No, this is the “collective-action-problem”—where the end of the world arrives—despite a select band of decidedly amateurish messiahs arriving and failing to accomplish anything significant.
The END OF THE WORLD is probably the most frequently-repeated failed prediction of all time. Humans are doing spectacularly well—and the world is showing many signs of material and moral progress—all of which makes the apocalypse unlikely.
The reason for the interest here seems obvious—the Singularity Institute’s funding is derived largely from donors who think it can help to SAVE THE WORLD. The world must first be at risk to enable heroic Messiahs to rescue everyone.
The most frequently-cited projected cause of the apocalypse: an engineering screw-up. Supposedly, future engineers are going to be so incompetent that they accidentally destroy the whole world. The main idea—as far as I can tell—is that a bug is going to destroy civilisation.
Also—as far as I can tell—this isn’t the conclusion of analysis performed on previous engineering failures—or on the effects of previous bugs—but rather is wild extrapolation and guesswork.
Of course it is true that there may be a disaster, and END OF THE WORLD might arrive. However there is no credible evidence that this is likely to be a probable outcome. Instead, what we have appears to be mostly a bunch of fear mongering used for fundraising aimed at fighting the threat. That gets us into the whole area of the use and effects of fear mongering.
Fearmongering is a common means of psychological manipulation, used frequently by advertisers and marketers to produce irrational behaviour in their victims.
Evidently, prolonged and widespread use is likely to help to produce a culture of fear. The long-term effects of that are not terribly clear—but it seems to be dubious territory.
I would council those using fear mongering for fund-raising purposes to be especially cautious of the harm this might do. It seems like a potentially dangerous form of meme warfare. Fear targets circuits in the human brain that evolved in an earlier, more dangerous era—where death was much more likely—so humans have an evolved vulnerability in the area. The modern super-stimulus of the END OF THE WORLD overloads those vulnerable circuits.
Maybe this is an effective way of extracting money from people—but also, maybe it is an unpleasant and unethical one. So, wannabe heroic Messiahs, please: take care. Starting out by screwing over your friends and associates by messing up their heads with a hostile and virulent meme complex may not be the greatest way to start out.
Do you also think that global warming is a hoax, that nuclear weapons were never really that dangerous, and that the whole concept of existential risks is basically a self-serving delusion?
Also, why are the folks that you disagree with the only ones that get to be described with all-caps narrative tropes? Aren’t you THE LONE SANE MAN who’s MAKING A DESPERATE EFFORT to EXPOSE THE TRUTH about FALSE MESSIAHS and the LIES OF CORRUPT LEADERS and SHOW THE WAY to their HORDES OF MINDLESS FOLLOWERS to AN ENLIGHTENED FUTURE? Can’t you describe anything with all-caps narrative tropes if you want?
Not rhethorical questions, I’d actually like to read your answers.
1-line summary—I am not too worried about that either.
Global warming is far more the subject of irrational fear-mongering then machine intelligence is.
It’s hard to judge how at risk the world was from nuclear weapons during the cold war. I don’t have privileged information about that. After Japan, we have not had nuclear weapons used in anger or war. That doesn’t give much in the way of actual statistics to go on. Whatever estimate is best, confidence intervals would have to be wide. Perhaps ask an expert on the history of the era this question.
The END OF THE WORLD is not necessarily an idea that benefits those who embrace it. If you consider the stereotypical END OF THE WORLD plackard carrier, they are probably not benefitting very much personally. The benefit associated with the behaviour accrues mostly to the END OF THE WORLD meme itself. However, obviously, there are some people who benefit. 2012 - and all that.
The probabality of the END OF THE WORLD soon—if it is spelled out exactly what is meant by that—is a real number which could be scientifically investigated. However whether the usual fundraising and marketing campaigns around the subject illuminate that subject more than they systematically distort it seems debatable.
1-line summary—I am not too worried about that either.
This is a pretty optimistic way of looking at it, but unfortunately it’s quite unfounded. Current scientific consensus is that we’ve already released more than enough greenhouse gases to avert the next glacial period. Melting the ice sheets and thus ending the ice age entirely is an extremely bad idea if we do it too quickly for global ecosystems to adapt.
We don’t even really understand what causes the glacial cycles yet. This is an area where there are multiple competing hypotheses. I list four of these on my site. So, since we don’t have a proper understanding of the mechanics involved with much confidence yet, we don’t yet know what it would take to prevent them.
We do not know how to answer the most important question: do our human activities in general, and our burning of fossil fuels in particular, make the onset of the next ice-age [sic] more likely or less likely? [...]
Until the causes of ice-ages are understood, we cannot know whether the increase of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing or decreasing the danger.
I do not believe this is contrary to any “scientific consensus” on the topic. Where is this supposed “scientific consensus” of which you speak?
Melting the ice caps is inevitably an extremely slow process—due to thermal inertia. It is also widely thought to be a runaway positive feedback cycle—and so probably a phenomenon that it would be difficult to control the rate of.
Melting of the icecaps is now confirmed to be a runaway positive feedback process pretty much beyond a shadow of a doubt. Within the last few years, melting has occurred at a rate that exceeded the upper limits of our projection margins.
Have you performed calculations on what it would take to avert the next glacial period on the basis of any of the competing models, or did you just assume that ice ages are bad, so preventing them is good and we should thus work hard to prevent reglaciation? There’s a reason why your site is the first and possibly only only result in online searches for support of preventing glaciation, and it’s not because you’re the only one to think of it
If we could choose between the climate of today with a dry Sahara and the climate of 6,000 years ago with a wet Sahara, should we prefer the climate of today? My second heresy answers yes to the first question and no to the second. It says that the warm climate of 6,000 years ago with the wet Sahara is to be preferred, and that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may help to bring it back. I am not saying that this heresy is true. I am only saying that it will not do us any harm to think about it.”
Why is being difficult to control glacial melting a point in the favor of increasing greenhouse gas emissions?
It’s true that climate change models are limited in their ability to project climate change accurately, although they’re getting better all the time. Unfortunately, the evidence currently suggests that they’re undershooting actual warming rates even at their upper limits.
The pro-warming arguments on your site essentially boil down to “warm earth is better than cold earth, so we should try to warm the earth up.” Regardless of the relative merits of a warmer or colder planet though, rapid change of climate is a major burden on ecosystems. Flooding and forest fires are relatively trivial effects, it’s mass extinction events that are a real matter of concern.
Why is being difficult to control glacial melting a point in the favor of increasing greenhouse gas emissions?
That is hard to parse. You are asking why I think the rate of runaway positive feedback cycles is difficult to control? That is because that is often their nature.
It’s true that climate change models are limited in their ability to project climate change accurately, although they’re getting better all the time. Unfortunately, the evidence currently suggests that they’re undershooting actual warming rates even at their upper limits.
You talk as though I am denying warming is happening. HUH?
The pro-warming arguments on your site essentially boil down to “warm earth is better than cold earth, so we should try to warm the earth up.” Regardless of the relative merits of a warmer or colder planet though, rapid change of climate is a major burden on ecosystems. Flooding and forest fires are relatively trivial effects, it’s mass extinction events that are a real matter of concern.
Right. So, if you want a stable climate, you need to end the yo-yo glacial cycles—and end the ice age. A stable climate is one of the benefits of doing that.
I have a section entitled “Climate stablity” in my essay. To quote from it:
Ice age climates are inherently unstable. That is because they are characterised by positive feedback—and are prone to flipping between extreme states.
That is hard to parse. You are asking why I think the rate of runaway positive feedback cycles is difficult to control? That is because that is often their nature.
I have no idea how you got that out of my question. It’s obvious why runaway positive feedback cycles would be hard to control, the question I asked is why this in any way supports global warming not being dangerous.
You talk as though I am denying warming is happening. HUH?
That was not something I meant to imply. My point is that you seem to have decided that it’s better for our earth to be warm than cold, and thus that it’s good to approach that state, but not done any investigation into whether what we’re doing is a safe means of accomplishing that end; rather you seem to have assumed that we cannot do too much.
Right. So, if you want a stable climate, you need to end the yo-yo glacial cycles—and end the ice age. A stable climate is one of the benefits of doing that.
Most of the species on earth today have survived through multiple glaciation periods. Our ecosystems have that plasticity, because those species that were not able to cope with the rapid cooling periods died out. Global warming could lead to a stable climate, but it’s also liable to cause massive extinction in the process as climate zones shift in ways that they haven’t in millions of years far at a rate outside the tolerances of many ecosystems.
When it comes to global climate, there are really no “better” or “worse” states. Species adapt to the way things are. Cretaceous organisms are adapted to Cretaceous climates, Cenozoic organisms are adapted to Cenozoic climates, and either would have problems dealing with the other’s climate. Humans more often suffer problems from being too cold than too hot, but we’ve scarcely had time to evolve since we left near-equatorial climates. We’re adapted to be comfortable in hotter climates than the ones in which most people live today, but the species we rely on are mostly adapted to deal with the climates they’re actually in, with cooling periods lying within the tolerances of ecosystems that have been forced to deal with them recently in their evolutionary history.
From the perspective of species, “better,” is generally “maintain ecosystem status quo” and “worse” is everything else, except for cases where they come out ahead due to competitors suffering more heavily from the changes.
For most possible changes, a good rule of thumb is on average that half the agents affected do better than average, and half the agents affected do worse than average.
Fitness is relative—and that’s just what it means to consider an average value.
Roughly half of agents may have a better than average response to the change, but when rapid ecosystem changes occur, the average species response is negative. Particularly when accompanied by other forms of ecosystem pressure (which humanity is certainly exerting) rapid changes in climate tend to be accompanied by extinction spikes and decreases in species diversity.
...you will see that I expect the current mass extinction to intensify tremendously. However, I am not clear about how or why that would be bad. Surely it is a near-inevitable result of progress.
Rapid change drives species to extinction at a rate liable to endanger the function of ecosystems we rely on. Massive extinction events are in no way an inevitable consequence of improving the livelihoods of humans, although I’m not optimistic about our prospects of actually avoiding them.
Loss of a large percentage of the species on earth would hurt us, both in practical terms and as a matter of widely shared preference. As a species, we would almost certainly survive anthropogenic climate change even if it caused a runaway mass extinction event, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not an outcome that would be better to avoid if possible. Frankly, I don’t expect legislation or social agitation ever to have an adequate impact in halting anthropogenic global warming; unless we come up with some really clever hack, the battle is going to be lost, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be aware of what we stand to lose, and take notice if any viable means of avoiding it arises.
