Sometimes I feel like looking into how I can help humanity (e.g. 80000 hours stuff), but other times I feel like humanity is just irredeemable and may as well wipe itself off the planet (via climate change, nuclear war, whatever).
For instance, humans are so facepalmingly bad at making decisions for the long term (viz. climate change, running out of fossil fuels) that it seems clear that genetic or neurological enhancements would be highly beneficial in changing this (and other deficiencies, of course). Yet discourse about such things is overwhelmingly negative, mired in what I think are irrational kneejerk reactions to defend “what it means to be human.” So I’m just like, you know what? Fuck it. You can’t even help yourselves help yourselves. Forget it.
You know how when you see a kid about to fall off a cliff, you shrug and don’t do anything because the standards of discourse aren’t as high as they could be?
A task with a better expected outcome is still better (in expected outcome), even if it’s hopeless, silly, not as funny as some of the failure modes, not your responsibility or in some way emotionally less comfortable.
You’re of course correct. I’m tempted to question the use of “better” (i.e. it’s a matter of values and opinion as to whether its “better” if humanity wipes itself out or not), but I think it’s pretty fair to assume (as I believe utilitarians do) that less suffering is better, and theoretically less suffering would result from better decision-making and possibly from less climate change.
Also, would you still want to save a drowning dog even if it might bite you out of fear and misunderstanding? (let’s say it is a small dog and a bite would not be drastically injurious)
True, true. But it’s still hard for me (and most people?) to circumvent that effect, even while I’m aware of it. I know Mother Theresa actually had a technique for it (to just think of one child rather than the millions in need). I guess I can try that. Any other suggestions?
Also, would you still want to save a drowning dog even if it might bite you out of fear and misunderstanding? (let’s say it is a small dog and a bite would not be drastically injurious)
I’ll pretend it’s a cat since I don’t really like small dogs. ;-) Yes, of course I’d save it. I think this analogy will help me moving forward. Thank you! ^_^
No problem. I have an intuition that IMing might be more productive than structured posts if you’re exploring this space and want to cover a bunch of ground quickly. Feel free to ping me on gtalk if you’re interested. romeostevensit is my google.
I think it is amazingly myopic to look at the only species that has ever started a fire or crafted a wheel and conclude that
humans are so facepalmingly bad at making decisions
The idea that climate change is an existential risk seems wacky to me. It is not difficult to walk away from an ocean which is rising at even 1 m a year and no one hypothesizes anything close to that rate. We are adapted to a broad range of climates and able to move north south east and west as the winds might blow us.
Running out of fossil fuels, thinking we are doing something wildly stupid with our use of fossil fuels seems to me to be about as sensible as thinking a centrally planned economy will work better. It is not intuitive that a centrally planned economy will be a piece of crap compared to what we have, but it turns out to be true. Thinking you or even a bunch of people like you with no track record doing ANYTHING can second guess the markets in fossil fuels, well it seems intuitively right but if you ever get involved in testing your intuitions I don’t think you’ll find out it holds up. And if you think even doubling the price of fossil fuels really changes the calculus by much, I think Europe and Japan have lived that life for decades compared to the US, and yet the US is the home to the wackiest and ill-thought-out alternatives to fossil fuels in the world.
Can anybody explain to me why creating a wildly popular luxury car which effectively runs on burning coal is such a boon to the environment that it should be subsidized at $7500 by the US federal government and an additional $2500 by states such as California which has been so close to bankruptcy recently? Well that is what a Tesla is, if you drive one in a country with coal on the grid, and most of Europe, China, and the US are in that category, The Tesla S Performance puts out the same amount of carbon as a car getting (WRONG14WRONG) 25 mpg of gasoline.
The rest of your point seems to hold, though; if the subsidy is predicated on reducing CO2 emissions then the equivalent of 25mpg still isn’t anything to brag about.
This is likely an overestimation, since it assumes that you’re exclusively burning coal. Electricity production in the US is about 68% fossil, the rest deriving from a mixture of nuclear and renewables; the fossil-fuel category also includes natural gas, which per your link generates about 55-60% the CO2 of coal per unit electricity. This varies quite a bit state to state, though, from almost exclusively fossil (West Virginia; Delaware; Utah) to almost exclusively nuclear (Vermont) or renewable (Washington; Idaho).
Based on the same figures and breaking it down by the national average of coal, natural gas, and nuclear and renewables, I’m getting a figure of 43 lb CO2 / 100 mi, or about 50 mpg equivalent. Since its subsidies came up, California burns almost no coal but gets a bit more than 60% of its energy from natural gas; its equivalent would be about 28 lb CO2.
This is likely an overestimation, since it assumes that you’re exclusively burning coal.
Yes, but that should be the right comparison to make. Consider two alternatives:
1) World generates N kwh + 38 kwh to fuel a Tesla to go 100 miles
2) World generates N kwh and puts 4 gallons of gasoline in a car to go 100 miles.
If we are interested in minimizing CO2 emissions, then in world 2 compared to world 1 we will generate 38 kWh fewer from our dirtiest plant on the grid, which is going to be a coal-fired plant.
So in world 1 we have an extra 80 lbs of CO2 emission from electric generation and 0 from gasoline.
In world 2 we have 80 lbs less of CO2 emission from electric generation and add 80 lbs from gasoline.
When adding electric usage, you need to “bill” it at the marginal costs to generate that electricity, which is true both in terms the price you charge customers for it and the CO2 emissions you attribute to it.
The US, China, and most of Europe have a lot of Coal in the mix on the grid. Until they scrub coal or stop using it, it seems very clear that the Tesla puffs out the same amount of CO2 as a 25 mpg gasoline powered car.
