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What if you actually can’t predict the future and climate change is actually good? What if having kids is actually a great thing for them and for the world? The

What if you actually can’t predict the future and climate change is actually good? What if having kids is actually a great thing for them and for the world? These are reasonable ideas if you don’t just spend your time doomscrolling on twitter all day. People talk about the AI singularity but the whole world is a singularity all the time. To model the entire world and predict how everything is going to play out on a social and economic level is obviously impossible. To make impoverishing top-down prescriptions based on that seems criminal. To utilize this storyline as a political mechanism is cruel.

defrost 3y ago
> To model the entire world and predict how everything is going to play out on a social and economic level is obviously impossible. Sure. But that's a trite non sequitur entirely orthoganal to the simplicity of the thermodynamics underpinning the cause of climate change. Ever increasing levels of trapped energy that will increase at an even faster rate once methane and water vapor get seriously involved in the mix unless action is taken to either block the sun or reduce the insulating effects of atmospheric gases.
- hashxyz 3y ago
  I agree with your last statement, although it is describing a very simple interaction and I don’t feel certain that we are observing that in action yet. I also don’t know if there are counter-balancing interactions that we aren’t aware of yet. If humanity does end up accidentally terraforming the planet to get to hot in a positive feedback loop, I believe we will be within a line-of-sight to terraforming it back in the other direction. Technology has solved all our physical problems so far. Maybe we will seed clouds in the upper atmosphere to reflect a lot of energy back into space. Maybe we will find something useful to do with captured carbon (which doesn’t just release it). It is insane to suggest capitalism won’t solve this problem by the time it actually needs solving, and therefore needs to be shut down (it’s the thing that actually works).
  - defrost 3y ago
    If it takes > 100 years and all the energy of tens of billions of tonnes of fossil fuel to put us in a state of extreme peril then yes, it will at least * take another 100+ years and all the energy of tens of billions of tonnes of fossil fuel to reverse out of that position. If that's your suggested strategy then I would suggest that we can do better by not going there in the first instance. * Thanks to the arrow of time, the issue of unbreaking a glass, methane release and other factors it very realistically could take more time and energy to get out of the hole we seem intent upon driving into. > Technology is for solving problems. It's not 'magic' though and I have little time for green washing or praying to the technology fairy.
    - hashxyz 3y ago
      > I would suggest that we can do better by not going there The problem is that you are recommending we turn off capitalism, which will have serious consequences that are easier to predict than climate change: we will doom the world’s poor people to lives of certain poverty with no hope of upward mobility.
      - kaba0 3y ago
        Who recommends turning off capitalism? But un-restricted capitalism is literally the stereotypical paper clip AI. It will seek out maximal profit at every cost. As per the very Adam Smith, it only works well in small, welll-regulated markets. Let the government do its job, and capitalism its own.
        hashxyz 3y ago
        > Who recommends turning off capitalism The article is about degrowth. The paperclip thought experiment is a stupid thought experiment. An AI that had the executive functioning to improve its entire substrate (e.g. rewrite the entire TSMC Nvidia chip and software supply chain) would require the same higher order agency that would stop it from destroying the world to turn it into paperclips. It only seems plausible if you spend all your time disembodied from reality browsing lesswrong.
aplanas 3y ago
> What if you actually can’t predict the future and climate change is actually good? Is this how rational people react, or is some spiritual response talking from fear? How can be the depletion of biodiversity, the increase of temperatures and the disappearance of ecosystems that we need to survive "good"? As a community we do no have a crystal ball to predict the future, but we have science and technology and the predictions from there are clear: it is not good for us, and it is not good for the current species. The far future, the very far one -- sure -- the are good chances that new ecosystems will appear adapted to the new environments, but those will not be "nice" for our current expectations. A doing-nothing-and-hoping-for-the-best strategy is a guarantee for massive wars, hunger and suffering, as happen many times in the past (but never in a scale of 7.000.000 population)
- hashxyz 3y ago
  Your entire framing of the world is engineered by pessimistic news articles which only tell a small part of the story. Is loss of biodiversity bad? Maybe. Will we have resurrected most extinct species using jurassic park DNA within the next 500 years? I dunno but if that happened, it would make the current loss of biodiversity into more of a blip than an apocalyptic thing. The science and technology enterprise is economically motivated. It is pretty good at creating value out of fewer and fewer resources. It is not good at making godlike insights into the far future about the late stage interactions between itself and the physical world. Any definite predictions provided to you are more likely driven by short-term incentives of some political figures. There is nothing indicating massive wars are coming due to climate change, most of the world is lifting out of poverty not slipping back into it. If the world does heat by 5-10 degrees, we should be focused on making sure indians and africans have enough economic resources to afford air conditioning like we do in rich countries.
  - kaba0 3y ago
    What an absolutely bullshit take, honestly I have a hard time reasonably reacting to it, it is so dumb. We can’t predict the future down to a point, but we can make good, large-scale predictions with good accuracy — global average temperatures will increase and by every prediction, that will have catastrophic results. Period. That’s not some doomer news, that is reality. We can’t predict how individual countries will react, but that is not the question.

