6 ms·

The world should think better about catastrophic and existential risks

14 points by jkuria 6y ago

gregjor 6y ago
The article manages to describe tail risk without using the term, and the author avoids mentioning Nasim Taleb, the current leading author/speaker on low probability/high risk events, so-called Black Swans. I suppose Taleb has offended enough people at this point to earn this treatment. Instead Nick Bostrom gets a nod for his sci-fi singularity fantasies.
- rramadass 6y ago
  Am i the only one who really likes Taleb and his aggressive approach ? :-) I couldn't care less about "Offended feelings" of charlatans, posers and fakes. Given the mess that the so-called "people in charge" have made of everything i wish more academics/intelligentsia were as aggressive as him in calling out mistakes/errors in our patterns of thought and force us to face them.
redis_mlc 6y ago
What, like relying on the CCP for our pharmaceutical, mfg. and rare earth processing? Maybe something like that?
aeternum 6y ago
Seems like the best risk mitigation strategy is to become multi-planetary. We would eliminate the vast majority of existential risks.
- gregjor 6y ago
  That much is obvious, but can we get there before a catastrophe wipes us out or sets us back hundreds of years? Colonizing other planets is not going to happen in our lifetimes or in my grandchildren's lifetimes. We don't even have colonies under the oceans yet. Every new environment (planet) will have different risks, so colonizing is a hedge, not a guarantee. If you look at the history of colonizing the New World, Europeans had many failures, and they weren't even leaving the planet. We can expect similar high failure rates colonizing other planets.
  - aeternum 6y ago
    It will be difficult but that didn't stop those colonizing the new world and it shouldn't stop us. The universe has near infinite resources, why continue to fight over the finite resources on earth?
    - gregjor 6y ago
      The resources are far away, we have no way to get to them right now. Will we reach those resources before we run out on this planet? Before a catastrophe wipes us out? Who knows. By comparison sailing across the oceans seems trivial.
      - aeternum 6y ago
        We have the technology even with chemical rockets to get to Mars in 30-100 days depending on deltaV and payload. That's on par with the time required to sail across the ocean. Our track record of humans surviving space journeys is also much better than the survival probability of those early ocean voyages. Sailing across the ocean seems trivial now because we did it often and perfected the technology. We can do the same with space travel.
        gregjor 6y ago
        And then what? Supposing humans can survive a trip to Mars — far more dangerous than crossing an ocean — can we bring any resources back in meaningful quantities? Can we establish colonies and industry? Not now, not anytime soon. Like I already wrote, obviously we increase long-term survival chances as a species by spreading out. Mars is orders of magnitude less hospitable than Virginia or Mexico in the 15th century, though. Huge problems to overcome. In the meantime the odds of some catastrophe get worse.
        aeternum 6y ago
        We can manufacture rocket fuel on Mars. The low gravity may provide unique industrial opportunities and the weak gravity well allows Mars or the moon to be a great staging point for further exploration. Mars would benefit greatly from increasing CO2 in the atmosphere so eventually we can move the majority of carbon-heavy manufacturing there and make it a terraforming benefit rather than a problem.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  We can't stop ourselves from trashing this planet. I don't know why people think we would be more succesful elsewhere.
  - aeternum 6y ago
    One organism's trash is another's habitat. None of us would be around if the early cyanobacteria hadn't polluted the earth with oxygen.
    - glial 6y ago
      That might be the strangest apologetics for pollution that I’ve ever seen.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > Seems like the best risk mitigation strategy is to become multi-planetary. No, scifi fanboi. That doesn't follow at all.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    Since I agree, but you didn't bother to give a counter argument... Given the wealth and power of the richest nations on earth today, I think it's entirely possible to establish colonies on other planets, that are maintained indefinitely, as long as the will to do it exists. However, I don't think in the foreseeable future, that these colonies could make an iota of difference to the probability of the human species surviving, until they can incorporate a completely independent supply chain of everything needed for human existence, and some kind of adequate ecosystem as well. Where do you get the nuts and bolts, the potting soil, the hypodermic needles, the aluminum and steel, the fertilizer...? Shipping everything from earth means you're no different from an Antarctic research station. I don't think people who believe in near term colonization of space have grappled with the necessity of earth and its billions of inhabitants to support the lifestyle of the most well off. Anything, again, in the foreseeable future is going to be like a bigger, better ISS. My guess is building up a sustainable colony from the ground up has to start with biotech and/or nanotech way beyond anything we have now. To live elsewhere, we'll have to become the indigenous aliens that don't already exist there. You have to have the ability to fall back to stone age tech, before your high tech is firmly rooted.