It’s true that most of the flexibility in our power system comes from dirty sources, and that squeezing a few extra kilowatt-hours in the short term generally means burning more coal. If we’re talking policy changes aimed at popularizing electric cars, though, then we aren’t talking a megawatt here or there; we’ve moved into the realm of adding capacity, and it’s not at all obvious that new electrical capacity is going to come from dirty sources—at least outside of somewhere like West Virginia. On those kinds of scales, I think it’s fair to assume a mix similar to what we’ve currently got, outside of special cases like Germany phasing out its nuclear program.
(There are some caveats; renewables are growing strongly in the US, but nuclear isn’t. But it works as a first approximation.)
Coal electric generation isn’t going away anytime soon. The only reason coal may look at the moment like it is declining in the US is because at the moment natural gas generation in the US is less expensive than coal. But in Europe, coal is less expensive and, remarkably, generating companies respond by turning up coal and turning down natural gas.
Doesn’t need to be going away for my argument to hold, as long as the relative proportions are favorable—and as far as I can tell, most of that GIC delta in coal is happening in the developing world, where I don’t see too many people buying Teslas. Europe and the US project new capacity disproportionately in the form of renewables; coal is going up in Europe, but less quickly.
This isn’t ideal; I’m generally long on wind and solar, but if I had my way we’d be building Gen IV nuclear reactors as fast as we could lay down concrete. But neither is it as grim as the picture you seem to be painting.
This isn’t ideal; …. But neither is it as grim as the picture you seem to be painting.
I would agree with that.. Certainly my initial picture was just wrong. Even using Coal as the standard, the Tesla is as good as a 25 mpg gasolilne car. For that size and quality of car, that is actually not bad, but it is best in class, not revolutionary.
As to subsidizing a Tesla as opposed to a 40 mpg diesel, for example, as long as we use coal for electricity, we are better off adding a 40 mpg diesel to the fleet than adding a Tesla. This is almost just me hating on subsidies, preferring that we just tax fuels proportional to their carbon content and let market forces decide how to distribute that distortion.
This is almost just me hating on subsidies, preferring that we just tax fuels proportional to their carbon content and let market forces decide how to distribute that distortion.
That probably is better baseline policy from a carbon minimization perspective, yeah; I have similar objections to the fleet mileage penalties imposed on automakers in the US, which ended up contributing among other things to a good chunk of the SUV boom in the ’90s and ’00s. Now, I can see an argument for subsidies or even direct grants if they help kickstart building EV infrastructure or enable game-changing research, but that should be narrowly targeted, not the basis of our entire approach.
Unfortunately, basic economic literacy is not exactly a hallmark of environmental policy.
When adding electric usage, you need to “bill” it at the marginal costs to generate that electricity
Yes, but marginal analysis requires identifying the correct margin. If you charge your car during the day at work, you are increasing peak load, which is often coal. If you charge your car at night, you are contributing to base load. This might not even require building new plants! This works great if you have nuclear plants. With a sufficiently smart grid, it makes erratic sources like wind much more useful.
Yes, but marginal analysis requires identifying the correct margin.
I do agree using the rate for coal is pessimistic.
On further research, I discover that Li-ion batteries are very energetically expensive to produce. Their net lifetime energy in production and then recycling is about 430 kWh per kWh of battery. Li-ion can be recharged 300-500 times. Using 430 recharges, amortizing production costs across all uses of the battery we see that we have 1 kWh of production energy used for every 1 kWh of storage the battery accomplished during its lifetime.
So now we have the more complicated accounting questions, how much carbon do we associate with constructing the battery vs how much with charging the battery? If construction and charging come from the same grid, we charge the same.
And of course to be fair, we need to figure the cost to refine a gallon of gasoline. Its pretty wacky out there but the numbers out there range from 6 kwh to 12 kwh. The higher numbers include quite a bit of natural gas directly used in the process, which using it directly is about twice as efficient as making electricity with it.
All in all, it looks to me like we have about 100% overhead on battery production energy, and say 8 kWh to make a gallon of gas for about 25% overhead on gasoline.
Lets assign 1.3 lbs of CO2 per kwh electric, which is 2009 US average adjusted 7.5% for delivery losses.
Then a gallon of gasoline gives 19 lbs from the gasoline + 10.4 lbs from making/transporting the gasoline.
A Tesla costs 1.3*38 = 39 lbs CO2 to go 100 miles from electric charge + 39 lbs CO2 from amortizing battery lifetime over CO2 cost or producing the battery.
Tesla = 78 lbs CO2 per 100 miles.
A 78 lbs of CO2 comes from 78⁄30 = 2.6 gallons of fuel.
So using US average CO2 load for kwh electricity, loading the Tesla with 100% overhead for battery production and loading gasoline with 34% overhead from refining, mining, and transport, we get a Tesla S about equivalent to a 38 mpg car in CO2 emissions.
That number is actually extremely impressive for the class of car a Tesla is.
Nissan Leaf uses 75% as much energy as Tesla to go 100 miles. So Leaf has same CO2 emissions as a 51 mpg car.
If we use coal for electricity these numbers change to Tesla --> 19 mpg and Leaf --> 26 mpg. The Tesla still looks good-ish for the class of car it is, but the Leaf is lousy at 26 mpg, competing with hybrids that get 45 mpg or so.
Your lithium-ion numbers match my understanding of batteries in general: they cost as much energy to create as their lifetime capacity. That’s why you can’t use batteries to smooth out erratic power sources like wind, or inflexible ones like nuclear.
I’m skeptical that it’s a good idea to focus on the energy used to create the battery. There’s energy used to create all the rest of the car, and certainly energy to create the gasoline-powered car that you’re using as a benchmark. Production energy is difficult to compute and I think most people do such a bad job that I think it’s better to use price as a proxy.
The rest of your point seems to hold, though; if the subsidy is predicated on reducing CO2 emissions then the equivalent of 25mpg still isn’t anything to brag about.
You are right I did my math wrong.
To make it a little clearer to people following along, 80 lbs of CO2 generate to move a Tesla 100 miles using coal generated electricity. 80 pounds of CO2 to move a 25 mpg gasoline car 100 miles.