The argument suggesting that we should move away from the “cliff edge” of reglaciation is that it is dangerous hanging around there—and we really don’t want to fall off.
You seem to be saying that we should be cautious about moving too fast—in case we break something. Very well, I agree entirely—so: let us study the whole issue while moving as rapidly away from the danger zone as we feel is reasonably safe.
As I already noted, as best indicated by our calculations we have already overshot the goal of preventing the next glaciation period. Moving away from the danger zone at a reasonably safe pace would mean a major reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
CO2 apparently helps—but even that is uncertain. I would want to see a very convincing case that we are far enough from the edge for the risk of reglaciation to be over before advocating hanging around on the reglaciation cliff-edge. Short of eliminating the ice caps, it is difficult to imagine what would be convincing. Those ice caps are potentially major bad news for life on the planet—and some industrial CO2 is little reassurance—since that could relatively quickly become trapped inside plants and then buried.
The global ice caps have been around for millions of years now. Life on earth is adapted to climates that sustain them. They do not constitute “major bad news for life on this planet.” Reglaciation would pose problems for human civilization, but the onset of glaciation occurs at a much slower rate than the warming we’re already subjecting the planet to, and as such even if raising CO2 levels above what they’ve been since before the glaciations began in the Pleistocene were not enough to prevent the next round, it would still be a less pressing issue.
On a geological time scale, the amount of CO2 we’ve released could quickly be trapped in plants and buried, but with the state of human civilization as it is, how do you suppose that would actually happen quickly enough to be meaningful for the purposes of this discussion?
The global ice caps have been around for millions of years now. Life on earth is adapted to climates that sustain them. They do not constitute “major bad news for life on this planet.”
The ice age is a pretty major problem for the planet. Huge ice sheets obliterate most life on the northern hemisphere continents every 100 thousand years or so.
Re: reglaciation being slow—the last reglaciation looked slower than the last melt. The one before that happened at about the same speed. However, they both look like runaway positive feedback processes. Once the process has started it may not be easy to stop it.
Thinking of reglaciation as “not pressing” seems like a quick way to get reglaciated. Humans have got to intervene in the planet’s climate and warm it up in order to avoid this disaster. Leaving the climate alone would be a recipe for reglaciation. Pumping CO2 into the atmosphere may have saved us from disaster already, may save us from disaster in the future, may merely be a step in the right direction—or may be pretty ineffectual. However, it is important to realise that humans have got to take steps to warm the planet up—otherwise our whole civilisation may be quickly screwed.
We don’t know that industrial CO2 will protect us from reglaciation—since we don’t yet fully understand the latter process—though we do know that it devastates the planet like clockwork, and so has an astronomical origin.
The atmosphere has a CO2 decay function with an estimated half-life time of somwhere between 20-100 years. It wouldn’t vanish overnight—but a lot of it could go pretty quickly if civilisation problems resulted in a cessation of production.
Hopefully—if we have enough of a civilisation at the time. Reglaciation seems likely to only really be a threat after a major disaster or setback—I figure. Otherwise, we can just adjust the climate controls. The chances of such a major setback may seem slender—but perhaps are not so small that we can afford to be blazee about the matter. What we don’t want is to fall down the stairs—and then be kicked in the teeth.
We don’t know great many things, but what to do right now, we must decide right now, based on whatever we happen to know. (To address the reason for Desrtopa’s comment, if not any problem with your comment on this topic I’m completely ignorant about.)
If you are concerned about loss of potentially valuable information in the form of species extinction, global warming seems like total fluff. Look instead to habitat destruction and decimation, farming practices, and the resistribution of pathogens, predators and competitors by humans.
I do look at all these issues. I’ve spoken at conferences about how they receive too little attention relative to the danger they pose. That doesn’t mean that global warming does not stand to cause major harm, and going on the basis of the content of your site, you don’t seem to have invested adequate effort into researching the potential dangers, only the potential benefits.
Really? Don’t you hear enough about the supposed potential dangers from elsewhere already?!? I certainly do.
Be advised that I have pretty minimal effort to invest in discussing global warming these days. It is a big environmentalist scam. I list it at the top of my list of bad causes here.
The only reason worth discussing it—IMO—is if you are trying to direct all the resources that are being senselessly squandered on it towards better ends. You show little sign of doing that. Rather you appear to be caught up in promoting the lunacy. Global warming is mostly fluff. WAKE UP! Bigger fish are frying.
Frankly, reviewing the content of your site strongly leads me to suspect that your position is not credible; you consistently fail to accurately present what scientists consider to be the reasons for concern. When you claim that global warming is mostly fluff, I already have stronger reason than usual to suspect that you haven’t come by your conclusion from an unbiased review of the data.
I would care much less about bothering to convince you if you were not hosting a website for the purpose of convincing others to support furthering global warming, and despite the fact that there is now virtually no controversy that global warming exists, that we are causing it, and that the negatives will outweigh the positives, many people will take any excuse to dismiss it.
you consistently fail to accurately present what scientists consider to be the reasons for concern
My site doesn’t go into the down-sides of global warming sufficiently for you?!? My main purpose is to explain the advantages. My site is part of the internet. You can obtain a huge mountain of information about the disadvantages by following the links. I do not expect readers to use my site as their sole source of information on the topic.
despite the fact that there is now virtually no controversy that global warming exists, that we are causing it, and that the negatives will outweigh the positives, many people will take any excuse to dismiss it.
There is little controversy that global warming exists. There’s quite a bit more controversy about the role of humans—though my personal view is that humans are implicated. Relatively few people seem to have given much thought to the optimal temperature of the planet for living systems. Certainly very few of those involved in the “global warming movement”.
Anyway, global warming is good. It may have saved the planet from reglaciation already, or it may do so in the future, but without global warming, the planet and our civilisation would be screwed for a long time, with high probabality. The effects so far have been pretty miniscule, though. We have to carry on warming up the planet on basic safety grounds. The only issue I see is: “how fast”.
My site doesn’t go into the down-sides of global warming sufficiently for you?!? My main purpose is to explain the advantages. My site is part of the internet. You can obtain a huge mountain of information about the disadvantages by following the links. I do not expect readers to use my site as their sole source of information on the topic.
Your representations of the downsides (forest fires and floods) are actively misleading to readers. You create a false comparison by weighing all the most significant pros you can raise against a few of the more trivial cons, and encourage readers to make a judgment on that basis. Remember that people tend to actively seek out information sources that support their own views, and once they have adopted a view, seeing arguments for it falsified will not tend to revise their confidence downwards. Additionally, there is no shortage of people who will seize on any remotely credible sounding excuse to vindicate them from having to worry about global warming. Your site runs counter to the purpose of informing the public.
Anyway, global warming is good. It may have saved the planet from reglaciation already, or it may do so in the future, but without global warming, the planet and our civilisation would be screwed for a long time, with high probabality. The effects so far have been pretty miniscule, though. We have to carry on warming up the planet on basic safety grounds. The only issue I see is: “how fast”.
If global warming has already prevented reglaciation (which, as I have stated repeatedly, is most likely the case,) then why should we continue warming the planet? Unless we slow it down by orders of magnitude, the warming is occurring faster than the geological timescales on which ecosystems without technological protection are equipped to cope with it. Onset of glaciation is much slower than the progress of global warming. We are closer to the “cliff edge” of warming the world too fast than we are to reglaciation.
You’ve already stated that you consider global warming to be a storm in a teacup because you expect to see weather control before it becomes a serious issue, but even assuming that’s realistic, it gives us a larger time window to deal with reglaciation, should we turn out not to have already prevented it.
there is no shortage of people who will seize on any remotely credible sounding excuse to vindicate them from having to worry about global warming
There is no shortage of people with smoke coming out of their ears about the issue either.
Look, I don’t just mention fires and floods. I mention sea-level rise, coral reef damage, desertification, heatstroke, and a number of other disadvantages. However, the disadvantages of GW are not the main focus of my article—you can find them on a million other web sites.
If global warming has already prevented reglaciation (which, as I have stated repeatedly, is most likely the case,) then why should we continue warming the—planet?
Repeating something doesn’t make it true. Show that the risk is so small that we need no longer concern ourselves with the huge catastrophe it would represent, and I swear, I will not mention it again. The current situation—as I understand it—is that our understanding of glaciation cycles is weak, our understanding of climate dynamics is weak, and we have little idea of what risk of reglaciation we face.
Of course, a warmer planet will still be healthier and better one—risk of glaciation or no—but then warming it up becomes less urgent.
Onset of glaciation is much slower than the progress of global warming. We are closer to the “cliff edge” of warming the world too fast than we are to reglaciation.
There isn’t a “cliff-edge” of warming nearby—AFAICS. If you look at the temperature graph of the last million years, we are at a high point—and about to fall off a cliff into a glacial phase. The other direction we can only “fall” in by rearranging the continents, so there isn’t land over the south pole, and a land-locked region around the north pole. With ice-age continental positions, warming the planet is more like struggling uphill.
One thing we could try and do about that is to destroy the Isthmus of Panama. However, that needs further research—and might be a lot of work.
You’ve already stated that you consider global warming to be a storm in a teacup because you expect to see weather control before it becomes a serious issue, but even assuming that’s realistic, it gives us a larger time window to deal with reglaciation, should we turn out not to have already prevented it.
Indeed. So, I only have one page about the topic, and thousands of pages about other things. As I said, this area is only of interest as a bad cause, really.
There is no shortage of people with smoke coming out of their ears about the issue either.
Look, I don’t just mention fires and floods. I mention sea-level rise, coral reef damage, desertification, heatstroke, and a number of other disadvantages. However, the disadvantages of GW are not the main focus of my article—you can find them on a million other web sites.
It’s true that there are people with an unrealistic view of the dangers that global warming poses, and hyperbolic reactions may stand to hurt the cause of getting people to take it seriously, but your expectations of how seriously people ought to be taking it are artificially low.
You don’t just mention fires and floods, this is true, but you invite readers to make a comparison of the pros and cons without accurately presenting the cons. If you don’t want to mislead people, you should either be presenting them more accurately, or outright telling people “This site does not accurately present the cons of global warming, and you should not form an opinion on the basis of this site without doing further research at sites not dedicated to arguing against the threats it may pose.”
