Claiming Trump as the most significant current existential risk, and prioritizing political activism over all other charity work, are the two that I was most offended by. These were usually not backed by any rigorous analysis or explanation, just the assumption that the reader conforms to the beliefs.
But I think ultimately, it was the frequency and amount of emotion and hostility that was shown that made my mind image these people as mind-killed.
Thanks. I agree that those examples are problematic. Do you have the link for Trump being the most significant current existential risk? I think he’s a major risk, but relatively less important than many other things.
The biggest risk from him is starting a major war and/or using nuclear weapons, but as I recall from speaking with Vaniver, not everyone thinks he’s a higher risk than Clinton would be in that area.
Outside of Trump’s family the person who knows Trump best said “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization”, as a significant X-risk makes sense.
In contrast to an X-risk like UFAI, it was a lot of tractable and thus there were rational arguments to exert more resources on it.
The political aspect can as well mean that you misjudge the risk posed.
A statement made by a lifelong liberal writer, who was offended by Trump’s lifestyle. Trump has short attention span, and doesn’t read books—therefore he will use nukes!
Predicting one person’s proclivity to cause nuclear war is an incredibly complicated prediction problem, and one flimsy and tribally motivated statement has almost zero predictive power. If I see a reasonable analysis, which considers both candidates and what kind of scenarios could actually lead to nuclear war; I’m ready to change my beliefs.
Why do you call a statement made in a long article and based on spending over a year studying Trump while listing in to his calls ‘flimsy’?
On his facebook EY describes having taken part in a scenario planning exercise that ended up with nuclear war simply because the players miscalculated their moves.
Having a short attention span and not listening to experts who study the possible moves leads to miscalculated moves.
Nuclear war happens when other wars escalate because no side is willing to make move that look like a local loss or concessions to the other side.
The US basically has undeclared wars with most countries including Nato countries like Germany that are under cyber attacks by the US (the US considers cyber attacks to be acts of war). At the same time the NSA doesn’t use their powers to the maximum.
When the Obama administration or Clinton administration runs cyber attacks against German targets there’s less pressure on German political leaders to retaliate then when a Trump administration does so.
You also forget the lying. Lying to his ghostwriter about the size of his business deal is illustrative. Trump is going to lie to various people inside his administration. That’s going to make it a lot harder for that administration to make effective moves.
Clinton on the other hand listens to experts when making geopolitical calcuations and that matters.
Trump already said that he’s okay with Saudi Arabia getting nukes. That move alone might produce nuclear war but it would be a mistake to focus at the moment on any specific scenario, because the problem is the decision making.
Claiming Trump as the most significant current existential risk, and prioritizing political activism over all other charity work, are the two that I was most offended by. These were usually not backed by any rigorous analysis or explanation, just the assumption that the reader conforms to the beliefs.
But I think ultimately, it was the frequency and amount of emotion and hostility that was shown that made my mind image these people as mind-killed.
Thanks. I agree that those examples are problematic. Do you have the link for Trump being the most significant current existential risk? I think he’s a major risk, but relatively less important than many other things.
The biggest risk from him is starting a major war and/or using nuclear weapons, but as I recall from speaking with Vaniver, not everyone thinks he’s a higher risk than Clinton would be in that area.
Outside of Trump’s family the person who knows Trump best said “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization”, as a significant X-risk makes sense.
In contrast to an X-risk like UFAI, it was a lot of tractable and thus there were rational arguments to exert more resources on it.
The political aspect can as well mean that you misjudge the risk posed.
A statement made by a lifelong liberal writer, who was offended by Trump’s lifestyle. Trump has short attention span, and doesn’t read books—therefore he will use nukes!
Predicting one person’s proclivity to cause nuclear war is an incredibly complicated prediction problem, and one flimsy and tribally motivated statement has almost zero predictive power. If I see a reasonable analysis, which considers both candidates and what kind of scenarios could actually lead to nuclear war; I’m ready to change my beliefs.
Why do you call a statement made in a long article and based on spending over a year studying Trump while listing in to his calls ‘flimsy’?
On his facebook EY describes having taken part in a scenario planning exercise that ended up with nuclear war simply because the players miscalculated their moves. Having a short attention span and not listening to experts who study the possible moves leads to miscalculated moves. Nuclear war happens when other wars escalate because no side is willing to make move that look like a local loss or concessions to the other side.
The US basically has undeclared wars with most countries including Nato countries like Germany that are under cyber attacks by the US (the US considers cyber attacks to be acts of war). At the same time the NSA doesn’t use their powers to the maximum.
When the Obama administration or Clinton administration runs cyber attacks against German targets there’s less pressure on German political leaders to retaliate then when a Trump administration does so.
You also forget the lying. Lying to his ghostwriter about the size of his business deal is illustrative. Trump is going to lie to various people inside his administration. That’s going to make it a lot harder for that administration to make effective moves.
Clinton on the other hand listens to experts when making geopolitical calcuations and that matters.
Trump already said that he’s okay with Saudi Arabia getting nukes. That move alone might produce nuclear war but it would be a mistake to focus at the moment on any specific scenario, because the problem is the decision making.