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.
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.