You can claim that your readers are free to research the issue elsewhere, but what you are doing is encouraging them to be informationally irresponsible.
There isn’t a “cliff-edge” of warming nearby—AFAICS. If you look at the temperature graph of the last million years, we are at a high point—and about to fall off a cliff into a glacial phase. The other direction we can only “fall” in by rearranging the continents, so there isn’t land over the south pole, and a land-locked region around the north pole. With ice-age continental positions, warming the planet is more like struggling uphill.
As you have already noted earlier in this debate, ice sheet melting is a runaway positive feedback process. Once we have started the cycle, warming the planet is not an uphill struggle. If you look at the temperature graph of the last million years, you will not see that we are about to fall into another glaciation period, because the climate record of the last million years does not reflect the current situation. Even if greenhouse gas levels halted where they are now, temperature would continue to rise to meet the level they set. Our climate situation is more reflective of the Pliocene, which did not have cyclical glaciation periods.
Repeating something doesn’t make it true. Show that the risk is so small that we need no longer concern ourselves with the huge catastrophe it would represent, and I swear, I will not mention it again. The current situation—as I understand it—is that our understanding of glaciation cycles is weak, our understanding of climate dynamics is weak, and we have little idea of what risk of reglaciation we face.
I don’t have the articles on which I based the statement; I would need access to materials from courses I’ve already graduated. I may be able to get the data by contacting old professors, but there’s a significant hassle barrier, particularly since I’m arguing with someone who I do not have a strong expectation of being receptive to new information. If I do retrieve the information, do you commit to revising your site to reflect it, or removing the site as obsolete?
You can claim that your readers are free to research the issue elsewhere, but what you are doing is encouraging them to be informationally irresponsible.
You what? You are starting to irritate me with your unsolicited editorial advice. Don’t like my web page—go and make your own!
As you have already noted earlier in this debate, ice sheet melting is a runaway positive feedback process.
Yes—from the point of full glaciation to little glaciation, ice core evidence suggests this process is a relatively unstoppable one-way slide. However, we have gone down that slide already in this glacial cycle. Trying to push the temperature upward from there hasn’t happened naturally for millions of years. That doesn’t look so easy—while we still have an ice-age continental configuration.
If you look at the temperature graph of the last million years, you will not see that we are about to fall into another glaciation period, because the climate record of the last million years does not reflect the current situation.
That sounds more like ignoring the temperature graph—and considering other information—to me.
If I do retrieve the information, do you commit to revising your site to reflect it, or removing the site as obsolete?
You are kidding, presumably. The information needs to be compelling evidence that there isn’t a significant risk. Whether you retreive it or not seems likely to be a minor factor.
As I previously explained, a warmer planet would still be better, reglaciation risk or no. More of the planet would be habitable, fewer would die of pneumonia, there would be fewer deserts—and so on. However, the reglaciation risk does add urgency to the situation.
You what? You are starting to irritate me with your unsolicited editorial advice. Don’t like my web page—go and make your own!
Given that people tend to seek out informational sources that flatter their biases, and your website is one of relatively few sources attempting to convince people that the data suggests global warming is positive, making another website has less utility to me than convincing you to revise yours.
That sounds more like ignoring the temperature graph—and considering other information—to me.
It is considering the temperature graph insofar as it is relevant, while incorporating other information that is more reflective of our current situation. Would you try to extrapolate technological advances in the next twenty years based on the average rate of technological advancement over the last six hundred?
Yes—from the point of full glaciation to little glaciation, ice core evidence suggests this process is a relatively unstoppable one-way slide. However, we have gone down that slide already in this glacial cycle. Trying to push the temperature upward from there hasn’t happened naturally for millions of years. That doesn’t look so easy—while we still have an ice-age continental configuration.
We had more or less the same continental configuration in the Pliocene, without cyclical glaciation periods.
You are kidding, presumably. The information needs to be compelling evidence that there isn’t a significant risk. Whether you retreive it or not seems likely to be a minor factor.
As I previously explained, a warmer planet would still be better, reglaciation risk or no. More of the planet would be habitable, fewer would die of pneumonia, there would be fewer deserts—and so on. However, the reglaciation risk does add urgency to the situation.
Climate zones would shift, necessitating massive relocations which would cause major infrastructure damage. If we alter the earth’s temperature to make larger proportions of the land mass optimally biologically suitable to humans, we are going to do tremendous damage to species that are not adapted to near-equatorial habitation, and the impact on those other species is going to cause more problems than the relatively small drop in rates of pneumonia.
How compelling would you expect the evidence to be in order for you to be willing to revise the content of your site?
We had more or less the same continental configuration in the Pliocene, without cyclical glaciation periods.
I am not sure what you are getting at there. Continental configuration is one factor. There may be other ones—including astronomical influences.
How compelling would you expect the evidence to be in order for you to be willing to revise the content of your site?
Why do you think it needs revising? A warmer planet looks remarkably positive—while keeping the planet in the freezer does not. I am not very impressed by the argument that change is painful, so we should keep the planet in an ice-age climate. Anyway, lots of evidence that global warming is undesirable—and that a half-frozen planet is good—would cause me to revise my position. However, I don’t seriously expect that to happen. That is a misguided lie—and a cause of much wasted energy and resources on the planet.
Why do you think it needs revising? Global warming looks remarkably positive—while keeping the planet in the freezer does not. I am not very impressed by the argument that change is painful, so we should keep the planet in an ice-age climate. Anyway, lots of evidence that global warming is undesirable—and that a half-frozen planet is good—would cause me to revise my position. However, I don’t expect that to happen. That is a misguided lie—and a cause of much wasted energy and resources on the planet.
Since you do not seem prepared to acknowledge the more significant dangers of rapid climate change, while substantially overstating the benefits of altering the entire planet to suit the biological preferences of a species that adapted to life near the equator, I doubt you would be swayed by the amount of evidence that should be (and, I assert, is,) forthcoming if you are wrong. I expect that most of the other members here already regard your position with an appropriate degree of skepticism, so while it frustrates me to leave the matter at rest while I am convinced that your position is untenable, I don’t see any benefit in continuing to participate in this debate.
Thanks for the link, though. It will be interesting to see whether their ideas stand up to peer review. If so, it seems like bad news—the authors seem to think the forces that lead to reglaciation are due to kick in around about now.
I don’t see any benefit in continuing to participate in this debate.
The reason for the shift to the term “climate change” over “global warming” is that climate zones would shift. Places that were previously not arable would become so, but places that previously were arable would cease to be. It would require a significant restructuring of our civilization to chase around the climate zones with the appropriate infrastructure.
Looking at a map …the warming occurs quite a bit more near the poles—and over land masses. So, mostly Canada and Russia will get less frosty and more cosy. That seems good. It would be hard to imagine a more positive kind of climate change than one that makes our large and mostly barren northern wastelands more productive and habitable places.
It would require a significant restructuring of our civilization to chase around the climate zones with the appropriate infrastructure.
Right—over tens of thousands of years, probably. The Antarctic is pretty thick.
A dead-pan presentation washes out my character—and means I have to be more wordy to get across my intended message. Who knows if a slap will work? Not me. Consider it an experiment.
A dead-pan presentation washes out my character—and means I have to be more wordy to get across my intended message.
I would be wary of overloading your message. Consider this as a core:
“My heavily researched impression is that global warming, while somewhat concerning, is significantly less important than many other concerns.”
Now, we dress that up. Notice the impact the following change has on you:
“I, Vaniver, have heavily researched global warming, and my impression is that while it is somewhat concerning, it is significantly less important than many other concerns.”
Most of the time, putting yourself into the message reduces persuasiveness, and the places where it doesn’t probably don’t occur during abstract debates. (Persuading someone to share their lunch with you is an example of an appropriate time, but I wouldn’t call it an abstract debate.) So while some character is inevitable, I would generally seek to err on the side of suppressing it rather than expressing it.
the question I asked is why this in any way supports global warming not being dangerous
Global warming seems a lot less dangerous than reglaciation.
My point is that you seem to have decided that it’s better for our earth to be warm than cold, and thus that it’s good to approach that state, but not done any investigation into whether what we’re doing is a safe means of accomplishing that end; rather you seem to have assumed that we cannot do too much.
Actually, I expect us to master climate control fairly quickly. That is another reason why global warming is a storm in a teacup. However, the future is uncertain. We might get unlucky—and be hit by a fair-sized meteorite. If that happens, reglaciation is about the last thing we would want for desert.
“Fairly quickly”? What if we don’t? Do you expect reglaciation to occur within the next 100 years, 200 years? If not we can wait until we have the knowledge to pull off climate control safely. (And if we do get hit by an asteroid, the last thing we probably want is runaway climate change started when we didn’t know what we were doing either.)
If things go according to plan, we get climate control—and then need to worry little about either warming or reglaciation. The problem is things not going according to plan.
And if we do get hit by an asteroid, the last thing we probably want is runaway climate change started when we didn’t know what we were doing either.
Indeed. The “runaway climate change” we are scheduled for is reglaciation. The history of the planet is very clear on this topic. That is exactly what we don’t want. A disaster followed by glaciers descending over the northern continents could make a mess of civilisation for quite a while. Warming, by contrast doesn’t represent a significant threat—living systems including humans thrive in warm conditions.
Living systems including humans also thrive in cold conditions. Most species on the planet today have persisted through multiple glaciation periods, but not through pre-Pleistocene level warmth or rapid warming events.
Plus, the history of the Pleistocene, in which our record of glaciation exists, contains no events of greenhouse gas release and warming comparable to the one we’re in now, this is not business as usual on the track to reglaciation. Claiming that the history of the planet is very clear that we’re headed for reglaciation is flat out misleading. Last time the world had CO2 levels as high as they are now, it wasn’t going through cyclical glaciation.
Most species on the planet are less than 2.5 million years old?!?
I checked and found: “The fossil record suggests an average species lifespan of about five million years” and “Average species lifespan in fossil record: 4 million years.” (search for sources).
So, I figure your claim is probably factually incorrect. However, isn’t it a rather meaningless statistic anyway? It depends on how often lineages speciate. That actually says very little about how long it takes to adapt to an environment.
