4 ms·

Are you legit saying, "I don't know if extinct-ing most of the species on the planet will wipe us out. It might. That seems like a worthwhile hypothesis to test

by rosser 8y ago

Are you legit saying, "I don't know if extinct-ing most of the species on the planet will wipe us out. It might. That seems like a worthwhile hypothesis to test empirically!"? When the dice are that loaded, you throw them at your own peril. When they're that loaded, you keep throwing them because it's more profitable at everyone's peril.

lopmotr 8y ago
Sounds like you agree it's not certain but you're exaggerating the risk to scare people who don't understand risks. It might be appropriate to yell during a Greenpeace march but I would rather have intelligent discussions than just yell slogans at each other. It's like a parent telling their teen "If you don't wear a seat belt, you'll die in a car crash." It's obviously not true but dying in a car crash is so bad that it's worth telling a lie to increase the chance of saving their life. That's what the parent would desperately yell at them as they run off with the car keys, but not if they want to develop an independent person who can make complex decisions for themselves.
- rosser 8y ago
  There's a very good reason we don't run experiments to test, e.g., the hypothesis that a certain chemical might cause birth defects: the consequences of the hypothesis being accurate are morally abhorrent. You don't do something that might kill or maim people to test whether or not doing the thing does kill or maim people — unless you're Mengele or something. Is it really that hard to extrapolate from the specific case to the general? If we get this one wrong, we're dead. Even the possibility makes it incumbent upon us to tread exceptionally carefully. EDIT: This, "Hey, now. Let's have a rational, skeptical discussion about this" is a disingenuous tactic, in the first place. If we played that game, we'd still be debating whether or not rising CO₂ levels are dangerous, as they crossed the 500ppm threshold. We know, for practical purposes, that this is coming, unless we change course. We know the consequences of its happening. But we're still somehow dithering, apparently in order to convince trenchant outliers who have identity-level investments in being trenchant outliers, that they're wrong. That ship will never sail. "Oops. Yeah, I guess that was a bad idea after all," is not an reasonable response to an existential threat.
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    "You don't do something that might kill or maim people to test whether or not doing the thing does kill or maim people — unless you're Mengele or something." Have you checked out the self-driving car threads recently?
    - michaelmrose 8y ago
      Regular cars come with a substantial threat of death or maiming.
    - rosser 8y ago
      Nope. That's not what they're testing. They're testing whether or not the thing even works — which necessarily includes "doesn't kill people", sure. But that's not the specific thing being measured; it's a consequence of the system not being ready yet. Your argument is more like, "We're testing this new chemotherapy agent to see how many people it kills", versus, "We're testing this new chemotherapy agent for safety and efficacy" (phase I and II, respectively). We aren't specifically screening for deadliness; we're trying to determine the therapeutic index of the agent, and get a baseline on its side effects (which, yes, may include death). It's a subtle distinction, but it's a critical one. All that aside, it's fundamentally disanalogous, anyway, because the populations in chemo clinical trials are already sick, and have given informed consent. Dude walking down the street getting smoked by a Tesla that thought he was a wall, not so much.
  - lopmotr 8y ago
    > There's a very good reason we don't run experiments to test, e.g., the hypothesis that a certain chemical might cause birth defects: the consequences of the hypothesis being accurate are morally abhorrent. Just because we don't know if it causes birth defects doesn't mean every untested chemical certainly does cause birth defects. In fact it's obvious that since we don't know, we don't know! You might save people by telling them that lie but it's still a lie and won't help anyone understand nature. You're really confusing "We don't know if ignoring the environment will wipe us out" with "Let's ignore the environment and see what happens.". I'm not proposing we conduct that experiment, just pointing out that we don't know what the outcome will be.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Can you survive without air, water, or food? If you haven’t tried it to see what happens, you can’t be certain....
  - lopmotr 8y ago
    Since you can't see the fault in your analogy, I'll tell you. People have already tried that and we have biology that tells us what would happen without those things. So we know the answer without having to test it again. It's not comparable to continuing to change the environment the way we are, which is something we don't know the effects of.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      We need the environment to provide air, water, and food, so if you keep destroying it then eventually this will go from analogy to direct consequence.
      - lopmotr 8y ago
        How can you destroy water? It literally falls out of the sky. Israel makes drinking water from sea water. How can you destroy all food? There's no way we can wipe out all plants and animals, and we can eat lots of them, even if they're not our favorite food today. You can even eat cockroaches. You're confusing actually destroying the things we depend on with carelessly using them and not trying to make sure they survive. An obvious counterexample - we do our best to eat as many cows as we can, yet the species is thriving! Maybe fish farms will do that to desirable fish species too. We didn't even wipe out sperm whales despite whalers doing their best to find all they could and having no concern for conservation. I agree there's a _risk_ of that happening though. We just don't know for sure. My concern is with people who claim to know for sure when actually they're taking a dishonest extreme position to make their political point stronger. Of course we should be careful not to destroy the environment because if we don't, the downside to being wrong is terrible. Somehow most of the people arguing about this seem to be victims of their own extremism and unable to distinguish risk from certainty.