I’ll address why the coal number is the right one in commenting on the next comment.
It’s not difficult to walk away from an ocean? Please explain New Orleans.
Tesla (and other stuff getting power from the grid) currently run mostly on coal but ideally they can be run off (unrealistically) solar or wind or (realistically) nuclear.
It’s not difficult to walk away from an ocean? Please explain New Orleans.
Are you under the impression that climate change rise in ocean level will look like a dike breaking? All references to sea levels rising are reported at less than 1 cm a year, but lets say that rises 100 fold to 1 m/yr. New Orleans flooded a few meters in at most a few days, about 1 m/day.
A factor of 365 in rate could well be the subtle difference between finding yourself on the roof of a house and finding yourself living in a house a few miles inland.
Uncache economic liberal dogma and consider real world experience for a moment? Because just going from observation, I would have to say that Electric Grids do in fact work better when centrally planned.
TVA, EDF and the rest of the regulated utilities beat the stuffing out of every example of places that attempt to have competitive markets in electricity.
That said, if we actually cared about the problems of fossil fuels, we would long ago have transitioned to a fission based grid, because that would actually solve that problem.
Nuclear fission. As in: “Everyone follows the example of France and Sweden, builds nuclear reactors until they no longer have any fossil fuel based power plants”. There are no real resource or economic limits keeping us from doing this—the Russians have quite good breeder reactor designs, and on a per-terawatt hour produced, it would kill a lot fewer people than any fossil fuel, and cost less money.
If you think helping humanity is (in long term) a futile effort, because humans are so stupid they will destroy themselves anyway… I’d say the organization you are looking for is CFAR.
So, how would you feel about making a lot of money and donating to CFAR? (Or other organization with a similar mission.)
I can’t speak for you, but I would hugely prefer for humanity to not wipe itself out, and even if it seems relatively likely at times, I still think it’s worth the effort to prevent it.
If you think existential risks are a higher priority than parasite removal, maybe you should focus your efforts on those instead.
Serious, non-rhetorical question: what’s the basis of your preference? Anything more than just affinity for your species?
I’m not 100% sure what you mean by parasite removal… I guess you’re referring to bad decision-makers, or bad decision-making processes? If so, I think existential risks are interlinked with parasite removal: the latter causes or at least hastens the former. Therefore, to truly address existential risks, you need to address parasite removal.
If I live forever, through cryonics or a positive intelligence explosion before my death, I’d like to have a lot of people to hang around with. Additionally, the people you’d be helping through EA aren’t the people who are fucking up the world at the moment. Plus there isn’t really anything directly important to me outside of humanity.
Parasite removal refers to removing literal parasites from people in the third world, as an example of one of the effective charitable causes you could donate to.
EA? (Sorry to ask, but it’s not in the Less Wrong jargon glossary and I haven’t been here in a while.)
Parasite removal refers to removing literal parasites from people in the third world
Oh. Yes. I think that’s important too, and it actually pulls on my heart strings much more than existential risks that are potentially far in the future, but I would like to try to avoid hyperbolic discounting and try to focus on the most important issue facing humanity sans cognitive bias. But since human motivation isn’t flawless, I may end up focusing on something more immediate. Not sure yet.
If you’re looking for ways to eliminate existential risk, then knowing that humanity is about to kill itself no matter what you do and you’re just putting it off a few years instead of a few billion matters. If you’re just looking for ways to help individuals, it’s pretty irrelevant. I guess it means that what matters is what happens now, instead of the flow through effects after a billion years, but it’s still a big effect.
If you’re suggesting that the life of the average human isn’t worth living, then saving lives might not be a good idea, but there are still ways to help keep the population low.
Besides, if humanity was great at helping itself, then why would we need you? It is precisely the fact that we allow extreme inequality to exist that means that you can make a big difference.
For instance, humans are so facepalmingly bad at making decisions for the long term (viz. climate change, running out of fossil fuels) that it seems clear that genetic or neurological enhancements would be highly beneficial in changing this
I think you underrate the existential risks that come along with substantial genetic or neurological enhancements. I’m not saying we shouldn’t go there but it’s no easy subject matter. It requires a lot of thought to address it in a way that doesn’t produce more problems than it solves.
For example the toolkit that you need for genetic engineering can also be used to create artificial pandemics which happen to be the existential risk most feared by people in the last LW surveys.
When it comes to running out of fossil fuels we seem to do quite well. Solar energy halves costs every 7 years. The sun doesn’t shine the whole day so there’s still further work to be done, but it doesn’t seem like an insurmountable challenge.
I think you underrate the existential risks that come along with substantial genetic or neurological enhancements.
It’s true, I absolutely do. It irritates me. I guess this is because the ethics seem obvious to me: of course we should prevent people from developing a “supervirus” or whatever, just as we try to prevent people from developing nuclear arms or chemical weapons. But steering towards a possibly better humanity (or other sentient species) just seems worth the risk to me when the alternative is remaining the violent apes we are. (I know we’re hominds, not apes; it’s just a figure of speech.)
When it comes to running out of fossil fuels we seem to do quite well. Solar energy halves costs every 7 years.
That’s certainly a reassuring statistic, but a less reassuring one is that solar power currently supplies less than one percent of global energy usage!! Changing that (and especially changing that quickly) will be an ENORMOUS undertaking, and there are many disheartening roadblocks in the way (utility companies, lack of government will, etc.). The fact that solar itself is getting less expensive is great, but unfortunately the changing over from fossil fuels to solar (e.g. phasing out old power plants and building brand new ones) is still incredibly expensive.
. I guess this is because the ethics seem obvious to me: of course we should prevent people from developing a “supervirus” or whatever, just as we try to prevent people from developing nuclear arms or chemical weapons.
Of course the ethics are obvious. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. 200 years ago burning all those fossil fuels to power steam engines sounded like a really great idea.
If you simply try to solve problems created by people adopting technology by throwing more technology at it, that’s dangerous.