The average species age is necessarily lower than the average species duration.
Additionally, the fossil record measures species in paleontological terms, a paleontological “species” is not a species in biological terms, but a group which cannot be distinguished from each other by fossilized remains. Paleontological species duration sets the upper bound on biological species duration; in practice, biological species duration is shorter.
Species originating more than 2.5 million years ago which were not capable of enduring glaciation periods would have died out when they occurred. The origin window for species without adaptations to cope is the last ten thousand years. Any species with a Pleistocene origin or earlier has persisted through glaciation periods.
That is hard to parse. You are asking why I think the rate of runaway positive feedback cycles is difficult to control? That is because that is often their nature.
Allow me to try: There are positive feedback cycles which appear to be going in runaway mode. Why is this evidence for “things are going to get better” rather than “things are going to get worse”?
Your argument as a whole- “we need to get above this variability regime into a stable regime”- answers why the runaway positive feedback loop would be desirable, but does not convincingly establish (the part I’ve read, at least, you may do this elsewhere) that the part above the current variability is actually a stable attractor, instead of us shooting to up to Venus’s climate (or something less extreme but still regrettable for humans).
but does not convincingly establish (the part I’ve read, at least, you may do this elsewhere) that the part above the current variability is actually a stable attractor, instead of us shooting to up to Venus’s climate (or something less extreme but still regrettable for humans).
Well, we already know what the planet is like when it is not locked into a crippling ice age. Ice-cap free is how the planet has spent the vast majority of its history. We have abundant records about that already.
Why is this evidence for “things are going to get better” rather than “things are going to get worse”?
That’s the whole “ice age: bad / normal planet: good” notion. I figure a planet locked into a crippling era of catastrophic glacial cycles is undesirable.
Point of fact: the negative singularity isn’t a superstimulus for evolved fear circuits: current best-guess would be that it would be a quick painless death in the distant future (30 years+ by most estimates, my guess 50 years+ if ever). It doesn’t at all look like how I would design a superstimulus for fear.
It typically has the feature that you, all your relatives, friends and loved-ones die—probably enough for most people to seriously want to avoid it. Michael Vasser talks about “eliminating everything that we value in the universe”.
Maybe better super-stimuli could be designed—but there are constraints. Those involved can’t just make up the apocalypse that they think would be the most scary one.
Despite that, some positively hell-like scenarios have been floated around recently. We will have to see if natural selection on these “hell” memes results in them becoming more prominent—or whether most people just find them too ridiculous to take seriously.
I think you’re trying to fit the facts to the hypothesis. Negatve singularity in my opinion is at least 50 years away. Many people I know will already be dead by then, including me if I die at the same point in life as the average of my family.
And as a matter of fact it is failing to actually get much in the way of donations, compared to donations to the church which is using hell as a superstimulus, or even compared to campaigns to help puppies (about $10bn in total as far as I can see).
And as a matter of fact it is failing to actually get much in the way of donations, compared to donations to the church which is using hell as a superstimulus...
It doesn’t work. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t even believe into a hell and they are gaining a lot of members each year and donations are on the rise. Donations are not even mandatory either, you are just asked to donate if possible. The only incentive they use is positive incentive.
People will do everything for their country if it asks them to give their life. Suicide bombers also do not blow themselves up because of negative incentive but because they promise their families help and money. Also some believe that they will enter paradise. Negative incentive makes many people reluctant. There is much less crime in the EU than in the U.S. and they got death penalty. Here you get out of jail after max. ~20 years and there’s almost no violence in jails either.
Negatve singularity in my opinion is at least 50 years away.
I take it that you would place (t(positive singularity) | positive singularity) a significant distance further still?
And as a matter of fact it is failing to actually get much in the way of donations, compared to donations to the church which is using hell as a superstimulus, or even compared to campaigns to help puppies (about $10bn in total as far as I can see).
I’m going to say 75 years for that. But really, this is becoming very much total guesswork.
I do know that AGI -ve singularity won’t happen in the next 2 decades and I think one can bet that it won’t happen after that for another few decades either.
I’m going to say 75 years for that. But really, this is becoming very much total guesswork.
It’s still interesting to hear your thoughts. My hunch is that the difficulty of the -ve --> +ve step is much harder than the ‘singularity’ step so I would expect the time estimates to reflect that somewhat. But there are all sorts of complications there and my guesswork is even more guess-like than yours!
I do know that AGI -ve singularity won’t happen in the next 2 decades and I think one can bet that it won’t happen after that for another few decades either.
If you find anyone who is willing to take you up on a bet of that form given any time estimate and any odds then please introduce them to me! ;)
Many plausible ways to S^+ involve something odd or unexpected happening. WBE might make computational political structures, i.e. political structures based inside a computer full of WBEs. This might change the way humans cooperate.
Suffices to say that FAI doesn’t have to come via the expected route of someone inventing AGI and then waiting until they invent “friendliness theory” for it.
Church and cute puppies are likely worse causes, yes. I listed animal charities in my “Bad causes” video.
I don’t have their budget at my fingertips—but SIAI has raked in around 200,000 dollars a year for the last few years. Not enormous—but not trivial. Anyway, my concern is not really with the cash, but with the memes. This is a field adjacent to one I am interested in: machine intelligence. I am sure there will be a festival of fear-mongering marketing in this area as time passes, with each organisation trying to convince consumers that its products will be safer than those of its rivals.
“3-laws-safe” slogans will be printed. I note that Google’s recent chrome ad was full of data destruction images—and ended with the slogan “be safe”.
Some of this is potentially good. However, some of it isn’t—and is more reminiscent of the Daisy ad.
To me, $200,000 for a charity seems to be pretty much the smallest possible amount of money. Can you find any charitable causes that recieve less than this?
Basically, you are saying that SIAI DOOM fearmongering is a trick to make money. But really, it fails to satisfy several important criteria:
it is shit at actually making money. I bet you that there are “save the earthworm” charities that make more money.
it is not actually frightening. I am not frightened; quick painless death in 50 years? boo-hoo. Whatever.
it is not optimized for believability. In fact it is almost optimized for anti-believability, “rapture of the nerds”, much public ridicule, etc.
Alas, I have to reject your summary of my position. The situation as I see it:
DOOM-based organisations are likely to form with a frequency which depends on the extent to which the world is percieved to be at risk;
They are likely to form from those with the highest estimates of p(DOOM);
Once they exist, they are likely to try and grow, much like all organisations tend to do—wanting attention, time, money and other available resources;
Since they are funded in proportion to the percived value of p(DOOM), such organisations will naturally promote the notion that p(DOOM) is a large value.
This is all fine. I accept that DOOM-based organisations will exist, will loudly proclaim the coming apocalypse, and will find supporters to help them propagate their DOOM message. They may be ineffectual, cause despair and depression or help save the world—depending on their competence—and on to what extent their paranoia turns out to be justified.
However, such organisations seem likely to be very bad sources of information for anyone interested in the actual value of p(DOOM). They have obvious vested interests.
Agreed that x-risk orgs are a biased source of info on P(risk) due to self-selection bias. Of course you have to look at other sources of info, you have to take the outside view on these questions, etc.
Personally I think that we are so ignorant and irrational as a species (humanity) and as a culture that there’s simply no way to get a good, stable probability estimate for big important questions like this, much less to act rationally on the info.
But I think your pooh-pooh’ing such infantile and amateurish efforts as there is silly when the reasoning is entirely bogus.
Why don’t you refocus your criticism on the more legitimate weakness of existential risks: that is highly likely to be irrelevant (either futile or unnecessary), since by its own prediction, the relevant risks are highly complex and hard to mitigate against, and people in general are highly unlikely to either understand the issues or cooperate on them.
The most likely route to survival would seem to be that the entire model of the future propounded here is wrong. But in that case we move into the domain of irrelevance.
I think your pooh-pooh’ing such infantile and amateurish efforts as there is silly when the reasoning is entirely bogus.
I hope I am not “pooh-pooh’ing”. There do seem to be a number of points on which I disagree. I feel a bit as though I am up against a propaganda machine—or a reality distortion field. Part of my response is to point out that the other side of the argument has vested interests in promoting a particular world view—and so its views on the topic should be taken with multiple pinches of salt.
Why don’t you refocus your criticism on the more legitimate weakness of existential risks: that is highly likely to be irrelevant (either futile or unnecessary), since by its own prediction, the relevant risks are highly complex and hard to mitigate against, and people in general are highly unlikely to either understand the issues or cooperate on them.
I am not sure I understand fully—but I think the short answer is because I don’t agree with that. What risks there are, we can collectively do things about. I appreciate that it isn’t easy to know what to do, and am generally supportive and sympathetic towards efforts to figure that out.
Probably my top recommendation on that front so far is corporate reputation systems. We have these huge, powerful creatures lumbering around on the planet, and governments provide little infrastructure for tracking their bad deeds. Reviews and complaints scattered around the internet is just not good enough. If there’s much chance of corporation-originated intelligent machines, reputation-induced cooperation would help encourage these entities to be good and do good.
If our idea of an ethical corporation is one whose motto is “don’t be evil”, then that seems to be a pretty low standard. We surely want our corporations to aim higher than that.
One important aspect of corporate reputation is what it’s like to work there—and this is important on the department level and smaller level.
Abusive work environments cause a tremendous amount of misery, and there’s no reliable method of finding out whether a job is likely to land you in one.
This problem is made worse if leaving a job makes an potential employee seem less reliable.
Another aspect of a universal reputation system is that there needs to be some method of updating and verification. Credit agencies are especially notable for being sloppy.
What risks there are, we can collectively do things about.
Not necessarily. The risk might be virtually unstoppable, like a huge oil tanker compared to the force of a single person swimming in the water trying to slow it down.
What I mean is that, in my opinion, most of the risks under discussion are not like that. Large meteorites are a bit like that—but they are not very likely to hit us soon.
The usual Singularity Institute line is that it is worth trying too, I believe. As to what p(success) is, the first thing to do would be to make sure that the parties involved mean the same thing by “success”. Otherwise, comparing values would be rather pointless.
This all reminds me of the dirac delta function. Its width is infinitesimal but its area is 1. Sure, it’s worth trying in the “Dirac Delta Function” sense.
I think your disapproval of animal charities is based on circular logic, or at least an unproven premise.
