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More than once I have wondered why so many high technologists are more concerned by as- yet-nonexistent threats than the much more mundane and all-too-real ones

More than once I have wondered why so many high technologists are more concerned by as- yet-nonexistent threats than the much more mundane and all-too-real ones literally right before their eyes. Yeah, for a group of people who hold themselves out to be so very intelligent there does seem to be a blind spot about ten miles wide. And before you say it, you're going to have to provide some proof of the oft-repeated notion that goes something like "Uber-for-dogwalkers is going to accidentally provide the solution to climate change." Simply believing so isn't enough.

aetherson 11y ago
Well, if you start with the premise that within a few decades we'll have superintelligences and magical nanotech, I wouldn't be very concerned about climate change either. I think the premise that we'll have superintelligences and magical nanotech in a few decades is fatuous, but that's a different fight.
edanm 11y ago
"Yeah, for a group of people who hold themselves out to be so very intelligent there does seem to be a blind spot about ten miles wide." A thought - It's also possible that you have a blind spot yourself. It's at least worth considering. "And before you say it, you're going to have to provide some proof of the oft-repeated notion that goes something like "Uber-for-dogwalkers is going to accidentally provide the solution to climate change."" If you're talking about people like Eliezer Yudkowsky/Elon Musk/"the LessWrong community", etc, that's not at all what they're saying. What they're saying is that the bad things that could happen, even if not happening now, and even if unlikely, could be so horribly, terribly bad, that it's worth making sure they don't happen.
- beatpanda 11y ago
  What I'm saying is that bad things, things that are so horribly, terribly bad that they could alter the course of human civilization for the worse, permanently, are happening right now and are being largely ignored by technologists, while they are worried about preventing something that might happen, someday. And when people level the criticism at the technology industry that it is currently mainly focused on creating trifles for already-wealthy people, the inevitable response is that incredible technological innovation, the kind we could use to solve actual life-threatening problems, might come out of the effort to create those trifles, so it's not worth pursuing actual problems directly. What's so interesting about the obsession over the singularity is that there is massive effort and capital being directed at directly solving a problem that is purely theoretical while, for example, climate change is already creating mass social instability all over the world, and companies working directly on possible technological solutions for climate change have to fight hard for every penny. These days it definitely feels like the priorities of the owners of capital are located somewhere in an alternate reality the rest of us can only scratch our heads at.
  - edanm 11y ago
    So, you're saying a few things here which I disagree with. First of all, the basic argument, at least of the "existensial risk" community that I frequent is that, compared to humanity's extinction, nothing else that's happening now is quite as bad. (Unless of course it is something that would also lead to human extinction). More importantly to your point, you seem to be operating under the assumption that " there is massive effort and capital being directed at [solving this problem]" (paraphrased). As opposed to say something like climate change. This assumption is wrong. There was recently an incredible victory for something called the "Future of Humanity Institute", which had just received $10 mil from Elon Musk. This was an extraordinary sum for a charity dealing with existensial risk, which is very decidedly a niche topic. Even if you look at all the charities dealing with X-risk, I doubt you'll be looking at more than a $100 mil dollars raised or so, and that's something of a stretch IMO. (If anyone has any real figures on this - please let me know!). As for something like climate change, it's hard to find good sources as most of my google searches return mostly criticisms of climate change activisits, but I would be shocked if the amount of money spent on climate change isn't in the 10's of billions of dollars. The argument of the people concerned with x-risk is that, at the moment, considering how little money is actually spent on research concerning x-risk, more money needs to be spent. And since these technologists are the only ones really aware (or at least talking of) the dangers, they need to try to get money invested in this issue. Btw, I will mention two other minor things: 1. I'm not trying to defend "people level the criticism at the technology industry that it is currently mainly focused on creating trifles for already-wealthy people" - I consider this a really separate topic, since its usually different people involved with x-risk charities vs. trying to make money. 