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      > Given the wealth and power of the richest nations on earth today With a limitless budget, you could send dozens of people to live on Mars. But they would likely die from a thousand little cuts (rocket failures, vitamin deficiencies, air leaks, primitive medical help, it's endless) since you're basically duplicating an earth environment. Or they could just sit around waiting for the next supply ship. We like to think that people are hardy pioneers, but most Americans stopped being tough farmers after WW2. (The press interviews with the Mars volunteers showed they were maladjusted on earth, and probably mentally ill.) I personally don't care if astronauts die on missions, because that's the risk they signed up for, but apparently other people do. And sending people on what is likely a one-way trip is something to be discussed beforehand. As an example, Shuttle engineers estimated the loss likelihood at 1/100 per mission, but managers 1/10,000 and couldn't justify manned flights with the engineers' estimate. The actual number was 1.6/100. The Biosphere project, the Space Shuttle, our lack of oceanic exploration all don't bode well for our readiness to colonize another planet. Reading scifi about going to Mars isn't the same as reality.
theonemind 6y ago
Do people actually care enough about "threats to humanity's potential" to actually support this kind of thing? I imagine more people would say they care than would actually want to pay tax dollars towards it.
- tluyben2 6y ago
  People care about #1 and the close relatives (very close usually); the rest is nice to say you care at parties and people might even want to contribute to it if the are either filthy rich anyway or get paid to do so (or both). There are exceptions (covid doctors/nurses most notably the last months; although I personally know doctors (and I only know 3) who all refused to work on the frontlines as ... looking out for #1), but in general, no-one wants to pay/help unless they get screwed themselves (Boris Johnson with covid as an example) which then humbles them (hopefully). Most of the rich countries' people are healthy (although it seems the US(and UK lately?) is trying to change that with obesity, diabetes being so prevalent?) so it's easy to think ; screw that, I will never get anything so I'm not paying taxes or doing anything for those 'lazy sods'. Until they get something. I think covid is not (yet ...) bad enough to change that way of thinking; especially here in europe (without the uk) there is strong pressure against helping 'lazy people' (between '' because they are not lazy generally, it's just inequality) with handouts, even though many rich people suffered first hand through how fast you can go from healthy to a complete wreck (or dead). The scare (I hope a scare will be enough..) needs to be far worse than this; the people who lived through WOII are dying off (faster with covid) so most people in the western world hardly lived through any real trauma in general. Imho also the reason words like 'trauma' are now used in completely wrong ways; people getting traumatised by, on a war or 'spanish flu' type pandemic scale, things that mean really not much at all. This is great because it means we live in prosperity (in the west!), however we are not prepared, at all for any larger calamity. And we forgot the calamities of yore (not sure if they still teach history in schools; I have a bad feeling it's not very ... well done) so it's easy to focus on the direct family and say 'f you!' to the rest of the world. I don't think that will change unless there is a real unifying event, far worse than this. Unfortunately it might come as the 2nd or 3rd wave of covid. And if not, as #1, I hope to be dead when that finally happens. But it will happen and we won't be prepared at all because our governments love dismantling things 'we don't need' (do we even have an army of any significance in the EU?) to save money and memory is really short for the 'bad things'.
yboris 6y ago
Without paywall: http://archive.is/SH3EU http://archive.is/SH3EU The article mentions Toby Ord and his The Precipice - I think a must-read book: https://theprecipice.com/ https://theprecipice.com/
LockAndLol 6y ago
Scientists have been basically screaming at the public since the 60s or so. 60 years later, people still don't take climate change seriously enough for the majority to vote in politicians who care about it. Just look at how we're actually having protests against something as simple as staying inside. We can think better about existential risks but that won't help if we don't actually take action. Given our track record, my bet is that barely anything will be done. Not enough people care.