by rosser 8y ago

lopmotr 8y ago

Sounds like you agree it's not certain but you're exaggerating the risk to scare people who don't understand risks. It might be appropriate to yell during a Greenpeace march but I would rather have intelligent discussions than just yell slogans at each other. It's like a parent telling their teen "If you don't wear a seat belt, you'll die in a car crash." It's obviously not true but dying in a car crash is so bad that it's worth telling a lie to increase the chance of saving their life. That's what the parent would desperately yell at them as they run off with the car keys, but not if they want to develop an independent person who can make complex decisions for themselves.

rosser 8y ago
There's a very good reason we don't run experiments to test, e.g., the hypothesis that a certain chemical might cause birth defects: the consequences of the hypothesis being accurate are morally abhorrent. You don't do something that might kill or maim people to test whether or not doing the thing does kill or maim people — unless you're Mengele or something. Is it really that hard to extrapolate from the specific case to the general? If we get this one wrong, we're dead. Even the possibility makes it incumbent upon us to tread exceptionally carefully. EDIT: This, "Hey, now. Let's have a rational, skeptical discussion about this" is a disingenuous tactic, in the first place. If we played that game, we'd still be debating whether or not rising CO₂ levels are dangerous, as they crossed the 500ppm threshold. We know, for practical purposes, that this is coming, unless we change course. We know the consequences of its happening. But we're still somehow dithering, apparently in order to convince trenchant outliers who have identity-level investments in being trenchant outliers, that they're wrong. That ship will never sail. "Oops. Yeah, I guess that was a bad idea after all," is not an reasonable response to an existential threat.
- perl4ever 8y ago
  "You don't do something that might kill or maim people to test whether or not doing the thing does kill or maim people — unless you're Mengele or something." Have you checked out the self-driving car threads recently?
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    Regular cars come with a substantial threat of death or maiming.
  - rosser 8y ago
    Nope. That's not what they're testing. They're testing whether or not the thing even works — which necessarily includes "doesn't kill people", sure. But that's not the specific thing being measured; it's a consequence of the system not being ready yet. Your argument is more like, "We're testing this new chemotherapy agent to see how many people it kills", versus, "We're testing this new chemotherapy agent for safety and efficacy" (phase I and II, respectively). We aren't specifically screening for deadliness; we're trying to determine the therapeutic index of the agent, and get a baseline on its side effects (which, yes, may include death). It's a subtle distinction, but it's a critical one. All that aside, it's fundamentally disanalogous, anyway, because the populations in chemo clinical trials are already sick, and have given informed consent. Dude walking down the street getting smoked by a Tesla that thought he was a wall, not so much.
- lopmotr 8y ago
  > There's a very good reason we don't run experiments to test, e.g., the hypothesis that a certain chemical might cause birth defects: the consequences of the hypothesis being accurate are morally abhorrent. Just because we don't know if it causes birth defects doesn't mean every untested chemical certainly does cause birth defects. In fact it's obvious that since we don't know, we don't know! You might save people by telling them that lie but it's still a lie and won't help anyone understand nature. You're really confusing "We don't know if ignoring the environment will wipe us out" with "Let's ignore the environment and see what happens.". I'm not proposing we conduct that experiment, just pointing out that we don't know what the outcome will be.
mikeash 8y ago
Can you survive without air, water, or food? If you haven’t tried it to see what happens, you can’t be certain....
- lopmotr 8y ago
  Since you can't see the fault in your analogy, I'll tell you. People have already tried that and we have biology that tells us what would happen without those things. So we know the answer without having to test it again. It's not comparable to continuing to change the environment the way we are, which is something we don't know the effects of.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    We need the environment to provide air, water, and food, so if you keep destroying it then eventually this will go from analogy to direct consequence.
    - lopmotr 8y ago
      How can you destroy water? It literally falls out of the sky. Israel makes drinking water from sea water. How can you destroy all food? There's no way we can wipe out all plants and animals, and we can eat lots of them, even if they're not our favorite food today. You can even eat cockroaches. You're confusing actually destroying the things we depend on with carelessly using them and not trying to make sure they survive. An obvious counterexample - we do our best to eat as many cows as we can, yet the species is thriving! Maybe fish farms will do that to desirable fish species too. We didn't even wipe out sperm whales despite whalers doing their best to find all they could and having no concern for conservation. I agree there's a _risk_ of that happening though. We just don't know for sure. My concern is with people who claim to know for sure when actually they're taking a dishonest extreme position to make their political point stronger. Of course we should be careful not to destroy the environment because if we don't, the downside to being wrong is terrible. Somehow most of the people arguing about this seem to be victims of their own extremism and unable to distinguish risk from certainty.