The wise way is to understand the problem you are facing and do specific intervention that you believe to help. CFAR style rationality training might sound less impressive then changing around peoples neurology but it might be an approach with a lot less ugly side effects.
CFAR style rationality training might seem less technological to you. That’s actually a good thing because it makes it easier to understand the effects.
The fact that solar itself is getting less expensive is great, but unfortunately the changing over from fossil fuels to solar (e.g. phasing out old power plants and building brand new ones) is still incredibly expensive.
It depends on what issue you want to address. Given how things are going technology involves in a way where I don’t think we have to fear that we will have no energy when coal runs out. There plenty of coal around and green energy evolves fast enough for that task.
On the other hand we don’t want to turn that coal. I want to eat tuna that’s not full of mercury and there already a recommendation from the European Food Safety Authority against eating tuna every day because there so much mercury in it. I want less people getting killed via fossil fuel emissions. I also want to have less greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
is still incredibly expensive.
If you want to do policy that pays off in 50 years looking at how things are at the moment narrows your field of vision too much.
If solar continues it’s price development and is 1⁄8 as cheap in 21 years you won’t need government subsidies to get people to prefer solar over coal. With another 30 years of deployment we might not burn any coal in 50 years.
disheartening roadblocks in the way (utility companies, lack of government will, etc.).
If you think lack of government will or utility companies are the core problem, why focus on changing human neurology? Addressing politics directly is more straightforward.
When it comes to solar power it might also be that nobody will use any solar panels in 50 years because Craig Venter’s algae are just a better energy source. Betting to much on single cards is never good.
CFAR style rationality training might sound less impressive then changing around peoples neurology but it might be an approach with a lot less ugly side effects.
It’s a start, and potentially fewer side effects is always good, but think of it this way: who’s going to gravitate towards rationality training? I would bet people who are already more rational than not (because it’s irrational not to want to be more rational). Since participants are self-selected, a massive part of the population isn’t going to bother with that stuff. There are similar issues with genetic and neurological modifications (e.g. they’ll be expensive, at least initially, and therefore restricted to a small pool of wealthy people), but given the advantages over things like CFAR I’ve already mentioned, it seems like it’d be worth it...
I have another issue with CFAR in particular that I’m reluctant to mention here for fear of causing a shit-storm, but since it’s buried in this thread, hopefully it’ll be okay. Admittedly, I only looked at their website rather than actually attending a workshop, but it seems kind of creepy and culty—rather reminiscent of Landmark, for reasons not the least of which is the fact that it’s ludicrously, prohibitively expensive (yes, I know they have “fellowships,” but surely not that many. And you have to use and pay for their lodgings? wtf?). It’s suggestive of mind control in the brainwashing sense rather than rationality. (Frankly, I find that this forum can get that way too, complete with shaming thought-stopping techniques (e.g. “That’s irrational!”). Do you (or anyone else) have any evidence to the contrary? (I know this is a little off-topic from my question—I could potentially create a workshop that I don’t find culty—but since CFAR is currently what’s out there, I figure it’s relevant enough.)
Given how things are going technology involves in a way where I don’t think we have to fear that we will have no energy when coal runs out. There plenty of coal around and green energy evolves fast enough for that task.
You could be right, but I think that’s rather optimistic. This blog post speaks to the problems behind this argument pretty well, I think. Its basic gist is that the amount of energy it will take to build sufficient renewable energy systems demands sacrificing a portion of the economy as is, to a point that no politician (let alone the free market) is going to support.
This brings me to your next point about addressing politics instead of neurology. Have you ever tried to get anything changed politically...? I’ve been involved in a couple of movements, and my god is it discouraging. You may as well try to knock a brick wall down with a feather. It basically seems that humanity is just going to be the way it is until it is changed on a fundamental level. Yes, I know society has changed in many ways already, but there are many undesirable traits that seem pretty constant, particularly war and inequality.
As for solar as opposed to other technologies, I am a bit torn as to whether it might be better to work on developing technologies rather than whatever seems most practical now. Fusion, for instance, if it’s actually possible, would be incredible. I guess I feel that working on whatever’s practical now is better for me, personally, to expend energy on since everything else is so speculative. Sort of like triage.
Pretty sure you just feel like bragging about how much smarter you are than the rest of the world. If you think people have to be as smart as you think you are to be worth protecting, you are a bad person.
Well, there has not been a nuclear war yet (excluding WWII where deaths from nuclear weapons were tiny in proportion), climate change has only been a known risk for a few decades, and progress is being made with electric cars and solar power. Things could be worse. Instead of moaning, propose solutions : what would you do to stop global warming when so much depends on fossil fuels?
On a separate note, I agree with the kneejerk reactions, but its a temporary cultural thing, caused partially by people basing morality on fiction. Get one group of people to watch GATTACA and another to watch Ghost in the shell, and they would have very different attitudes towards transhumanism. More interestingly, cybergoths (people who like to dress as cyborgs as a fashion statement) seem to be pretty open to discussions of actual brain-computer interfaces and there is music with H+ lyrics being realeased on actual record lables and brought by people who like the music and are not transhumanists… yet.
In conclusion, once enhancement become possible I think there will be a sizeable minority of people who back it—in fact this has allready happend with modafinil and students.
Yes, and that seems truly damaging. I get the need to create conflict in fiction, but it seems to come always at the expense of technological progress, in a way I’ve never really understood. When I read Brave New World, I genuinely thought it truly was a “brave new world.” So what if some guy was conceived naturally?? Why is that inherently superior? Sounds like status quo bias, if you ask me. Buncha Luddite propraganda.
I’ve actually been working on a pro-technology, anti-Luddite text-based game. Maybe working on it is in fact a good idea towards balancing out the propaganda and changing public opinion...