You seem to be saying that animal causes are unworthy recipients of human effort because animals aren’t humans. However, people care about animals because of the emotional effects of animals. They care about people because of the emotional effects of people. I don’t think it’s proven that people only like animals because the animals are super-stimuli.
I could be mistaken, but I think that a more abstract utilitarian approach grounds out in some sort of increased enjoyment of life, or else it’s an effort to assume a universe-eye’s view of what’s ultimately valuable. I’m inclined to trust the former more.
What’s your line of argument for supporting charities that help people?
I usually value humans much more than I value animals. Given a choice between saving a human or N non-human animals, N would normally have to be very large before I would even think twice about it. Similar values are enshrined in law in most countries.
Similar values are enshrined in law in most countries.
To the extent that the law accurately represents the values of the people it governs charities are not necessary. Vales enshrined in law are by necessity irrelevant.
(Noting by way of pre-emption that I do not require that laws should fully represent the values of the people.)
I do not agree. If the law says that killing a human is much worse than killing a dog, that is probably a reflection of the views of citizens on the topic.
If the law says that killing a human is much worse than killing a dog, that is probably a reflection of the views of citizens on the topic.
And yet this is not contrary to my point. Charity operates, only needs to operate, on areas that laws do not already create a solution for. If there was a law specifying that dying kids get trips to Disneyland and visits by popstars then there wouldn’t be a “Make A Wish Foundation”.
You said the law was “irrelevant”—but there’s a sense in which we can see consensus human values about animals by looking at what the law dictates as punishment for their maltreatment. That is what I was talking about. It seems to me that the law has something to say about the issue of the value of animals relative to humans.
For the most part, animals are given relatively few rights under the law. There are exceptions for some rare ones. Animals are routinely massacred in huge numbers by humans—including some smart mammals like pigs and dolphins. That is a broad reflection how relatively-valuable humans are considered to be.
If the law says that killing a human is much worse than killing a dog, that is probably a reflection of the views of citizens on the topic.
And once it’s enshrined in law, it no longer matters whether citizens think killing a human is worse or better than killing a dog. I think that is what wedrifid was noting.
You seem to be saying that animal causes are unworthy recipients of human effort because animals aren’t humans. However, people care about animals because of the emotional effects of animals. They care about people because of the emotional effects of people. I don’t think it’s proven that people only like animals because the animals are super-stimuli.
You may be interested in Alan Dawrst’s essays on animal suffering and animal suffering prevention.
I believe the numbers are actually higher than $200,000. SIAI’s 2008 budget was about $500,000. 2006 was about $400,000 and 2007 was about $300,000 (as listed further in the linked thread). I haven’t researched to see if gross revenue numbers or revenue from donations are available. Curiously, Guidestar does not seem to have 2009 numbers for SIAI, or at least I couldn’t find those numbers; I just e-mailed a couple people at SIAI asking about that.
That being said, even $500,000, while not trivial, seems to me a pretty small budget.
No, this is the “collective-action-problem”—where the end of the world arrives—despite a select band of decidedly amateurish messiahs arriving and failing to accomplish anything significant.
You are looking at those amateurs now.
The END OF THE WORLD is probably the most frequently-repeated failed prediction of all time. Humans are doing spectacularly well—and the world is showing many signs of material and moral progress—all of which makes the apocalypse unlikely.
The reason for the interest here seems obvious—the Singularity Institute’s funding is derived largely from donors who think it can help to SAVE THE WORLD. The world must first be at risk to enable heroic Messiahs to rescue everyone.
The most frequently-cited projected cause of the apocalypse: an engineering screw-up. Supposedly, future engineers are going to be so incompetent that they accidentally destroy the whole world. The main idea—as far as I can tell—is that a bug is going to destroy civilisation.
Also—as far as I can tell—this isn’t the conclusion of analysis performed on previous engineering failures—or on the effects of previous bugs—but rather is wild extrapolation and guesswork.
Of course it is true that there may be a disaster, and END OF THE WORLD might arrive. However there is no credible evidence that this is likely to be a probable outcome. Instead, what we have appears to be mostly a bunch of fear mongering used for fundraising aimed at fighting the threat. That gets us into the whole area of the use and effects of fear mongering.
Fearmongering is a common means of psychological manipulation, used frequently by advertisers and marketers to produce irrational behaviour in their victims.
It has been particularly widely used in the IT industry—mainly in the form of fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Evidently, prolonged and widespread use is likely to help to produce a culture of fear. The long-term effects of that are not terribly clear—but it seems to be dubious territory.
I would council those using fear mongering for fund-raising purposes to be especially cautious of the harm this might do. It seems like a potentially dangerous form of meme warfare. Fear targets circuits in the human brain that evolved in an earlier, more dangerous era—where death was much more likely—so humans have an evolved vulnerability in the area. The modern super-stimulus of the END OF THE WORLD overloads those vulnerable circuits.
Maybe this is an effective way of extracting money from people—but also, maybe it is an unpleasant and unethical one. So, wannabe heroic Messiahs, please: take care. Starting out by screwing over your friends and associates by messing up their heads with a hostile and virulent meme complex may not be the greatest way to start out.
Do you also think that global warming is a hoax, that nuclear weapons were never really that dangerous, and that the whole concept of existential risks is basically a self-serving delusion?
Also, why are the folks that you disagree with the only ones that get to be described with all-caps narrative tropes? Aren’t you THE LONE SANE MAN who’s MAKING A DESPERATE EFFORT to EXPOSE THE TRUTH about FALSE MESSIAHS and the LIES OF CORRUPT LEADERS and SHOW THE WAY to their HORDES OF MINDLESS FOLLOWERS to AN ENLIGHTENED FUTURE? Can’t you describe anything with all-caps narrative tropes if you want?
Not rhethorical questions, I’d actually like to read your answers.
I laughed aloud upon reading this comment; thanks for lifting my mood.
Tim on global warming: http://timtyler.org/end_the_ice_age/
1-line summary—I am not too worried about that either.
Global warming is far more the subject of irrational fear-mongering then machine intelligence is.
It’s hard to judge how at risk the world was from nuclear weapons during the cold war. I don’t have privileged information about that. After Japan, we have not had nuclear weapons used in anger or war. That doesn’t give much in the way of actual statistics to go on. Whatever estimate is best, confidence intervals would have to be wide. Perhaps ask an expert on the history of the era this question.
The END OF THE WORLD is not necessarily an idea that benefits those who embrace it. If you consider the stereotypical END OF THE WORLD plackard carrier, they are probably not benefitting very much personally. The benefit associated with the behaviour accrues mostly to the END OF THE WORLD meme itself. However, obviously, there are some people who benefit. 2012 - and all that.
The probabality of the END OF THE WORLD soon—if it is spelled out exactly what is meant by that—is a real number which could be scientifically investigated. However whether the usual fundraising and marketing campaigns around the subject illuminate that subject more than they systematically distort it seems debatable.
This is a pretty optimistic way of looking at it, but unfortunately it’s quite unfounded. Current scientific consensus is that we’ve already released more than enough greenhouse gases to avert the next glacial period. Melting the ice sheets and thus ending the ice age entirely is an extremely bad idea if we do it too quickly for global ecosystems to adapt.
We don’t even really understand what causes the glacial cycles yet. This is an area where there are multiple competing hypotheses. I list four of these on my site. So, since we don’t have a proper understanding of the mechanics involved with much confidence yet, we don’t yet know what it would take to prevent them.
Here’s what Dyson says on the topic:
I do not believe this is contrary to any “scientific consensus” on the topic. Where is this supposed “scientific consensus” of which you speak?
Melting the ice caps is inevitably an extremely slow process—due to thermal inertia. It is also widely thought to be a runaway positive feedback cycle—and so probably a phenomenon that it would be difficult to control the rate of.
Melting of the icecaps is now confirmed to be a runaway positive feedback process pretty much beyond a shadow of a doubt. Within the last few years, melting has occurred at a rate that exceeded the upper limits of our projection margins.
Have you performed calculations on what it would take to avert the next glacial period on the basis of any of the competing models, or did you just assume that ice ages are bad, so preventing them is good and we should thus work hard to prevent reglaciation? There’s a reason why your site is the first and possibly only only result in online searches for support of preventing glaciation, and it’s not because you’re the only one to think of it
There are others who share my views—e.g.:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/14/freeman_dyson_climate_heresies/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2002/dec/05/comment.climatechange
http://www.stanford.edu/~moore/Boon_To_Man.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1563054/Global-warming-is-good-and-is-not-our-fault.html
Why is being difficult to control glacial melting a point in the favor of increasing greenhouse gas emissions?
It’s true that climate change models are limited in their ability to project climate change accurately, although they’re getting better all the time. Unfortunately, the evidence currently suggests that they’re undershooting actual warming rates even at their upper limits.
The pro-warming arguments on your site essentially boil down to “warm earth is better than cold earth, so we should try to warm the earth up.” Regardless of the relative merits of a warmer or colder planet though, rapid change of climate is a major burden on ecosystems. Flooding and forest fires are relatively trivial effects, it’s mass extinction events that are a real matter of concern.
That is hard to parse. You are asking why I think the rate of runaway positive feedback cycles is difficult to control? That is because that is often their nature.
You talk as though I am denying warming is happening. HUH?
Right. So, if you want a stable climate, you need to end the yo-yo glacial cycles—and end the ice age. A stable climate is one of the benefits of doing that.
I have a section entitled “Climate stablity” in my essay. To quote from it:
http://timtyler.org/end_the_ice_age/
I have no idea how you got that out of my question. It’s obvious why runaway positive feedback cycles would be hard to control, the question I asked is why this in any way supports global warming not being dangerous.
That was not something I meant to imply. My point is that you seem to have decided that it’s better for our earth to be warm than cold, and thus that it’s good to approach that state, but not done any investigation into whether what we’re doing is a safe means of accomplishing that end; rather you seem to have assumed that we cannot do too much.
Most of the species on earth today have survived through multiple glaciation periods. Our ecosystems have that plasticity, because those species that were not able to cope with the rapid cooling periods died out. Global warming could lead to a stable climate, but it’s also liable to cause massive extinction in the process as climate zones shift in ways that they haven’t in millions of years far at a rate outside the tolerances of many ecosystems.