14 points by jkuria 6y ago

The article manages to describe tail risk without using the term, and the author avoids mentioning Nasim Taleb, the current leading author/speaker on low probability/high risk events, so-called Black Swans. I suppose Taleb has offended enough people at this point to earn this treatment. Instead Nick Bostrom gets a nod for his sci-fi singularity fantasies.

rramadass 6y ago
Am i the only one who really likes Taleb and his aggressive approach ? :-) I couldn't care less about "Offended feelings" of charlatans, posers and fakes. Given the mess that the so-called "people in charge" have made of everything i wish more academics/intelligentsia were as aggressive as him in calling out mistakes/errors in our patterns of thought and force us to face them.

redis_mlc 6y ago

What, like relying on the CCP for our pharmaceutical, mfg. and rare earth processing? Maybe something like that?

aeternum 6y ago

Seems like the best risk mitigation strategy is to become multi-planetary. We would eliminate the vast majority of existential risks.

gregjor 6y ago
That much is obvious, but can we get there before a catastrophe wipes us out or sets us back hundreds of years? Colonizing other planets is not going to happen in our lifetimes or in my grandchildren's lifetimes. We don't even have colonies under the oceans yet. Every new environment (planet) will have different risks, so colonizing is a hedge, not a guarantee. If you look at the history of colonizing the New World, Europeans had many failures, and they weren't even leaving the planet. We can expect similar high failure rates colonizing other planets.
- aeternum 6y ago
  It will be difficult but that didn't stop those colonizing the new world and it shouldn't stop us. The universe has near infinite resources, why continue to fight over the finite resources on earth?
  - gregjor 6y ago
    The resources are far away, we have no way to get to them right now. Will we reach those resources before we run out on this planet? Before a catastrophe wipes us out? Who knows. By comparison sailing across the oceans seems trivial.
    - aeternum 6y ago
      We have the technology even with chemical rockets to get to Mars in 30-100 days depending on deltaV and payload. That's on par with the time required to sail across the ocean. Our track record of humans surviving space journeys is also much better than the survival probability of those early ocean voyages. Sailing across the ocean seems trivial now because we did it often and perfected the technology. We can do the same with space travel.
      - gregjor 6y ago
        And then what? Supposing humans can survive a trip to Mars — far more dangerous than crossing an ocean — can we bring any resources back in meaningful quantities? Can we establish colonies and industry? Not now, not anytime soon. Like I already wrote, obviously we increase long-term survival chances as a species by spreading out. Mars is orders of magnitude less hospitable than Virginia or Mexico in the 15th century, though. Huge problems to overcome. In the meantime the odds of some catastrophe get worse.
        aeternum 6y ago
        We can manufacture rocket fuel on Mars. The low gravity may provide unique industrial opportunities and the weak gravity well allows Mars or the moon to be a great staging point for further exploration. Mars would benefit greatly from increasing CO2 in the atmosphere so eventually we can move the majority of carbon-heavy manufacturing there and make it a terraforming benefit rather than a problem.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
We can't stop ourselves from trashing this planet. I don't know why people think we would be more succesful elsewhere.
- aeternum 6y ago
  One organism's trash is another's habitat. None of us would be around if the early cyanobacteria hadn't polluted the earth with oxygen.
  - glial 6y ago
    That might be the strangest apologetics for pollution that I’ve ever seen.
redis_mlc 6y ago
> Seems like the best risk mitigation strategy is to become multi-planetary. No, scifi fanboi. That doesn't follow at all.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  Since I agree, but you didn't bother to give a counter argument... Given the wealth and power of the richest nations on earth today, I think it's entirely possible to establish colonies on other planets, that are maintained indefinitely, as long as the will to do it exists. However, I don't think in the foreseeable future, that these colonies could make an iota of difference to the probability of the human species surviving, until they can incorporate a completely independent supply chain of everything needed for human existence, and some kind of adequate ecosystem as well. Where do you get the nuts and bolts, the potting soil, the hypodermic needles, the aluminum and steel, the fertilizer...? Shipping everything from earth means you're no different from an Antarctic research station. I don't think people who believe in near term colonization of space have grappled with the necessity of earth and its billions of inhabitants to support the lifestyle of the most well off. Anything, again, in the foreseeable future is going to be like a bigger, better ISS. My guess is building up a sustainable colony from the ground up has to start with biotech and/or nanotech way beyond anything we have now. To live elsewhere, we'll have to become the indigenous aliens that don't already exist there. You have to have the ability to fall back to stone age tech, before your high tech is firmly rooted.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    > Given the wealth and power of the richest nations on earth today With a limitless budget, you could send dozens of people to live on Mars. But they would likely die from a thousand little cuts (rocket failures, vitamin deficiencies, air leaks, primitive medical help, it's endless) since you're basically duplicating an earth environment. Or they could just sit around waiting for the next supply ship. We like to think that people are hardy pioneers, but most Americans stopped being tough farmers after WW2. (The press interviews with the Mars volunteers showed they were maladjusted on earth, and probably mentally ill.) I personally don't care if astronauts die on missions, because that's the risk they signed up for, but apparently other people do. And sending people on what is likely a one-way trip is something to be discussed beforehand. As an example, Shuttle engineers estimated the loss likelihood at 1/100 per mission, but managers 1/10,000 and couldn't justify manned flights with the engineers' estimate. The actual number was 1.6/100. The Biosphere project, the Space Shuttle, our lack of oceanic exploration all don't bode well for our readiness to colonize another planet. Reading scifi about going to Mars isn't the same as reality.

