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If you have the choice between taking an action that may potentially save billions and billions of future lives, or taking an action that may have an extremely
by dotsam 5y ago
If you have the choice between taking an action that may potentially save billions and billions of future lives, or taking an action that may have an extremely marginal impact on a very bad, and yet not absolutely apocalyptic, climate change disaster, a longtermist would probably encourage you to maximise your impact by focusing at least some of your resources on preventing the more deadly scenarios (though not necessarily to the exclusion of dealing with climate change).
- ouid 5y agoSo the argument is that the probability of humanity achieving galactic sustainability is independent of humanity achieving local near term sustainability? This argument needs to take a better statistics class.
- dotsam 5y agoClimate change is likely to result in appalling tragedies of widespread suffering, but it is perhaps less likely to result in the permanent and total collapse of human civilisation. To that extent, it is locally sustainable (but at a grotesque cost). I don't think the argument is to not do anything about climate change. It is to continue to work with urgency to tackle climate change _and_ to do something appropriate about risks that could wipe out civilisation completely, where we have reason to believe our actions could to some degree mitigate the risks.