2. A lot of the community that talks about x-risk is also part of the "effective altruism" movement, which concerns itself greatly with solving more immediate issues.
    - beatpanda 11y ago
      I don't understand how climate change isn't at the very top of the list of existential risks to human civilization. If your concern is warding off existing and urgent existential risks, and then you end up fucking around worrying about killer robots instead of solving the problem that is literally at your doorstep, right now, then something has gone very, very wrong.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  Actually, I admit to hanging out with that crowd on the internet sometimes, and while right-wingers are louder on the official "community blog", a lot of people among the community are explicitly anticapitalist. Hence the "capitalism == paper-clip monster" blog post yesterday. What it amounts to is that if you ask what the loudest pet cause in the entire community is, you'll get "Friendly AI" and "the Singularity", the impending doom of the human race, and probably something about overbearing political correctness. If you conduct a statistically significant poll, you'll find that our opinions are largely just sampled from the tech sector as a whole, so we're actually very concerned about inequality and global warming. Nobody gives a mic to the people who sound relatively normal and give answers to "interesting" questions that just aren't very entertaining because they're too damned simple and realistic.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  Borrowing trouble from the future is a combination of procrastination and territorialism - by the latter I mean that if I expend enough effort publicly worrying about the Gray Goo nanotechnology disaster scenario, I'll eventually get regular shout-outs in any stories on the subject, and the more often my utterances are cited, the the higher the speaking fees I can command or parlay into think-tank residencies etc. This isn't inherently bad - as a highly imaginative person I enjoy juggling hypotheticals, and since technological externalities are an economic fact there is no shortage of potential dooms available - but let's not kid ourselves about the economics of punditocracy either.
  - edanm 11y ago
    You know, there's quite a few people who have invested a huge portion of their lives in working on things like x-risk charities. They did this even though, with their skills & intellect, they can early significantly more money by e.g. not working in a charity. I'm just saying, I don't think it's wise to simply sweep all of these people's hard work and efforts under the rug of "procrastation" and "they're somehow making money from this".
    - chipsy 11y ago
      They have the image of all of history's doomsayers to overcome. Just because it's science-doom doesn't make it different. Most people are concerned about immediate risks because it's the best average-case strategy, even if it can cause catastrophic errors.
    - anigbrowl 11y ago
      I only want to discount about half of it. It's true about the money, but some people prefer their rewards in the form of social status, and that too is an economic decision. I appreciate that this sounds cynical.
      - _benedict 11y ago
        Not to disagree, but there are also a multitude of other incentives that can be straightforwardly aligned with the goal somebody purports to target. "Doing something meaningful" (or simply of personal interest) is a surprisingly strong motivator for people, who I think generally find life has little meaning. Social status is also itself a powerful tool for effecting change, and so could be sought without desiring it for its own end (although whether or not this corrupts, were a person to aim for this, I do not know, nor cannot guess at the incidence of success for people with this motive)

