And re: Pinker: If you had a bit more experience with trends on a necessarily very noisy data—you would realize that such trends are virtually irrelevant with regards to the probability of encountering some extremes (especially when those are not even that extreme—preceding the cold war, you have Hitler). It’s the exact same mistake committed by particularly low brow republicans when they go on about “ha ha, global warming” during a cold spell—because they think that a trend in noisy data has huge impact on individual data points.
edit: furthermore, Pinker’s data is on violence per capita—the total violence increased, it’s just that the violence seems to scale sub-linearly with population. Population is growing, as well as the number of states with nuclear weapons.
By total violence I mean the number of people dying (due to wars and other violence). The rate of wars, given the huge variation in the war size, is not a very useful metric.
I frankly don’t see how, having on one hand trends by Pinker, and on the other hand, adoption of modern technologies in the regions far behind on any such trends, and developments of new technologies, you have the trends by Pinker outweight that.
On the general change, for 2100, we’re speaking of 86 years. That’s the time span in which Russian Empire of 1900 transformed to Soviet Union of 1986 , complete with two world wars and invention of nuclear weapons followed by thermonuclear weapons.
That’s a time span more than long enough for it to be far more likely than not that entirely unpredictable technological advancements will be made in multitude of fields that have impact on the ease and cost of manufacturing of nuclear weapons. Enrichment is incredibly inefficient, with a huge room for improvement. Go read the wikipedia page on enrichment, then assume a much larger number of methods which could be improved. Conditional on continued progress, of course.
The political changes that happen in that sort of timespan are even less predictable.
Ultimately, what you have is that the estimates should regress towards ignorance prior over time.
Now as for the “existential risk” rhetoric… The difference between 9.9 billions dying out of 10 billions, and 9.9 billions dying out of 9.9 billions, is primarily aesthetic in nature. It’s promoted as the supreme moral difference primarily by people with other agendas, such as “making a living from futurist speculation”.
Now as for the “existential risk” rhetoric… The difference between 9.9 billions dying out of 10 billions, and 9.9 billions dying out of 9.9 billions, is primarily aesthetic in nature. It’s promoted as the supreme moral difference primarily by people with other agendas, such as “making a living from futurist speculation”.
Not if you care about future generations. If everybody dies, there are no future generations. If 100 million people survive, you can possibly rebuild civilization.
(If the 100 million eventually die out too, without finding any way to sustain the species, and it just takes longer, that’s still an existential catastrophe.)
Not if you care about future generations. If everybody dies, there are no future generations. If 100 million people survive, you can possibly rebuild civilization.
I care about the well being of the future people, but not their mere existence. As do most people who don’t disapprove of birth control but do disapprove of, for example, drinking while pregnant.
Let’s postulate a hypothetical tiny universe, where you have Adam and Eve except they are sort of like horse and donkey—any children they’ll have are certain to be sterile. The food is plentiful etc etc. Is it supremely important that they have a large number of (certainly sterile) children?
And re: Pinker: If you had a bit more experience with trends on a necessarily very noisy data—you would realize that such trends are virtually irrelevant with regards to the probability of encountering some extremes (especially when those are not even that extreme—preceding the cold war, you have Hitler). It’s the exact same mistake committed by particularly low brow republicans when they go on about “ha ha, global warming” during a cold spell—because they think that a trend in noisy data has huge impact on individual data points.
edit: furthermore, Pinker’s data is on violence per capita—the total violence increased, it’s just that the violence seems to scale sub-linearly with population. Population is growing, as well as the number of states with nuclear weapons.
Did you not read the book? He shows big declines in rates of wars, not just per capita damage from war.
By total violence I mean the number of people dying (due to wars and other violence). The rate of wars, given the huge variation in the war size, is not a very useful metric.
I frankly don’t see how, having on one hand trends by Pinker, and on the other hand, adoption of modern technologies in the regions far behind on any such trends, and developments of new technologies, you have the trends by Pinker outweight that.
On the general change, for 2100, we’re speaking of 86 years. That’s the time span in which Russian Empire of 1900 transformed to Soviet Union of 1986 , complete with two world wars and invention of nuclear weapons followed by thermonuclear weapons.
That’s a time span more than long enough for it to be far more likely than not that entirely unpredictable technological advancements will be made in multitude of fields that have impact on the ease and cost of manufacturing of nuclear weapons. Enrichment is incredibly inefficient, with a huge room for improvement. Go read the wikipedia page on enrichment, then assume a much larger number of methods which could be improved. Conditional on continued progress, of course.
The political changes that happen in that sort of timespan are even less predictable.
Ultimately, what you have is that the estimates should regress towards ignorance prior over time.
Now as for the “existential risk” rhetoric… The difference between 9.9 billions dying out of 10 billions, and 9.9 billions dying out of 9.9 billions, is primarily aesthetic in nature. It’s promoted as the supreme moral difference primarily by people with other agendas, such as “making a living from futurist speculation”.
Not if you care about future generations. If everybody dies, there are no future generations. If 100 million people survive, you can possibly rebuild civilization.
(If the 100 million eventually die out too, without finding any way to sustain the species, and it just takes longer, that’s still an existential catastrophe.)
I care about the well being of the future people, but not their mere existence. As do most people who don’t disapprove of birth control but do disapprove of, for example, drinking while pregnant.
Let’s postulate a hypothetical tiny universe, where you have Adam and Eve except they are sort of like horse and donkey—any children they’ll have are certain to be sterile. The food is plentiful etc etc. Is it supremely important that they have a large number of (certainly sterile) children?