“Reactors by the thousand”. Fissile and fertile materials are sufficiently abundant that we could run a economy much larger than the present one entirely on fission for millions of years, and doing so would have considerably lower average health impacts and costs than what we are actually doing. - The fact that we still burn coal is basically insanity, even disregarding climate change, because of the sheer toxicity of the wastestream from coal plants. Mercury has no halflife.
Sometimes I feel like looking into how I can help humanity (e.g. 80000 hours stuff), but other times I feel like humanity is just irredeemable and may as well wipe itself off the planet (via climate change, nuclear war, whatever).
For instance, humans are so facepalmingly bad at making decisions for the long term (viz. climate change, running out of fossil fuels) that it seems clear that genetic or neurological enhancements would be highly beneficial in changing this (and other deficiencies, of course). Yet discourse about such things is overwhelmingly negative, mired in what I think are irrational kneejerk reactions to defend “what it means to be human.” So I’m just like, you know what? Fuck it. You can’t even help yourselves help yourselves. Forget it.
Thoughts?
You know how when you see a kid about to fall off a cliff, you shrug and don’t do anything because the standards of discourse aren’t as high as they could be?
Me neither.
lol yeah, I know what you’re talking about.
Okay okay, fine. ;-)
A task with a better expected outcome is still better (in expected outcome), even if it’s hopeless, silly, not as funny as some of the failure modes, not your responsibility or in some way emotionally less comfortable.
You’re of course correct. I’m tempted to question the use of “better” (i.e. it’s a matter of values and opinion as to whether its “better” if humanity wipes itself out or not), but I think it’s pretty fair to assume (as I believe utilitarians do) that less suffering is better, and theoretically less suffering would result from better decision-making and possibly from less climate change.
Thanks for this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifiable_victim_effect
Also, would you still want to save a drowning dog even if it might bite you out of fear and misunderstanding? (let’s say it is a small dog and a bite would not be drastically injurious)
True, true. But it’s still hard for me (and most people?) to circumvent that effect, even while I’m aware of it. I know Mother Theresa actually had a technique for it (to just think of one child rather than the millions in need). I guess I can try that. Any other suggestions?
I’ll pretend it’s a cat since I don’t really like small dogs. ;-) Yes, of course I’d save it. I think this analogy will help me moving forward. Thank you! ^_^
No problem. I have an intuition that IMing might be more productive than structured posts if you’re exploring this space and want to cover a bunch of ground quickly. Feel free to ping me on gtalk if you’re interested. romeostevensit is my google.
I think it is amazingly myopic to look at the only species that has ever started a fire or crafted a wheel and conclude that
The idea that climate change is an existential risk seems wacky to me. It is not difficult to walk away from an ocean which is rising at even 1 m a year and no one hypothesizes anything close to that rate. We are adapted to a broad range of climates and able to move north south east and west as the winds might blow us.
Running out of fossil fuels, thinking we are doing something wildly stupid with our use of fossil fuels seems to me to be about as sensible as thinking a centrally planned economy will work better. It is not intuitive that a centrally planned economy will be a piece of crap compared to what we have, but it turns out to be true. Thinking you or even a bunch of people like you with no track record doing ANYTHING can second guess the markets in fossil fuels, well it seems intuitively right but if you ever get involved in testing your intuitions I don’t think you’ll find out it holds up. And if you think even doubling the price of fossil fuels really changes the calculus by much, I think Europe and Japan have lived that life for decades compared to the US, and yet the US is the home to the wackiest and ill-thought-out alternatives to fossil fuels in the world.
Can anybody explain to me why creating a wildly popular luxury car which effectively runs on burning coal is such a boon to the environment that it should be subsidized at $7500 by the US federal government and an additional $2500 by states such as California which has been so close to bankruptcy recently? Well that is what a Tesla is, if you drive one in a country with coal on the grid, and most of Europe, China, and the US are in that category, The Tesla S Performance puts out the same amount of carbon as a car getting (WRONG14WRONG) 25 mpg of gasoline.
The Tesla S takes about 38 kW-hr to go 100 miles, which works out to around 80 lb CO2 generated. 14mpg would be 7.1 gallons of gasoline to go 100 miles, which works out to around 140lb CO2 generated. I couldn’t find any independent numbers for the S Performance, but Tesla’s site claims the same range as the regular S with the same battery pack.
The rest of your point seems to hold, though; if the subsidy is predicated on reducing CO2 emissions then the equivalent of 25mpg still isn’t anything to brag about.
This is likely an overestimation, since it assumes that you’re exclusively burning coal. Electricity production in the US is about 68% fossil, the rest deriving from a mixture of nuclear and renewables; the fossil-fuel category also includes natural gas, which per your link generates about 55-60% the CO2 of coal per unit electricity. This varies quite a bit state to state, though, from almost exclusively fossil (West Virginia; Delaware; Utah) to almost exclusively nuclear (Vermont) or renewable (Washington; Idaho).
Based on the same figures and breaking it down by the national average of coal, natural gas, and nuclear and renewables, I’m getting a figure of 43 lb CO2 / 100 mi, or about 50 mpg equivalent. Since its subsidies came up, California burns almost no coal but gets a bit more than 60% of its energy from natural gas; its equivalent would be about 28 lb CO2.
Yes, but that should be the right comparison to make. Consider two alternatives: 1) World generates N kwh + 38 kwh to fuel a Tesla to go 100 miles 2) World generates N kwh and puts 4 gallons of gasoline in a car to go 100 miles.
If we are interested in minimizing CO2 emissions, then in world 2 compared to world 1 we will generate 38 kWh fewer from our dirtiest plant on the grid, which is going to be a coal-fired plant.
So in world 1 we have an extra 80 lbs of CO2 emission from electric generation and 0 from gasoline. In world 2 we have 80 lbs less of CO2 emission from electric generation and add 80 lbs from gasoline.
When adding electric usage, you need to “bill” it at the marginal costs to generate that electricity, which is true both in terms the price you charge customers for it and the CO2 emissions you attribute to it.