When it comes to global climate, there are really no “better” or “worse” states. Species adapt to the way things are. Cretaceous organisms are adapted to Cretaceous climates, Cenozoic organisms are adapted to Cenozoic climates, and either would have problems dealing with the other’s climate. Humans more often suffer problems from being too cold than too hot, but we’ve scarcely had time to evolve since we left near-equatorial climates. We’re adapted to be comfortable in hotter climates than the ones in which most people live today, but the species we rely on are mostly adapted to deal with the climates they’re actually in, with cooling periods lying within the tolerances of ecosystems that have been forced to deal with them recently in their evolutionary history.
There most certainly are—from the perspective of individuals, groups, or species.
From the perspective of species, “better,” is generally “maintain ecosystem status quo” and “worse” is everything else, except for cases where they come out ahead due to competitors suffering more heavily from the changes.
For most possible changes, a good rule of thumb is on average that half the agents affected do better than average, and half the agents affected do worse than average.
Fitness is relative—and that’s just what it means to consider an average value.
I go into all this in more detail on: http://timtyler.org/why_everything_is_controversial/
Roughly half of agents may have a better than average response to the change, but when rapid ecosystem changes occur, the average species response is negative. Particularly when accompanied by other forms of ecosystem pressure (which humanity is certainly exerting) rapid changes in climate tend to be accompanied by extinction spikes and decreases in species diversity.
I am not sure I am following. You are saying that such changes are bad—because they drive species towards extinction?
If you look at: http://alife.co.uk/essays/engineered_future/
...you will see that I expect the current mass extinction to intensify tremendously. However, I am not clear about how or why that would be bad. Surely it is a near-inevitable result of progress.
Rapid change drives species to extinction at a rate liable to endanger the function of ecosystems we rely on. Massive extinction events are in no way an inevitable consequence of improving the livelihoods of humans, although I’m not optimistic about our prospects of actually avoiding them.
Loss of a large percentage of the species on earth would hurt us, both in practical terms and as a matter of widely shared preference. As a species, we would almost certainly survive anthropogenic climate change even if it caused a runaway mass extinction event, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not an outcome that would be better to avoid if possible. Frankly, I don’t expect legislation or social agitation ever to have an adequate impact in halting anthropogenic global warming; unless we come up with some really clever hack, the battle is going to be lost, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be aware of what we stand to lose, and take notice if any viable means of avoiding it arises.
The argument suggesting that we should move away from the “cliff edge” of reglaciation is that it is dangerous hanging around there—and we really don’t want to fall off.
You seem to be saying that we should be cautious about moving too fast—in case we break something. Very well, I agree entirely—so: let us study the whole issue while moving as rapidly away from the danger zone as we feel is reasonably safe.
As I already noted, as best indicated by our calculations we have already overshot the goal of preventing the next glaciation period. Moving away from the danger zone at a reasonably safe pace would mean a major reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
We don’t know that. The science of this isn’t settled. The Milankovitch hypothesis of glaciation is more band-aid than theory. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles#Problems
CO2 apparently helps—but even that is uncertain. I would want to see a very convincing case that we are far enough from the edge for the risk of reglaciation to be over before advocating hanging around on the reglaciation cliff-edge. Short of eliminating the ice caps, it is difficult to imagine what would be convincing. Those ice caps are potentially major bad news for life on the planet—and some industrial CO2 is little reassurance—since that could relatively quickly become trapped inside plants and then buried.
The global ice caps have been around for millions of years now. Life on earth is adapted to climates that sustain them. They do not constitute “major bad news for life on this planet.” Reglaciation would pose problems for human civilization, but the onset of glaciation occurs at a much slower rate than the warming we’re already subjecting the planet to, and as such even if raising CO2 levels above what they’ve been since before the glaciations began in the Pleistocene were not enough to prevent the next round, it would still be a less pressing issue.
On a geological time scale, the amount of CO2 we’ve released could quickly be trapped in plants and buried, but with the state of human civilization as it is, how do you suppose that would actually happen quickly enough to be meaningful for the purposes of this discussion?
The ice age is a pretty major problem for the planet. Huge ice sheets obliterate most life on the northern hemisphere continents every 100 thousand years or so.
Re: reglaciation being slow—the last reglaciation looked slower than the last melt. The one before that happened at about the same speed. However, they both look like runaway positive feedback processes. Once the process has started it may not be easy to stop it.
Thinking of reglaciation as “not pressing” seems like a quick way to get reglaciated. Humans have got to intervene in the planet’s climate and warm it up in order to avoid this disaster. Leaving the climate alone would be a recipe for reglaciation. Pumping CO2 into the atmosphere may have saved us from disaster already, may save us from disaster in the future, may merely be a step in the right direction—or may be pretty ineffectual. However, it is important to realise that humans have got to take steps to warm the planet up—otherwise our whole civilisation may be quickly screwed.
We don’t know that industrial CO2 will protect us from reglaciation—since we don’t yet fully understand the latter process—though we do know that it devastates the planet like clockwork, and so has an astronomical origin.
The atmosphere has a CO2 decay function with an estimated half-life time of somwhere between 20-100 years. It wouldn’t vanish overnight—but a lot of it could go pretty quickly if civilisation problems resulted in a cessation of production.
If reglaciation starts, could it be stopped by sprinkling coal dust on some of the ice?
Hopefully—if we have enough of a civilisation at the time. Reglaciation seems likely to only really be a threat after a major disaster or setback—I figure. Otherwise, we can just adjust the climate controls. The chances of such a major setback may seem slender—but perhaps are not so small that we can afford to be blazee about the matter. What we don’t want is to fall down the stairs—and then be kicked in the teeth.
I discuss possible theraputic interventions on: http://timtyler.org/tundra_reclamation/
The main ones listed are planting northerly trees and black ground sheets.
We don’t know great many things, but what to do right now, we must decide right now, based on whatever we happen to know. (To address the reason for Desrtopa’s comment, if not any problem with your comment on this topic I’m completely ignorant about.)
If you are concerned about loss of potentially valuable information in the form of species extinction, global warming seems like total fluff. Look instead to habitat destruction and decimation, farming practices, and the resistribution of pathogens, predators and competitors by humans.
I do look at all these issues. I’ve spoken at conferences about how they receive too little attention relative to the danger they pose. That doesn’t mean that global warming does not stand to cause major harm, and going on the basis of the content of your site, you don’t seem to have invested adequate effort into researching the potential dangers, only the potential benefits.
Really? Don’t you hear enough about the supposed potential dangers from elsewhere already?!? I certainly do.
Be advised that I have pretty minimal effort to invest in discussing global warming these days. It is a big environmentalist scam. I list it at the top of my list of bad causes here.
The only reason worth discussing it—IMO—is if you are trying to direct all the resources that are being senselessly squandered on it towards better ends. You show little sign of doing that. Rather you appear to be caught up in promoting the lunacy. Global warming is mostly fluff. WAKE UP! Bigger fish are frying.
Frankly, reviewing the content of your site strongly leads me to suspect that your position is not credible; you consistently fail to accurately present what scientists consider to be the reasons for concern. When you claim that global warming is mostly fluff, I already have stronger reason than usual to suspect that you haven’t come by your conclusion from an unbiased review of the data.
I would care much less about bothering to convince you if you were not hosting a website for the purpose of convincing others to support furthering global warming, and despite the fact that there is now virtually no controversy that global warming exists, that we are causing it, and that the negatives will outweigh the positives, many people will take any excuse to dismiss it.
My site doesn’t go into the down-sides of global warming sufficiently for you?!? My main purpose is to explain the advantages. My site is part of the internet. You can obtain a huge mountain of information about the disadvantages by following the links. I do not expect readers to use my site as their sole source of information on the topic.
There is little controversy that global warming exists. There’s quite a bit more controversy about the role of humans—though my personal view is that humans are implicated. Relatively few people seem to have given much thought to the optimal temperature of the planet for living systems. Certainly very few of those involved in the “global warming movement”.
Anyway, global warming is good. It may have saved the planet from reglaciation already, or it may do so in the future, but without global warming, the planet and our civilisation would be screwed for a long time, with high probabality. The effects so far have been pretty miniscule, though. We have to carry on warming up the planet on basic safety grounds. The only issue I see is: “how fast”.
Your representations of the downsides (forest fires and floods) are actively misleading to readers. You create a false comparison by weighing all the most significant pros you can raise against a few of the more trivial cons, and encourage readers to make a judgment on that basis. Remember that people tend to actively seek out information sources that support their own views, and once they have adopted a view, seeing arguments for it falsified will not tend to revise their confidence downwards. Additionally, there is no shortage of people who will seize on any remotely credible sounding excuse to vindicate them from having to worry about global warming. Your site runs counter to the purpose of informing the public.
If global warming has already prevented reglaciation (which, as I have stated repeatedly, is most likely the case,) then why should we continue warming the planet? Unless we slow it down by orders of magnitude, the warming is occurring faster than the geological timescales on which ecosystems without technological protection are equipped to cope with it. Onset of glaciation is much slower than the progress of global warming. We are closer to the “cliff edge” of warming the world too fast than we are to reglaciation.
You’ve already stated that you consider global warming to be a storm in a teacup because you expect to see weather control before it becomes a serious issue, but even assuming that’s realistic, it gives us a larger time window to deal with reglaciation, should we turn out not to have already prevented it.
There is no shortage of people with smoke coming out of their ears about the issue either.
Look, I don’t just mention fires and floods. I mention sea-level rise, coral reef damage, desertification, heatstroke, and a number of other disadvantages. However, the disadvantages of GW are not the main focus of my article—you can find them on a million other web sites.
Repeating something doesn’t make it true. Show that the risk is so small that we need no longer concern ourselves with the huge catastrophe it would represent, and I swear, I will not mention it again. The current situation—as I understand it—is that our understanding of glaciation cycles is weak, our understanding of climate dynamics is weak, and we have little idea of what risk of reglaciation we face.
Of course, a warmer planet will still be healthier and better one—risk of glaciation or no—but then warming it up becomes less urgent.
There isn’t a “cliff-edge” of warming nearby—AFAICS. If you look at the temperature graph of the last million years, we are at a high point—and about to fall off a cliff into a glacial phase. The other direction we can only “fall” in by rearranging the continents, so there isn’t land over the south pole, and a land-locked region around the north pole. With ice-age continental positions, warming the planet is more like struggling uphill.
