5 ms·

> The more uncertain we are about our uncertainty of the rarity of a global catastrophe, the more rational it is for us to assume we are likely presently under-

• netrus 9y ago
  Think of it as Pascal's wager. We are talking about catastrophy here, the cost function is quite out of balance when looking at the alternative of "Reducing our standard of living a bit even though the catastrophy would not have happend anyway".
• pizza 9y ago
  It took me a long while to come up with a response to this I liked, but think about it this way: there is, maybe, a 10^-a prior climate change destroys life as we know it, right? But my prior for God, heaven, etc existing is, alas, 10^-b, where b >>>>>>>>>>>>> a. (never a 0 or 1 prior kinda guy, even if I know that is dumb in some scenarios, like tautologies and impossibilities, yadada). Too many more factors would have to be revealed to me in terms of the existence of God that I would then believe that a is of similar value to b, if that makes sense? ie that they have similar probabilities (or rather, utilities, which matters since heaven is probably +inf and catastrophe of all life is MAX(badness) which we might as well call -inf, right? So, not only is -Cost * P(calamity | investment) >> -Cost * P(calamity | not investment), Cost(investment) < [Cost(calamity | no investment) - Cost(calamity | w investment)], so its a rational purchase... sorry if this is at all unclear, i can clarify anything