The US, China, and most of Europe have a lot of Coal in the mix on the grid. Until they scrub coal or stop using it, it seems very clear that the Tesla puffs out the same amount of CO2 as a 25 mpg gasoline powered car.
It’s true that most of the flexibility in our power system comes from dirty sources, and that squeezing a few extra kilowatt-hours in the short term generally means burning more coal. If we’re talking policy changes aimed at popularizing electric cars, though, then we aren’t talking a megawatt here or there; we’ve moved into the realm of adding capacity, and it’s not at all obvious that new electrical capacity is going to come from dirty sources—at least outside of somewhere like West Virginia. On those kinds of scales, I think it’s fair to assume a mix similar to what we’ve currently got, outside of special cases like Germany phasing out its nuclear program.
(There are some caveats; renewables are growing strongly in the US, but nuclear isn’t. But it works as a first approximation.)
The global installed capacity of coal-fired power generation is expected to increase from 1,673.1 GW in 2012 to 2.057.6 GW by 2019, according to a report from Transparency Market Research. Coal-fired electrical-generation plants are being started up in Europe—and comparatively clean gas-fired generating capacity is being shut down.
Coal electric generation isn’t going away anytime soon. The only reason coal may look at the moment like it is declining in the US is because at the moment natural gas generation in the US is less expensive than coal. But in Europe, coal is less expensive and, remarkably, generating companies respond by turning up coal and turning down natural gas.
Doesn’t need to be going away for my argument to hold, as long as the relative proportions are favorable—and as far as I can tell, most of that GIC delta in coal is happening in the developing world, where I don’t see too many people buying Teslas. Europe and the US project new capacity disproportionately in the form of renewables; coal is going up in Europe, but less quickly.
This isn’t ideal; I’m generally long on wind and solar, but if I had my way we’d be building Gen IV nuclear reactors as fast as we could lay down concrete. But neither is it as grim as the picture you seem to be painting.
I would agree with that.. Certainly my initial picture was just wrong. Even using Coal as the standard, the Tesla is as good as a 25 mpg gasolilne car. For that size and quality of car, that is actually not bad, but it is best in class, not revolutionary.
As to subsidizing a Tesla as opposed to a 40 mpg diesel, for example, as long as we use coal for electricity, we are better off adding a 40 mpg diesel to the fleet than adding a Tesla. This is almost just me hating on subsidies, preferring that we just tax fuels proportional to their carbon content and let market forces decide how to distribute that distortion.
That probably is better baseline policy from a carbon minimization perspective, yeah; I have similar objections to the fleet mileage penalties imposed on automakers in the US, which ended up contributing among other things to a good chunk of the SUV boom in the ’90s and ’00s. Now, I can see an argument for subsidies or even direct grants if they help kickstart building EV infrastructure or enable game-changing research, but that should be narrowly targeted, not the basis of our entire approach.
Unfortunately, basic economic literacy is not exactly a hallmark of environmental policy.
Yes, but marginal analysis requires identifying the correct margin. If you charge your car during the day at work, you are increasing peak load, which is often coal. If you charge your car at night, you are contributing to base load. This might not even require building new plants! This works great if you have nuclear plants. With a sufficiently smart grid, it makes erratic sources like wind much more useful.
I do agree using the rate for coal is pessimistic.
On further research, I discover that Li-ion batteries are very energetically expensive to produce. Their net lifetime energy in production and then recycling is about 430 kWh per kWh of battery. Li-ion can be recharged 300-500 times. Using 430 recharges, amortizing production costs across all uses of the battery we see that we have 1 kWh of production energy used for every 1 kWh of storage the battery accomplished during its lifetime.
So now we have the more complicated accounting questions, how much carbon do we associate with constructing the battery vs how much with charging the battery? If construction and charging come from the same grid, we charge the same.
And of course to be fair, we need to figure the cost to refine a gallon of gasoline. Its pretty wacky out there but the numbers out there range from 6 kwh to 12 kwh. The higher numbers include quite a bit of natural gas directly used in the process, which using it directly is about twice as efficient as making electricity with it.
All in all, it looks to me like we have about 100% overhead on battery production energy, and say 8 kWh to make a gallon of gas for about 25% overhead on gasoline.
Lets assign 1.3 lbs of CO2 per kwh electric, which is 2009 US average adjusted 7.5% for delivery losses.
Then a gallon of gasoline gives 19 lbs from the gasoline + 10.4 lbs from making/transporting the gasoline.
A Tesla costs 1.3*38 = 39 lbs CO2 to go 100 miles from electric charge + 39 lbs CO2 from amortizing battery lifetime over CO2 cost or producing the battery.
Tesla = 78 lbs CO2 per 100 miles.
A 78 lbs of CO2 comes from 78⁄30 = 2.6 gallons of fuel.
So using US average CO2 load for kwh electricity, loading the Tesla with 100% overhead for battery production and loading gasoline with 34% overhead from refining, mining, and transport, we get a Tesla S about equivalent to a 38 mpg car in CO2 emissions.
That number is actually extremely impressive for the class of car a Tesla is.
Nissan Leaf uses 75% as much energy as Tesla to go 100 miles. So Leaf has same CO2 emissions as a 51 mpg car.
If we use coal for electricity these numbers change to Tesla --> 19 mpg and Leaf --> 26 mpg. The Tesla still looks good-ish for the class of car it is, but the Leaf is lousy at 26 mpg, competing with hybrids that get 45 mpg or so.
Your lithium-ion numbers match my understanding of batteries in general: they cost as much energy to create as their lifetime capacity. That’s why you can’t use batteries to smooth out erratic power sources like wind, or inflexible ones like nuclear.
I’m skeptical that it’s a good idea to focus on the energy used to create the battery. There’s energy used to create all the rest of the car, and certainly energy to create the gasoline-powered car that you’re using as a benchmark. Production energy is difficult to compute and I think most people do such a bad job that I think it’s better to use price as a proxy.
You are right I did my math wrong.
