4 ms·

Wouldn’t nuclear weapons or even plastics be a black ball already? Humanity is not homogeneous, we will always react to new inventions or tools differently ,

Wouldn’t nuclear weapons or even plastics be a black ball already? Humanity is not homogeneous, we will always react to new inventions or tools differently , many will use it positively some won’t . Short of weapons of mass destruction I am not sure anything else will destroy civilization itself .

ALittleLight 4y ago
No, the black ball is a technology that, once invented, humanity cannot survive. Nuclear weapons have been invented and humanity is surviving. Same with plastics. A black ball would be like - suppose nuclear weapons ignited the atmosphere. We test the first nuke, it ignites the atmosphere, a global fire storm consumes all breathable oxygen, kills all plants and everyone on the surface and everything else suffocates shortly after. Plastics aren't even close to this level of harm.
- neuronic 4y ago
  > Same with plastics Plastics are playing the long game. They have to turn into micro- and nanoplastics first and may then enact undesired, unforeseen biological functions, just like BPA [1]. Not even talking about weaponizing this stuff... [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21605673/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21605673/
  - ALittleLight 4y ago
    It seems implausible to me that plastics are going to kill all humanity. If the paper you linked makes that case, then I will read it, but I didn't get that from skimming the abstract.
- michaelt 4y ago
  I guess people are getting confused because in terms of risk-of-destroying-humanity, nuclear weapons seem higher risk than DALL-E.
  - PoignardAzur 4y ago
    Nuclear weapons alone aren't an existential risk. There are far fewer nuclear weapons in the world than there are major cities, among other things. Dall-E isn't an x-risk, but an advanced AI might be (though a lot of people have their opinion on that part).
    - Art9681 4y ago
      This is news to me. A "modern" nuclear weapon is much more powerful than the ones we recall. The difference between what was used in WWII and what was developed after is astounding. I was under the impression the US nuclear arsenal alone can wipe out humanity. Its not the bomb itself that would kill most people. It's what comes after. And thats just ONE bomb. There's a reason nuclear armed countries show restraint, as well as aggressors against those countries. Its not a war, its suicide.
      - laverya 4y ago
        > A "modern" nuclear weapon is much more powerful than the ones we recall. The nuclear weapons deployed during the 60s and 70s were far more powerful than the ones of today. Instead of multi-megaton yields being the default, now most warheads are in the 100-300kt range. (This is largely due to improved accuracy reducing the size of a warhead required to take out a target) That means 2-3x the damage radius of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs at 10-15kt. (radius does not scale linearly with yield) > I was under the impression the US nuclear arsenal alone can wipe out humanity. Even if you assume 1 nuke = 1 city, the US only has ~5k warheads. According to [0], city number 3000 has 141k inhabitants. Now, indirect effects are going to kill a LOT more (no more industrialized agriculture or global supply chains), but that'll still only get you to 99% at most. (And that's in this extremely contrived scenario where it only takes one nuke to kill Beijing, and not a few dozen) 0: https://data.mongabay.com/cities_pop_03.htm https://data.mongabay.com/cities_pop_03.htm
        fragmede 4y ago
        There's also Nuclear winter to contend with. 100 or more cities being destroyed throwing dust and soot into the air is enough to lead to problems with food production, leading to widespread famine. Still not enough to eliminate human life entirely, but severely unpleasant to undergo. For that, you'd need up look into a significantly larger explosion, enough to crack the Earth's crust and unbalance its orbit. It might be easier to deorbit the moon and crash it into the Earth.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  >> Wouldn’t nuclear weapons or even plastics be a black ball already? > No, the black ball is a technology that, once invented, humanity cannot survive. Nuclear weapons have been invented and humanity is surviving. Same with plastics. I don't think that definition is a good one. Technological civilization [1] has survived nuclear weapons for ~80 years, but there's no guarantee it will survive it for another 80 years, let alone forever. It seems like these "black balls" should be though of like time bombs, there are at least two variables: how much destruction it will cause when it goes off AND the delay time before that happens. We shouldn't confuse a dangerous technology with a long delay time for a safe technology. My intuition tells me that there will probably be nuclear war at some point over the next 1,000+ years. [1] I don't think nuclear weapons can make humanity extinct, so long as there are still little poorly-connected subsistence communities in remote areas. However, if The Market, manages to extend its tentacles into every human community, we're probably fucked.
  - ALittleLight 4y ago
    The term comes from Nick Bostrum's article on The Vulnerable World [1]. In it he defines a black ball like this "a black ball: a technology that invariably or by default destroys the civilization that invents it". Nuclear weapons don't invariably destroy civilization because we could just imagine that we keep using them as is - that's not impossible. Also, Bostrum considers nuclear weapons explicitly and calls them a gray ball. 1 - https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      > "a black ball: a technology that invariably or by default destroys the civilization that invents it" I think I see the issue, and I think that summary leaves an important facet out that the paper talks about. It would probably be better as "a black ball: a civilization-destroying technology that cannot be regulated, so invariably or by default destroys the civilization that invents it"
- yreg 4y ago
  >Nuclear weapons have been invented and humanity is surviving. Isn't the point of the discussion started by PoignardAzur about how we deal with such technology after it is pulled out of the bag? If you define black ball technology as fundamentaly uncontainable, then there is no point in talking about our practices of restricting access to new tech.

