither Gore nor Bush nor any other president is going to make any significant difference to the probability of the human race being wiped out, as long as the probability is your reasonable subjective estimate.
Also, my statement was about Supreme Court appointments, which are even less likely to make a difference. But they make a big difference to culture, which is what politics is about. That is why I said this is about being mindkilled—bad Supreme Court justices = bad cultural effects = the worst thing in the world = existential risk.
Well, its possible that e.g.
Conservative judges → ban abortion → increased crime → government spends more energy trying to stop crime and less on FAI reserch → paperclips
But we’re into the realm of tiny minute one-in-a-million probabilities here. Altering Supreme Court appointments is not exactly the most effective way to fight x-risk by any stretch of the imagination.
Something like that could happen, but someone could just as easily come up with some opposite chain of events. And saying that you could still make an overall estimate of which is more likely is no different from saying that you can choose which religion is best for Pascal’s wager.
The Obama administration did a very poor job on global warming and the same would likely have been true for Clinton as well.
There a chance that the Trump administration does better than either because it embraces nuclear energy.
Peter Thiel is in Trump’s transition team and sees nuclear as an important move.
Climate change, while potentially catastrophic, is not an x-risk. Nuclear war is only an x-risk for a subset of scenarios.
I disagree.
Elaborate? Even with just a link?
It is very strange to me that claiming c/c is an X-risk is the position that requires explaining, rather than the opposite (as is the amount of scepsis/shading thrown at c/c on LW in general). Afaik (correct me if I’m wrong) the future of humanity institute also treats it as an X-risk, though they assign a lower probability to it than to other ones. That is my view aswell, I think c/c is likely to kill several billion people overall before we stop it, and might also lead to extinction.
As for how that would happen, I imagine a sceanario of nation wide collapse, caused by mass migration due to flooding and hunger. Alternatively, it could escalate chaos and cause nukes to be used without leading to total collapse.
Scientific consensus is that warming under 2 degrees c could be good, warming over that is bad. Worst case scenario is that we will hit that around 2060. Many forecast the singularity as most likely to happen in the 2040s, but even if that is over optimistic, solar panels are halving in cost per watt each decade. Naively extrapolating, by 2060 solar power should be 20x cheaper, so even if the singularity is delayed we should still be able to move most of the economy onto clean energy even without subsidies long before we reach dangerous levels of warming.
I certainly think that global warming is a risk we should monitor, and keep funding research into solar panels, but I really don’t think it needs to be a priority.
There’s no such consensus. There is a consensus (which may be more political than scientific in nature) that below two degrees is somewhat safe, globally and on average (locally, not necessarily; ask the island nations of the Pacific). And my impression is that more recent research has suggested that two degrees may be worse than previously though.
Naively. I think solar currently accounts for less than one percent of global energy consumption. With CO2 levels still on the rise, there’s a long way to go before the world economy is rid of fossils, and we don’t know if solar and other renewables can actually scale high and fast enough. There are reasons to suspect they can’t. Plus, with renewables like solar, we would also need to be able to store electricity on a massive scale, and that may not be possible either.
Edit: Whoah, −3 with no responses. Now I get why LessWrong shuns politics.
I IPCC summary for policy makers doesn’t say that policy makers should be worried about global warming causing human extinction.
The position of treating c/c as an X-risk is either treating it as a risk with p<0.01 or it’s a position of skepticism of the IPCC scientific consensus.
This doesn’t match with the information I have gathered. I would hope you are right – if you are, it is at best still a simplified stance. c/c already causes chaos in some parts of the world and will continue to do so. That can and will cause interventions which adds fuel to international tensions.
The narrative you are laying out seems to be possible, but there are also numerous ways in which c/c can lead to extinction.