aetherson 11y ago

Well, if you start with the premise that within a few decades we'll have superintelligences and magical nanotech, I wouldn't be very concerned about climate change either. I think the premise that we'll have superintelligences and magical nanotech in a few decades is fatuous, but that's a different fight.

edanm 11y ago

"Yeah, for a group of people who hold themselves out to be so very intelligent there does seem to be a blind spot about ten miles wide." A thought - It's also possible that you have a blind spot yourself. It's at least worth considering. "And before you say it, you're going to have to provide some proof of the oft-repeated notion that goes something like "Uber-for-dogwalkers is going to accidentally provide the solution to climate change."" If you're talking about people like Eliezer Yudkowsky/Elon Musk/"the LessWrong community", etc, that's not at all what they're saying. What they're saying is that the bad things that could happen, even if not happening now, and even if unlikely, could be so horribly, terribly bad, that it's worth making sure they don't happen.

beatpanda 11y ago
What I'm saying is that bad things, things that are so horribly, terribly bad that they could alter the course of human civilization for the worse, permanently, are happening right now and are being largely ignored by technologists, while they are worried about preventing something that might happen, someday. And when people level the criticism at the technology industry that it is currently mainly focused on creating trifles for already-wealthy people, the inevitable response is that incredible technological innovation, the kind we could use to solve actual life-threatening problems, might come out of the effort to create those trifles, so it's not worth pursuing actual problems directly. What's so interesting about the obsession over the singularity is that there is massive effort and capital being directed at directly solving a problem that is purely theoretical while, for example, climate change is already creating mass social instability all over the world, and companies working directly on possible technological solutions for climate change have to fight hard for every penny. These days it definitely feels like the priorities of the owners of capital are located somewhere in an alternate reality the rest of us can only scratch our heads at.
- edanm 11y ago
  So, you're saying a few things here which I disagree with. First of all, the basic argument, at least of the "existensial risk" community that I frequent is that, compared to humanity's extinction, nothing else that's happening now is quite as bad. (Unless of course it is something that would also lead to human extinction). More importantly to your point, you seem to be operating under the assumption that " there is massive effort and capital being directed at [solving this problem]" (paraphrased). As opposed to say something like climate change. This assumption is wrong. There was recently an incredible victory for something called the "Future of Humanity Institute", which had just received $10 mil from Elon Musk. This was an extraordinary sum for a charity dealing with existensial risk, which is very decidedly a niche topic. Even if you look at all the charities dealing with X-risk, I doubt you'll be looking at more than a $100 mil dollars raised or so, and that's something of a stretch IMO. (If anyone has any real figures on this - please let me know!). As for something like climate change, it's hard to find good sources as most of my google searches return mostly criticisms of climate change activisits, but I would be shocked if the amount of money spent on climate change isn't in the 10's of billions of dollars. The argument of the people concerned with x-risk is that, at the moment, considering how little money is actually spent on research concerning x-risk, more money needs to be spent. And since these technologists are the only ones really aware (or at least talking of) the dangers, they need to try to get money invested in this issue. Btw, I will mention two other minor things: 1. I'm not trying to defend "people level the criticism at the technology industry that it is currently mainly focused on creating trifles for already-wealthy people" - I consider this a really separate topic, since its usually different people involved with x-risk charities vs. trying to make money. 2. A lot of the community that talks about x-risk is also part of the "effective altruism" movement, which concerns itself greatly with solving more immediate issues.
  - beatpanda 11y ago
    I don't understand how climate change isn't at the very top of the list of existential risks to human civilization. If your concern is warding off existing and urgent existential risks, and then you end up fucking around worrying about killer robots instead of solving the problem that is literally at your doorstep, right now, then something has gone very, very wrong.
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
Actually, I admit to hanging out with that crowd on the internet sometimes, and while right-wingers are louder on the official "community blog", a lot of people among the community are explicitly anticapitalist. Hence the "capitalism == paper-clip monster" blog post yesterday. What it amounts to is that if you ask what the loudest pet cause in the entire community is, you'll get "Friendly AI" and "the Singularity", the impending doom of the human race, and probably something about overbearing political correctness. If you conduct a statistically significant poll, you'll find that our opinions are largely just sampled from the tech sector as a whole, so we're actually very concerned about inequality and global warming. Nobody gives a mic to the people who sound relatively normal and give answers to "interesting" questions that just aren't very entertaining because they're too damned simple and realistic.
anigbrowl 11y ago
Borrowing trouble from the future is a combination of procrastination and territorialism - by the latter I mean that if I expend enough effort publicly worrying about the Gray Goo nanotechnology disaster scenario, I'll eventually get regular shout-outs in any stories on the subject, and the more often my utterances are cited, the the higher the speaking fees I can command or parlay into think-tank residencies etc. This isn't inherently bad - as a highly imaginative person I enjoy juggling hypotheticals, and since technological externalities are an economic fact there is no shortage of potential dooms available - but let's not kid ourselves about the economics of punditocracy either.
- edanm 11y ago
  You know, there's quite a few people who have invested a huge portion of their lives in working on things like x-risk charities. They did this even though, with their skills & intellect, they can early significantly more money by e.g. not working in a charity. I'm just saying, I don't think it's wise to simply sweep all of these people's hard work and efforts under the rug of "procrastation" and "they're somehow making money from this".
  - chipsy 11y ago
    They have the image of all of history's doomsayers to overcome. Just because it's science-doom doesn't make it different. Most people are concerned about immediate risks because it's the best average-case strategy, even if it can cause catastrophic errors.
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    I only want to discount about half of it. It's true about the money, but some people prefer their rewards in the form of social status, and that too is an economic decision. I appreciate that this sounds cynical.
    - _benedict 11y ago
      Not to disagree, but there are also a multitude of other incentives that can be straightforwardly aligned with the goal somebody purports to target. "Doing something meaningful" (or simply of personal interest) is a surprisingly strong motivator for people, who I think generally find life has little meaning. Social status is also itself a powerful tool for effecting change, and so could be sought without desiring it for its own end (although whether or not this corrupts, were a person to aim for this, I do not know, nor cannot guess at the incidence of success for people with this motive)