One thing we could try and do about that is to destroy the Isthmus of Panama. However, that needs further research—and might be a lot of work.
Indeed. So, I only have one page about the topic, and thousands of pages about other things. As I said, this area is only of interest as a bad cause, really.
It’s true that there are people with an unrealistic view of the dangers that global warming poses, and hyperbolic reactions may stand to hurt the cause of getting people to take it seriously, but your expectations of how seriously people ought to be taking it are artificially low.
You don’t just mention fires and floods, this is true, but you invite readers to make a comparison of the pros and cons without accurately presenting the cons. If you don’t want to mislead people, you should either be presenting them more accurately, or outright telling people “This site does not accurately present the cons of global warming, and you should not form an opinion on the basis of this site without doing further research at sites not dedicated to arguing against the threats it may pose.”
You can claim that your readers are free to research the issue elsewhere, but what you are doing is encouraging them to be informationally irresponsible.
As you have already noted earlier in this debate, ice sheet melting is a runaway positive feedback process. Once we have started the cycle, warming the planet is not an uphill struggle. If you look at the temperature graph of the last million years, you will not see that we are about to fall into another glaciation period, because the climate record of the last million years does not reflect the current situation. Even if greenhouse gas levels halted where they are now, temperature would continue to rise to meet the level they set. Our climate situation is more reflective of the Pliocene, which did not have cyclical glaciation periods.
I don’t have the articles on which I based the statement; I would need access to materials from courses I’ve already graduated. I may be able to get the data by contacting old professors, but there’s a significant hassle barrier, particularly since I’m arguing with someone who I do not have a strong expectation of being receptive to new information. If I do retrieve the information, do you commit to revising your site to reflect it, or removing the site as obsolete?
You what? You are starting to irritate me with your unsolicited editorial advice. Don’t like my web page—go and make your own!
Yes—from the point of full glaciation to little glaciation, ice core evidence suggests this process is a relatively unstoppable one-way slide. However, we have gone down that slide already in this glacial cycle. Trying to push the temperature upward from there hasn’t happened naturally for millions of years. That doesn’t look so easy—while we still have an ice-age continental configuration.
That sounds more like ignoring the temperature graph—and considering other information—to me.
You are kidding, presumably. The information needs to be compelling evidence that there isn’t a significant risk. Whether you retreive it or not seems likely to be a minor factor.
As I previously explained, a warmer planet would still be better, reglaciation risk or no. More of the planet would be habitable, fewer would die of pneumonia, there would be fewer deserts—and so on. However, the reglaciation risk does add urgency to the situation.
Given that people tend to seek out informational sources that flatter their biases, and your website is one of relatively few sources attempting to convince people that the data suggests global warming is positive, making another website has less utility to me than convincing you to revise yours.
It is considering the temperature graph insofar as it is relevant, while incorporating other information that is more reflective of our current situation. Would you try to extrapolate technological advances in the next twenty years based on the average rate of technological advancement over the last six hundred?
We had more or less the same continental configuration in the Pliocene, without cyclical glaciation periods.
Climate zones would shift, necessitating massive relocations which would cause major infrastructure damage. If we alter the earth’s temperature to make larger proportions of the land mass optimally biologically suitable to humans, we are going to do tremendous damage to species that are not adapted to near-equatorial habitation, and the impact on those other species is going to cause more problems than the relatively small drop in rates of pneumonia.
How compelling would you expect the evidence to be in order for you to be willing to revise the content of your site?
I am not sure what you are getting at there. Continental configuration is one factor. There may be other ones—including astronomical influences.
Why do you think it needs revising? A warmer planet looks remarkably positive—while keeping the planet in the freezer does not. I am not very impressed by the argument that change is painful, so we should keep the planet in an ice-age climate. Anyway, lots of evidence that global warming is undesirable—and that a half-frozen planet is good—would cause me to revise my position. However, I don’t seriously expect that to happen. That is a misguided lie—and a cause of much wasted energy and resources on the planet.
You are proposing an additional mechanism to a phenomenon that we can now model with considerable confidence without it
Since you do not seem prepared to acknowledge the more significant dangers of rapid climate change, while substantially overstating the benefits of altering the entire planet to suit the biological preferences of a species that adapted to life near the equator, I doubt you would be swayed by the amount of evidence that should be (and, I assert, is,) forthcoming if you are wrong. I expect that most of the other members here already regard your position with an appropriate degree of skepticism, so while it frustrates me to leave the matter at rest while I am convinced that your position is untenable, I don’t see any benefit in continuing to participate in this debate.
Continental configuration is not an unnecessary “additional mechanism”. It is a well known factor—see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age#Position_of_the_continents
Thanks for the link, though. It will be interesting to see whether their ideas stand up to peer review. If so, it seems like bad news—the authors seem to think the forces that lead to reglaciation are due to kick in around about now.
OK, then—bye!
Do you have a feeling for how much of the planet would be temperate if it were warmer?
Imagine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperateness with the bands further towards the poles.
And a bit further away from the equator.
The reason for the shift to the term “climate change” over “global warming” is that climate zones would shift. Places that were previously not arable would become so, but places that previously were arable would cease to be. It would require a significant restructuring of our civilization to chase around the climate zones with the appropriate infrastructure.
Looking at a map …the warming occurs quite a bit more near the poles—and over land masses. So, mostly Canada and Russia will get less frosty and more cosy. That seems good. It would be hard to imagine a more positive kind of climate change than one that makes our large and mostly barren northern wastelands more productive and habitable places.
Right—over tens of thousands of years, probably. The Antarctic is pretty thick.
While I can’t speak for everyone, I strongly suspect presenting things like this makes your case less persuasive.
A dead-pan presentation washes out my character—and means I have to be more wordy to get across my intended message. Who knows if a slap will work? Not me. Consider it an experiment.
All right. In that case: what would you consider meaningful experimental results, and what would they demonstrate?
This is my experiment—and, alas, you will have to leave me to it.
I would be wary of overloading your message. Consider this as a core:
“My heavily researched impression is that global warming, while somewhat concerning, is significantly less important than many other concerns.”
Now, we dress that up. Notice the impact the following change has on you:
“I, Vaniver, have heavily researched global warming, and my impression is that while it is somewhat concerning, it is significantly less important than many other concerns.”
Most of the time, putting yourself into the message reduces persuasiveness, and the places where it doesn’t probably don’t occur during abstract debates. (Persuading someone to share their lunch with you is an example of an appropriate time, but I wouldn’t call it an abstract debate.) So while some character is inevitable, I would generally seek to err on the side of suppressing it rather than expressing it.
Global warming seems a lot less dangerous than reglaciation.
Actually, I expect us to master climate control fairly quickly. That is another reason why global warming is a storm in a teacup. However, the future is uncertain. We might get unlucky—and be hit by a fair-sized meteorite. If that happens, reglaciation is about the last thing we would want for desert.
“Fairly quickly”? What if we don’t? Do you expect reglaciation to occur within the next 100 years, 200 years? If not we can wait until we have the knowledge to pull off climate control safely. (And if we do get hit by an asteroid, the last thing we probably want is runaway climate change started when we didn’t know what we were doing either.)
If things go according to plan, we get climate control—and then need to worry little about either warming or reglaciation. The problem is things not going according to plan.
Indeed. The “runaway climate change” we are scheduled for is reglaciation. The history of the planet is very clear on this topic. That is exactly what we don’t want. A disaster followed by glaciers descending over the northern continents could make a mess of civilisation for quite a while. Warming, by contrast doesn’t represent a significant threat—living systems including humans thrive in warm conditions.
Living systems including humans also thrive in cold conditions. Most species on the planet today have persisted through multiple glaciation periods, but not through pre-Pleistocene level warmth or rapid warming events.
Plus, the history of the Pleistocene, in which our record of glaciation exists, contains no events of greenhouse gas release and warming comparable to the one we’re in now, this is not business as usual on the track to reglaciation. Claiming that the history of the planet is very clear that we’re headed for reglaciation is flat out misleading. Last time the world had CO2 levels as high as they are now, it wasn’t going through cyclical glaciation.
Most species on the planet are less than 2.5 million years old?!?
I checked and found: “The fossil record suggests an average species lifespan of about five million years” and “Average species lifespan in fossil record: 4 million years.” (search for sources).
So, I figure your claim is probably factually incorrect. However, isn’t it a rather meaningless statistic anyway? It depends on how often lineages speciate. That actually says very little about how long it takes to adapt to an environment.
The average species age is necessarily lower than the average species duration.
Additionally, the fossil record measures species in paleontological terms, a paleontological “species” is not a species in biological terms, but a group which cannot be distinguished from each other by fossilized remains. Paleontological species duration sets the upper bound on biological species duration; in practice, biological species duration is shorter.
Species originating more than 2.5 million years ago which were not capable of enduring glaciation periods would have died out when they occurred. The origin window for species without adaptations to cope is the last ten thousand years. Any species with a Pleistocene origin or earlier has persisted through glaciation periods.
Allow me to try: There are positive feedback cycles which appear to be going in runaway mode. Why is this evidence for “things are going to get better” rather than “things are going to get worse”?
Your argument as a whole- “we need to get above this variability regime into a stable regime”- answers why the runaway positive feedback loop would be desirable, but does not convincingly establish (the part I’ve read, at least, you may do this elsewhere) that the part above the current variability is actually a stable attractor, instead of us shooting to up to Venus’s climate (or something less extreme but still regrettable for humans).
Well, we already know what the planet is like when it is not locked into a crippling ice age. Ice-cap free is how the planet has spent the vast majority of its history. We have abundant records about that already.
That’s the whole “ice age: bad / normal planet: good” notion. I figure a planet locked into a crippling era of catastrophic glacial cycles is undesirable.
So the real problem here is weakness of arguments, since they lack explanatory power by being able to “explain” too much.
Point of fact: the negative singularity isn’t a superstimulus for evolved fear circuits: current best-guess would be that it would be a quick painless death in the distant future (30 years+ by most estimates, my guess 50 years+ if ever). It doesn’t at all look like how I would design a superstimulus for fear.
It typically has the feature that you, all your relatives, friends and loved-ones die—probably enough for most people to seriously want to avoid it. Michael Vasser talks about “eliminating everything that we value in the universe”.
