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Because if he’s right we really, really want to pay attention to this problem so we don’t all die. I’m sure Bostrom abstracts away an enormous amount of the di

Because if he’s right we really, really want to pay attention to this problem so we don’t all die. I’m sure Bostrom abstracts away an enormous amount of the difficulty in implementation but that’s quite defensible. Moore’s Law isn’t the only curve that works well to explain technological trends for decades. We can see in broad outlines what’s coming decades from now.

n4r9 7y ago
> Because if he’s right we really, really want to pay attention to this problem so we don’t all die. You could say that about any doomsayer. It's important to use their reputation and authority, and your own context within reason, to weight the significance of their prophecies.
- me_me_me 7y ago
  You could say that Eisenstein was doomsayer about nuclear fission. And we did came quite close to doomsday scenarios, cold war, but also false-positives in automated detection defense systems.
  - n4r9 7y ago
    Of course, I'm not saying we should ignore all doomsayers, just that we should weight their prophecies with a reasonable estimate of trust. Saying "if it's right then we need to pay attention" isn't a good argument in and of itself. It would imply that we have to pay attention to thousands of additional crazy prophecies, like those of the Westboro Baptist Church or that lizard people are taking control of the earth. Whether Boston is a genuine trusted authority on this is a much more interesting discussion.
adrianN 7y ago
Decades from now we'll likely fight each other for food and water as climate change reduces the amount of arable land and important ecosystems collapse
- garmaine 7y ago
  That flies in the face of the history of progress. Maltheus was wrong for the last 200 years of doom and gloom predictions. Why would you expect differently now? In actual fact, the amount of resources (atoms, power) in the Earth are orders of magnitude beyond what humans need for thousands of years, even assuming exponential growth. And the carrying capacity of the Earth has grown as fast or faster than population, explicitly because more people means more innovation and more capital which means higher carrying capacity. What's more, the per capita quality of life grows linearly with population, meaning a quadratic increase in available resources overall. More people = more prosperity. It's not a zero-sum game. Inoculate yourself against the Malthusian ideology of the Club of Rome. The world is not ending, as much as their anti-human agenda would want you to believe.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Humans need more than atoms and power to live a comfortable life. We're rapidly destroying major ecosystems that our way of life depends on. Sure, the human race can survive huddled around breeder reactors in underground caves. But I'd like to spend old age on a planet that is reasonably similar to what we have right now.
  - Fricken 7y ago
    HN is where I go to hear the most twisted and convoluted arguments as to why destroying the planet is actually a good thing.

n4r9 7y ago

> Because if he’s right we really, really want to pay attention to this problem so we don’t all die. You could say that about any doomsayer. It's important to use their reputation and authority, and your own context within reason, to weight the significance of their prophecies.

me_me_me 7y ago
You could say that Eisenstein was doomsayer about nuclear fission. And we did came quite close to doomsday scenarios, cold war, but also false-positives in automated detection defense systems.
- n4r9 7y ago
  Of course, I'm not saying we should ignore all doomsayers, just that we should weight their prophecies with a reasonable estimate of trust. Saying "if it's right then we need to pay attention" isn't a good argument in and of itself. It would imply that we have to pay attention to thousands of additional crazy prophecies, like those of the Westboro Baptist Church or that lizard people are taking control of the earth. Whether Boston is a genuine trusted authority on this is a much more interesting discussion.

adrianN 7y ago

Decades from now we'll likely fight each other for food and water as climate change reduces the amount of arable land and important ecosystems collapse

garmaine 7y ago
That flies in the face of the history of progress. Maltheus was wrong for the last 200 years of doom and gloom predictions. Why would you expect differently now? In actual fact, the amount of resources (atoms, power) in the Earth are orders of magnitude beyond what humans need for thousands of years, even assuming exponential growth. And the carrying capacity of the Earth has grown as fast or faster than population, explicitly because more people means more innovation and more capital which means higher carrying capacity. What's more, the per capita quality of life grows linearly with population, meaning a quadratic increase in available resources overall. More people = more prosperity. It's not a zero-sum game. Inoculate yourself against the Malthusian ideology of the Club of Rome. The world is not ending, as much as their anti-human agenda would want you to believe.
- adrianN 7y ago
  Humans need more than atoms and power to live a comfortable life. We're rapidly destroying major ecosystems that our way of life depends on. Sure, the human race can survive huddled around breeder reactors in underground caves. But I'd like to spend old age on a planet that is reasonably similar to what we have right now.
- Fricken 7y ago
  HN is where I go to hear the most twisted and convoluted arguments as to why destroying the planet is actually a good thing.