To make it a little clearer to people following along, 80 lbs of CO2 generate to move a Tesla 100 miles using coal generated electricity. 80 pounds of CO2 to move a 25 mpg gasoline car 100 miles.
I’ll address why the coal number is the right one in commenting on the next comment.
It’s not difficult to walk away from an ocean? Please explain New Orleans.
Tesla (and other stuff getting power from the grid) currently run mostly on coal but ideally they can be run off (unrealistically) solar or wind or (realistically) nuclear.
It’s not difficult to walk away from an ocean? Please explain New Orleans.
Are you under the impression that climate change rise in ocean level will look like a dike breaking? All references to sea levels rising are reported at less than 1 cm a year, but lets say that rises 100 fold to 1 m/yr. New Orleans flooded a few meters in at most a few days, about 1 m/day.
A factor of 365 in rate could well be the subtle difference between finding yourself on the roof of a house and finding yourself living in a house a few miles inland.
No, explain why we still have a city in new orleans when it repeatedly gets destroyed by hurricanes.
The thread is about whether climate change is an existential threat, not how to best manage coastal cities that flood.
you’re right, sorry.
Uncache economic liberal dogma and consider real world experience for a moment? Because just going from observation, I would have to say that Electric Grids do in fact work better when centrally planned. TVA, EDF and the rest of the regulated utilities beat the stuffing out of every example of places that attempt to have competitive markets in electricity. That said, if we actually cared about the problems of fossil fuels, we would long ago have transitioned to a fission based grid, because that would actually solve that problem.
Googling doesn’t find many hits. What do you mean with the term?
Nuclear fission. As in: “Everyone follows the example of France and Sweden, builds nuclear reactors until they no longer have any fossil fuel based power plants”. There are no real resource or economic limits keeping us from doing this—the Russians have quite good breeder reactor designs, and on a per-terawatt hour produced, it would kill a lot fewer people than any fossil fuel, and cost less money.
If you think helping humanity is (in long term) a futile effort, because humans are so stupid they will destroy themselves anyway… I’d say the organization you are looking for is CFAR.
So, how would you feel about making a lot of money and donating to CFAR? (Or other organization with a similar mission.)
How cool, I’ve never heard of CFAR before. It looks awesome. I don’t think I’m capable of making a lot of money, but I’ll certainly look into CFAR.
Edit: I just realized that CFAR’s logo is at the top of the site. Just never looked into it. I am not a smart man.
Taboo humanity.
I can’t speak for you, but I would hugely prefer for humanity to not wipe itself out, and even if it seems relatively likely at times, I still think it’s worth the effort to prevent it.
If you think existential risks are a higher priority than parasite removal, maybe you should focus your efforts on those instead.
Serious, non-rhetorical question: what’s the basis of your preference? Anything more than just affinity for your species?
I’m not 100% sure what you mean by parasite removal… I guess you’re referring to bad decision-makers, or bad decision-making processes? If so, I think existential risks are interlinked with parasite removal: the latter causes or at least hastens the former. Therefore, to truly address existential risks, you need to address parasite removal.
If I live forever, through cryonics or a positive intelligence explosion before my death, I’d like to have a lot of people to hang around with. Additionally, the people you’d be helping through EA aren’t the people who are fucking up the world at the moment. Plus there isn’t really anything directly important to me outside of humanity.
Parasite removal refers to removing literal parasites from people in the third world, as an example of one of the effective charitable causes you could donate to.
EA? (Sorry to ask, but it’s not in the Less Wrong jargon glossary and I haven’t been here in a while.)
Oh. Yes. I think that’s important too, and it actually pulls on my heart strings much more than existential risks that are potentially far in the future, but I would like to try to avoid hyperbolic discounting and try to focus on the most important issue facing humanity sans cognitive bias. But since human motivation isn’t flawless, I may end up focusing on something more immediate. Not sure yet.
EA is Effective Altruism.
Ah, thanks. :)
I find it fascinating to observe.
I assume you’re talking about the facepalm-inducing decision-making? If so, that’s a pretty morbid fascination. ;-)
If you’re looking for ways to eliminate existential risk, then knowing that humanity is about to kill itself no matter what you do and you’re just putting it off a few years instead of a few billion matters. If you’re just looking for ways to help individuals, it’s pretty irrelevant. I guess it means that what matters is what happens now, instead of the flow through effects after a billion years, but it’s still a big effect.
If you’re suggesting that the life of the average human isn’t worth living, then saving lives might not be a good idea, but there are still ways to help keep the population low.
Besides, if humanity was great at helping itself, then why would we need you? It is precisely the fact that we allow extreme inequality to exist that means that you can make a big difference.
I think you underrate the existential risks that come along with substantial genetic or neurological enhancements. I’m not saying we shouldn’t go there but it’s no easy subject matter. It requires a lot of thought to address it in a way that doesn’t produce more problems than it solves.
For example the toolkit that you need for genetic engineering can also be used to create artificial pandemics which happen to be the existential risk most feared by people in the last LW surveys.
When it comes to running out of fossil fuels we seem to do quite well. Solar energy halves costs every 7 years. The sun doesn’t shine the whole day so there’s still further work to be done, but it doesn’t seem like an insurmountable challenge.
It’s true, I absolutely do. It irritates me. I guess this is because the ethics seem obvious to me: of course we should prevent people from developing a “supervirus” or whatever, just as we try to prevent people from developing nuclear arms or chemical weapons. But steering towards a possibly better humanity (or other sentient species) just seems worth the risk to me when the alternative is remaining the violent apes we are. (I know we’re hominds, not apes; it’s just a figure of speech.)
That’s certainly a reassuring statistic, but a less reassuring one is that solar power currently supplies less than one percent of global energy usage!! Changing that (and especially changing that quickly) will be an ENORMOUS undertaking, and there are many disheartening roadblocks in the way (utility companies, lack of government will, etc.). The fact that solar itself is getting less expensive is great, but unfortunately the changing over from fossil fuels to solar (e.g. phasing out old power plants and building brand new ones) is still incredibly expensive.