theonemind 6y ago

Do people actually care enough about "threats to humanity's potential" to actually support this kind of thing? I imagine more people would say they care than would actually want to pay tax dollars towards it.

tluyben2 6y ago
People care about #1 and the close relatives (very close usually); the rest is nice to say you care at parties and people might even want to contribute to it if the are either filthy rich anyway or get paid to do so (or both). There are exceptions (covid doctors/nurses most notably the last months; although I personally know doctors (and I only know 3) who all refused to work on the frontlines as ... looking out for #1), but in general, no-one wants to pay/help unless they get screwed themselves (Boris Johnson with covid as an example) which then humbles them (hopefully). Most of the rich countries' people are healthy (although it seems the US(and UK lately?) is trying to change that with obesity, diabetes being so prevalent?) so it's easy to think ; screw that, I will never get anything so I'm not paying taxes or doing anything for those 'lazy sods'. Until they get something. I think covid is not (yet ...) bad enough to change that way of thinking; especially here in europe (without the uk) there is strong pressure against helping 'lazy people' (between '' because they are not lazy generally, it's just inequality) with handouts, even though many rich people suffered first hand through how fast you can go from healthy to a complete wreck (or dead). The scare (I hope a scare will be enough..) needs to be far worse than this; the people who lived through WOII are dying off (faster with covid) so most people in the western world hardly lived through any real trauma in general. Imho also the reason words like 'trauma' are now used in completely wrong ways; people getting traumatised by, on a war or 'spanish flu' type pandemic scale, things that mean really not much at all. This is great because it means we live in prosperity (in the west!), however we are not prepared, at all for any larger calamity. And we forgot the calamities of yore (not sure if they still teach history in schools; I have a bad feeling it's not very ... well done) so it's easy to focus on the direct family and say 'f you!' to the rest of the world. I don't think that will change unless there is a real unifying event, far worse than this. Unfortunately it might come as the 2nd or 3rd wave of covid. And if not, as #1, I hope to be dead when that finally happens. But it will happen and we won't be prepared at all because our governments love dismantling things 'we don't need' (do we even have an army of any significance in the EU?) to save money and memory is really short for the 'bad things'.

yboris 6y ago

Without paywall: http://archive.is/SH3EU http://archive.is/SH3EU The article mentions Toby Ord and his The Precipice - I think a must-read book: https://theprecipice.com/ https://theprecipice.com/

LockAndLol 6y ago

Scientists have been basically screaming at the public since the 60s or so. 60 years later, people still don't take climate change seriously enough for the majority to vote in politicians who care about it. Just look at how we're actually having protests against something as simple as staying inside. We can think better about existential risks but that won't help if we don't actually take action. Given our track record, my bet is that barely anything will be done. Not enough people care.