Maybe better super-stimuli could be designed—but there are constraints. Those involved can’t just make up the apocalypse that they think would be the most scary one.
Despite that, some positively hell-like scenarios have been floated around recently. We will have to see if natural selection on these “hell” memes results in them becoming more prominent—or whether most people just find them too ridiculous to take seriously.
Yes, you can only look at them through a camera lens, as a reflection in a pool or possibly through a ghost! ;)
I think you’re trying to fit the facts to the hypothesis. Negatve singularity in my opinion is at least 50 years away. Many people I know will already be dead by then, including me if I die at the same point in life as the average of my family.
And as a matter of fact it is failing to actually get much in the way of donations, compared to donations to the church which is using hell as a superstimulus, or even compared to campaigns to help puppies (about $10bn in total as far as I can see).
It is also not well-optimized to be believable.
It doesn’t work. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t even believe into a hell and they are gaining a lot of members each year and donations are on the rise. Donations are not even mandatory either, you are just asked to donate if possible. The only incentive they use is positive incentive.
People will do everything for their country if it asks them to give their life. Suicide bombers also do not blow themselves up because of negative incentive but because they promise their families help and money. Also some believe that they will enter paradise. Negative incentive makes many people reluctant. There is much less crime in the EU than in the U.S. and they got death penalty. Here you get out of jail after max. ~20 years and there’s almost no violence in jails either.
I take it that you would place (t(positive singularity) | positive singularity) a significant distance further still?
This got a wry smile out of me. :)
(t(positive singularity) | positive singularity)
I’m going to say 75 years for that. But really, this is becoming very much total guesswork.
I do know that AGI -ve singularity won’t happen in the next 2 decades and I think one can bet that it won’t happen after that for another few decades either.
It’s still interesting to hear your thoughts. My hunch is that the difficulty of the -ve --> +ve step is much harder than the ‘singularity’ step so I would expect the time estimates to reflect that somewhat. But there are all sorts of complications there and my guesswork is even more guess-like than yours!
If you find anyone who is willing to take you up on a bet of that form given any time estimate and any odds then please introduce them to me! ;)
Many plausible ways to S^+ involve something odd or unexpected happening. WBE might make computational political structures, i.e. political structures based inside a computer full of WBEs. This might change the way humans cooperate.
Suffices to say that FAI doesn’t have to come via the expected route of someone inventing AGI and then waiting until they invent “friendliness theory” for it.
Church and cute puppies are likely worse causes, yes. I listed animal charities in my “Bad causes” video.
I don’t have their budget at my fingertips—but SIAI has raked in around 200,000 dollars a year for the last few years. Not enormous—but not trivial. Anyway, my concern is not really with the cash, but with the memes. This is a field adjacent to one I am interested in: machine intelligence. I am sure there will be a festival of fear-mongering marketing in this area as time passes, with each organisation trying to convince consumers that its products will be safer than those of its rivals. “3-laws-safe” slogans will be printed. I note that Google’s recent chrome ad was full of data destruction images—and ended with the slogan “be safe”.
Some of this is potentially good. However, some of it isn’t—and is more reminiscent of the Daisy ad.
To me, $200,000 for a charity seems to be pretty much the smallest possible amount of money. Can you find any charitable causes that recieve less than this?
Basically, you are saying that SIAI DOOM fearmongering is a trick to make money. But really, it fails to satisfy several important criteria:
it is shit at actually making money. I bet you that there are “save the earthworm” charities that make more money.
it is not actually frightening. I am not frightened; quick painless death in 50 years? boo-hoo. Whatever.
it is not optimized for believability. In fact it is almost optimized for anti-believability, “rapture of the nerds”, much public ridicule, etc.
A moment’s googling finds this:
http://www.buglife.org.uk/Resources/Buglife/Buglife%20Annual%20Report%20-%20web.pdf
($863 444)
I leave it to readers to judge whether Tim is flogging a dead horse here.
Not the sort of thing that could, you know, give you nightmares?
The sort of thing that could give you nightmares is more like the stuff that is banned. This is different than the mere “existential risk” message.
Alas, I have to reject your summary of my position. The situation as I see it:
DOOM-based organisations are likely to form with a frequency which depends on the extent to which the world is percieved to be at risk;
They are likely to form from those with the highest estimates of p(DOOM);
Once they exist, they are likely to try and grow, much like all organisations tend to do—wanting attention, time, money and other available resources;
Since they are funded in proportion to the percived value of p(DOOM), such organisations will naturally promote the notion that p(DOOM) is a large value.
This is all fine. I accept that DOOM-based organisations will exist, will loudly proclaim the coming apocalypse, and will find supporters to help them propagate their DOOM message. They may be ineffectual, cause despair and depression or help save the world—depending on their competence—and on to what extent their paranoia turns out to be justified.
However, such organisations seem likely to be very bad sources of information for anyone interested in the actual value of p(DOOM). They have obvious vested interests.
Agreed that x-risk orgs are a biased source of info on P(risk) due to self-selection bias. Of course you have to look at other sources of info, you have to take the outside view on these questions, etc.
Personally I think that we are so ignorant and irrational as a species (humanity) and as a culture that there’s simply no way to get a good, stable probability estimate for big important questions like this, much less to act rationally on the info.
But I think your pooh-pooh’ing such infantile and amateurish efforts as there is silly when the reasoning is entirely bogus.
Why don’t you refocus your criticism on the more legitimate weakness of existential risks: that is highly likely to be irrelevant (either futile or unnecessary), since by its own prediction, the relevant risks are highly complex and hard to mitigate against, and people in general are highly unlikely to either understand the issues or cooperate on them.
The most likely route to survival would seem to be that the entire model of the future propounded here is wrong. But in that case we move into the domain of irrelevance.
I hope I am not “pooh-pooh’ing”. There do seem to be a number of points on which I disagree. I feel a bit as though I am up against a propaganda machine—or a reality distortion field. Part of my response is to point out that the other side of the argument has vested interests in promoting a particular world view—and so its views on the topic should be taken with multiple pinches of salt.
I am not sure I understand fully—but I think the short answer is because I don’t agree with that. What risks there are, we can collectively do things about. I appreciate that it isn’t easy to know what to do, and am generally supportive and sympathetic towards efforts to figure that out.
Probably my top recommendation on that front so far is corporate reputation systems. We have these huge, powerful creatures lumbering around on the planet, and governments provide little infrastructure for tracking their bad deeds. Reviews and complaints scattered around the internet is just not good enough. If there’s much chance of corporation-originated intelligent machines, reputation-induced cooperation would help encourage these entities to be good and do good.
If our idea of an ethical corporation is one whose motto is “don’t be evil”, then that seems to be a pretty low standard. We surely want our corporations to aim higher than that.
One important aspect of corporate reputation is what it’s like to work there—and this is important on the department level and smaller level.
Abusive work environments cause a tremendous amount of misery, and there’s no reliable method of finding out whether a job is likely to land you in one.
This problem is made worse if leaving a job makes an potential employee seem less reliable.
Another aspect of a universal reputation system is that there needs to be some method of updating and verification. Credit agencies are especially notable for being sloppy.
Not necessarily. The risk might be virtually unstoppable, like a huge oil tanker compared to the force of a single person swimming in the water trying to slow it down.
What I mean is that, in my opinion, most of the risks under discussion are not like that. Large meteorites are a bit like that—but they are not very likely to hit us soon.
Ok, I see. Well, that’s just a big factual disagreement then.
The usual Singularity Institute line is that it is worth trying too, I believe. As to what p(success) is, the first thing to do would be to make sure that the parties involved mean the same thing by “success”. Otherwise, comparing values would be rather pointless.
This all reminds me of the dirac delta function. Its width is infinitesimal but its area is 1. Sure, it’s worth trying in the “Dirac Delta Function” sense.
Agreed that there are vested interests potentially biasing reasoning.
I think your disapproval of animal charities is based on circular logic, or at least an unproven premise.
You seem to be saying that animal causes are unworthy recipients of human effort because animals aren’t humans. However, people care about animals because of the emotional effects of animals. They care about people because of the emotional effects of people. I don’t think it’s proven that people only like animals because the animals are super-stimuli.
I could be mistaken, but I think that a more abstract utilitarian approach grounds out in some sort of increased enjoyment of life, or else it’s an effort to assume a universe-eye’s view of what’s ultimately valuable. I’m inclined to trust the former more.
What’s your line of argument for supporting charities that help people?
I usually value humans much more than I value animals. Given a choice between saving a human or N non-human animals, N would normally have to be very large before I would even think twice about it. Similar values are enshrined in law in most countries.
To the extent that the law accurately represents the values of the people it governs charities are not necessary. Vales enshrined in law are by necessity irrelevant.
(Noting by way of pre-emption that I do not require that laws should fully represent the values of the people.)
I do not agree. If the law says that killing a human is much worse than killing a dog, that is probably a reflection of the views of citizens on the topic.
And yet this is not contrary to my point. Charity operates, only needs to operate, on areas that laws do not already create a solution for. If there was a law specifying that dying kids get trips to Disneyland and visits by popstars then there wouldn’t be a “Make A Wish Foundation”.
You said the law was “irrelevant”—but there’s a sense in which we can see consensus human values about animals by looking at what the law dictates as punishment for their maltreatment. That is what I was talking about. It seems to me that the law has something to say about the issue of the value of animals relative to humans.
For the most part, animals are given relatively few rights under the law. There are exceptions for some rare ones. Animals are routinely massacred in huge numbers by humans—including some smart mammals like pigs and dolphins. That is a broad reflection how relatively-valuable humans are considered to be.
And once it’s enshrined in law, it no longer matters whether citizens think killing a human is worse or better than killing a dog. I think that is what wedrifid was noting.
You may be interested in Alan Dawrst’s essays on animal suffering and animal suffering prevention.
I believe the numbers are actually higher than $200,000. SIAI’s 2008 budget was about $500,000. 2006 was about $400,000 and 2007 was about $300,000 (as listed further in the linked thread). I haven’t researched to see if gross revenue numbers or revenue from donations are available. Curiously, Guidestar does not seem to have 2009 numbers for SIAI, or at least I couldn’t find those numbers; I just e-mailed a couple people at SIAI asking about that.
That being said, even $500,000, while not trivial, seems to me a pretty small budget.
Sorry, yes, my bad. $200,000 is what they spent on their own salaries.