Of course the ethics are obvious. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. 200 years ago burning all those fossil fuels to power steam engines sounded like a really great idea.
If you simply try to solve problems created by people adopting technology by throwing more technology at it, that’s dangerous.
The wise way is to understand the problem you are facing and do specific intervention that you believe to help. CFAR style rationality training might sound less impressive then changing around peoples neurology but it might be an approach with a lot less ugly side effects.
CFAR style rationality training might seem less technological to you. That’s actually a good thing because it makes it easier to understand the effects.
It depends on what issue you want to address. Given how things are going technology involves in a way where I don’t think we have to fear that we will have no energy when coal runs out. There plenty of coal around and green energy evolves fast enough for that task.
On the other hand we don’t want to turn that coal. I want to eat tuna that’s not full of mercury and there already a recommendation from the European Food Safety Authority against eating tuna every day because there so much mercury in it. I want less people getting killed via fossil fuel emissions. I also want to have less greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
If you want to do policy that pays off in 50 years looking at how things are at the moment narrows your field of vision too much.
If solar continues it’s price development and is 1⁄8 as cheap in 21 years you won’t need government subsidies to get people to prefer solar over coal. With another 30 years of deployment we might not burn any coal in 50 years.
If you think lack of government will or utility companies are the core problem, why focus on changing human neurology? Addressing politics directly is more straightforward.
When it comes to solar power it might also be that nobody will use any solar panels in 50 years because Craig Venter’s algae are just a better energy source. Betting to much on single cards is never good.
It’s a start, and potentially fewer side effects is always good, but think of it this way: who’s going to gravitate towards rationality training? I would bet people who are already more rational than not (because it’s irrational not to want to be more rational). Since participants are self-selected, a massive part of the population isn’t going to bother with that stuff. There are similar issues with genetic and neurological modifications (e.g. they’ll be expensive, at least initially, and therefore restricted to a small pool of wealthy people), but given the advantages over things like CFAR I’ve already mentioned, it seems like it’d be worth it...
I have another issue with CFAR in particular that I’m reluctant to mention here for fear of causing a shit-storm, but since it’s buried in this thread, hopefully it’ll be okay. Admittedly, I only looked at their website rather than actually attending a workshop, but it seems kind of creepy and culty—rather reminiscent of Landmark, for reasons not the least of which is the fact that it’s ludicrously, prohibitively expensive (yes, I know they have “fellowships,” but surely not that many. And you have to use and pay for their lodgings? wtf?). It’s suggestive of mind control in the brainwashing sense rather than rationality. (Frankly, I find that this forum can get that way too, complete with shaming thought-stopping techniques (e.g. “That’s irrational!”). Do you (or anyone else) have any evidence to the contrary? (I know this is a little off-topic from my question—I could potentially create a workshop that I don’t find culty—but since CFAR is currently what’s out there, I figure it’s relevant enough.)
You could be right, but I think that’s rather optimistic. This blog post speaks to the problems behind this argument pretty well, I think. Its basic gist is that the amount of energy it will take to build sufficient renewable energy systems demands sacrificing a portion of the economy as is, to a point that no politician (let alone the free market) is going to support.
This brings me to your next point about addressing politics instead of neurology. Have you ever tried to get anything changed politically...? I’ve been involved in a couple of movements, and my god is it discouraging. You may as well try to knock a brick wall down with a feather. It basically seems that humanity is just going to be the way it is until it is changed on a fundamental level. Yes, I know society has changed in many ways already, but there are many undesirable traits that seem pretty constant, particularly war and inequality.
As for solar as opposed to other technologies, I am a bit torn as to whether it might be better to work on developing technologies rather than whatever seems most practical now. Fusion, for instance, if it’s actually possible, would be incredible. I guess I feel that working on whatever’s practical now is better for me, personally, to expend energy on since everything else is so speculative. Sort of like triage.
Pretty sure you just feel like bragging about how much smarter you are than the rest of the world. If you think people have to be as smart as you think you are to be worth protecting, you are a bad person.
Well, there has not been a nuclear war yet (excluding WWII where deaths from nuclear weapons were tiny in proportion), climate change has only been a known risk for a few decades, and progress is being made with electric cars and solar power. Things could be worse. Instead of moaning, propose solutions : what would you do to stop global warming when so much depends on fossil fuels?
On a separate note, I agree with the kneejerk reactions, but its a temporary cultural thing, caused partially by people basing morality on fiction. Get one group of people to watch GATTACA and another to watch Ghost in the shell, and they would have very different attitudes towards transhumanism. More interestingly, cybergoths (people who like to dress as cyborgs as a fashion statement) seem to be pretty open to discussions of actual brain-computer interfaces and there is music with H+ lyrics being realeased on actual record lables and brought by people who like the music and are not transhumanists… yet.
In conclusion, once enhancement become possible I think there will be a sizeable minority of people who back it—in fact this has allready happend with modafinil and students.
Yes, and that seems truly damaging. I get the need to create conflict in fiction, but it seems to come always at the expense of technological progress, in a way I’ve never really understood. When I read Brave New World, I genuinely thought it truly was a “brave new world.” So what if some guy was conceived naturally?? Why is that inherently superior? Sounds like status quo bias, if you ask me. Buncha Luddite propraganda.
I’ve actually been working on a pro-technology, anti-Luddite text-based game. Maybe working on it is in fact a good idea towards balancing out the propaganda and changing public opinion...
“Reactors by the thousand”. Fissile and fertile materials are sufficiently abundant that we could run a economy much larger than the present one entirely on fission for millions of years, and doing so would have considerably lower average health impacts and costs than what we are actually doing. - The fact that we still burn coal is basically insanity, even disregarding climate change, because of the sheer toxicity of the wastestream from coal plants. Mercury has no halflife.
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Well, true. All things shall pass.