defrost 3y ago

> To model the entire world and predict how everything is going to play out on a social and economic level is obviously impossible. Sure. But that's a trite non sequitur entirely orthoganal to the simplicity of the thermodynamics underpinning the cause of climate change. Ever increasing levels of trapped energy that will increase at an even faster rate once methane and water vapor get seriously involved in the mix unless action is taken to either block the sun or reduce the insulating effects of atmospheric gases.

hashxyz 3y ago
I agree with your last statement, although it is describing a very simple interaction and I don’t feel certain that we are observing that in action yet. I also don’t know if there are counter-balancing interactions that we aren’t aware of yet. If humanity does end up accidentally terraforming the planet to get to hot in a positive feedback loop, I believe we will be within a line-of-sight to terraforming it back in the other direction. Technology has solved all our physical problems so far. Maybe we will seed clouds in the upper atmosphere to reflect a lot of energy back into space. Maybe we will find something useful to do with captured carbon (which doesn’t just release it). It is insane to suggest capitalism won’t solve this problem by the time it actually needs solving, and therefore needs to be shut down (it’s the thing that actually works).
- defrost 3y ago
  If it takes > 100 years and all the energy of tens of billions of tonnes of fossil fuel to put us in a state of extreme peril then yes, it will at least * take another 100+ years and all the energy of tens of billions of tonnes of fossil fuel to reverse out of that position. If that's your suggested strategy then I would suggest that we can do better by not going there in the first instance. * Thanks to the arrow of time, the issue of unbreaking a glass, methane release and other factors it very realistically could take more time and energy to get out of the hole we seem intent upon driving into. > Technology is for solving problems. It's not 'magic' though and I have little time for green washing or praying to the technology fairy.
  - hashxyz 3y ago
    > I would suggest that we can do better by not going there The problem is that you are recommending we turn off capitalism, which will have serious consequences that are easier to predict than climate change: we will doom the world’s poor people to lives of certain poverty with no hope of upward mobility.
    - kaba0 3y ago
      Who recommends turning off capitalism? But un-restricted capitalism is literally the stereotypical paper clip AI. It will seek out maximal profit at every cost. As per the very Adam Smith, it only works well in small, welll-regulated markets. Let the government do its job, and capitalism its own.
      - hashxyz 3y ago
        > Who recommends turning off capitalism The article is about degrowth. The paperclip thought experiment is a stupid thought experiment. An AI that had the executive functioning to improve its entire substrate (e.g. rewrite the entire TSMC Nvidia chip and software supply chain) would require the same higher order agency that would stop it from destroying the world to turn it into paperclips. It only seems plausible if you spend all your time disembodied from reality browsing lesswrong.

aplanas 3y ago

> What if you actually can’t predict the future and climate change is actually good? Is this how rational people react, or is some spiritual response talking from fear? How can be the depletion of biodiversity, the increase of temperatures and the disappearance of ecosystems that we need to survive "good"? As a community we do no have a crystal ball to predict the future, but we have science and technology and the predictions from there are clear: it is not good for us, and it is not good for the current species. The far future, the very far one -- sure -- the are good chances that new ecosystems will appear adapted to the new environments, but those will not be "nice" for our current expectations. A doing-nothing-and-hoping-for-the-best strategy is a guarantee for massive wars, hunger and suffering, as happen many times in the past (but never in a scale of 7.000.000 population)

hashxyz 3y ago
Your entire framing of the world is engineered by pessimistic news articles which only tell a small part of the story. Is loss of biodiversity bad? Maybe. Will we have resurrected most extinct species using jurassic park DNA within the next 500 years? I dunno but if that happened, it would make the current loss of biodiversity into more of a blip than an apocalyptic thing. The science and technology enterprise is economically motivated. It is pretty good at creating value out of fewer and fewer resources. It is not good at making godlike insights into the far future about the late stage interactions between itself and the physical world. Any definite predictions provided to you are more likely driven by short-term incentives of some political figures. There is nothing indicating massive wars are coming due to climate change, most of the world is lifting out of poverty not slipping back into it. If the world does heat by 5-10 degrees, we should be focused on making sure indians and africans have enough economic resources to afford air conditioning like we do in rich countries.
- kaba0 3y ago
  What an absolutely bullshit take, honestly I have a hard time reasonably reacting to it, it is so dumb. We can’t predict the future down to a point, but we can make good, large-scale predictions with good accuracy — global average temperatures will increase and by every prediction, that will have catastrophic results. Period. That’s not some doomer news, that is reality. We can’t predict how individual countries will react, but that is not the question.