ALittleLight 4y ago

No, the black ball is a technology that, once invented, humanity cannot survive. Nuclear weapons have been invented and humanity is surviving. Same with plastics. A black ball would be like - suppose nuclear weapons ignited the atmosphere. We test the first nuke, it ignites the atmosphere, a global fire storm consumes all breathable oxygen, kills all plants and everyone on the surface and everything else suffocates shortly after. Plastics aren't even close to this level of harm.

neuronic 4y ago
> Same with plastics Plastics are playing the long game. They have to turn into micro- and nanoplastics first and may then enact undesired, unforeseen biological functions, just like BPA [1]. Not even talking about weaponizing this stuff... [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21605673/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21605673/
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  It seems implausible to me that plastics are going to kill all humanity. If the paper you linked makes that case, then I will read it, but I didn't get that from skimming the abstract.
michaelt 4y ago
I guess people are getting confused because in terms of risk-of-destroying-humanity, nuclear weapons seem higher risk than DALL-E.
- PoignardAzur 4y ago
  Nuclear weapons alone aren't an existential risk. There are far fewer nuclear weapons in the world than there are major cities, among other things. Dall-E isn't an x-risk, but an advanced AI might be (though a lot of people have their opinion on that part).
  - Art9681 4y ago
    This is news to me. A "modern" nuclear weapon is much more powerful than the ones we recall. The difference between what was used in WWII and what was developed after is astounding. I was under the impression the US nuclear arsenal alone can wipe out humanity. Its not the bomb itself that would kill most people. It's what comes after. And thats just ONE bomb. There's a reason nuclear armed countries show restraint, as well as aggressors against those countries. Its not a war, its suicide.
    - laverya 4y ago
      > A "modern" nuclear weapon is much more powerful than the ones we recall. The nuclear weapons deployed during the 60s and 70s were far more powerful than the ones of today. Instead of multi-megaton yields being the default, now most warheads are in the 100-300kt range. (This is largely due to improved accuracy reducing the size of a warhead required to take out a target) That means 2-3x the damage radius of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs at 10-15kt. (radius does not scale linearly with yield) > I was under the impression the US nuclear arsenal alone can wipe out humanity. Even if you assume 1 nuke = 1 city, the US only has ~5k warheads. According to [0], city number 3000 has 141k inhabitants. Now, indirect effects are going to kill a LOT more (no more industrialized agriculture or global supply chains), but that'll still only get you to 99% at most. (And that's in this extremely contrived scenario where it only takes one nuke to kill Beijing, and not a few dozen) 0: https://data.mongabay.com/cities_pop_03.htm https://data.mongabay.com/cities_pop_03.htm
      - fragmede 4y ago
        There's also Nuclear winter to contend with. 100 or more cities being destroyed throwing dust and soot into the air is enough to lead to problems with food production, leading to widespread famine. Still not enough to eliminate human life entirely, but severely unpleasant to undergo. For that, you'd need up look into a significantly larger explosion, enough to crack the Earth's crust and unbalance its orbit. It might be easier to deorbit the moon and crash it into the Earth.
tablespoon 4y ago
>> Wouldn’t nuclear weapons or even plastics be a black ball already? > No, the black ball is a technology that, once invented, humanity cannot survive. Nuclear weapons have been invented and humanity is surviving. Same with plastics. I don't think that definition is a good one. Technological civilization [1] has survived nuclear weapons for ~80 years, but there's no guarantee it will survive it for another 80 years, let alone forever. It seems like these "black balls" should be though of like time bombs, there are at least two variables: how much destruction it will cause when it goes off AND the delay time before that happens. We shouldn't confuse a dangerous technology with a long delay time for a safe technology. My intuition tells me that there will probably be nuclear war at some point over the next 1,000+ years. [1] I don't think nuclear weapons can make humanity extinct, so long as there are still little poorly-connected subsistence communities in remote areas. However, if The Market, manages to extend its tentacles into every human community, we're probably fucked.
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  The term comes from Nick Bostrum's article on The Vulnerable World [1]. In it he defines a black ball like this "a black ball: a technology that invariably or by default destroys the civilization that invents it". Nuclear weapons don't invariably destroy civilization because we could just imagine that we keep using them as is - that's not impossible. Also, Bostrum considers nuclear weapons explicitly and calls them a gray ball. 1 - https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > "a black ball: a technology that invariably or by default destroys the civilization that invents it" I think I see the issue, and I think that summary leaves an important facet out that the paper talks about. It would probably be better as "a black ball: a civilization-destroying technology that cannot be regulated, so invariably or by default destroys the civilization that invents it"
yreg 4y ago
>Nuclear weapons have been invented and humanity is surviving. Isn't the point of the discussion started by PoignardAzur about how we deal with such technology after it is pulled out of the bag? If you define black ball technology as fundamentaly uncontainable, then there is no point in talking about our practices of restricting access to new tech.