3 ms·

I agree the details don't matter, which is precisely why there's no reason to believe (2) or (3) is universal other than that it's our own experience. You are

I agree the details don't matter, which is precisely why there's no reason to believe (2) or (3) is universal other than that it's our own experience. You are taking our details and extrapolating them to a universal filter. Most people die of old age. A very small number of people die of being hit by rocks falling from the sky. Only one of these is a broad filter for who survives into the next century that everyone has to go through, but if you only knew the life of one person you could not say with certainty which one it was.

lisper 4y ago
That's true, except that it is plausible that any major new source of energy is going to disrupt the previously prevailing equilibrium somehow, and it will do so very rapidly on evolutionary time scales. So yes, I'm extrapolating from one data point. But I think it's a plausible extrapolation based on a plausible model of evolution and ecosystems in general. Call it a hypothesis. Nothing would please me more than to have it disproved by evidence.
- stormbrew 4y ago
  > it is plausible that any major new source of energy is going to disrupt the previously prevailing equilibrium somehow Why? Anyways even if I grant that, we then get to ask why a change in equilibrium universally results in catastrophe? Certainly the weeds in my unkempt garden would disagree that the lack of equilibrium there is a bad thing. To be honest even the hypothesis that where we are now was inevitable for us seems sketchy and unsupportable. What if we'd had a nuclear race instead of a space race? We actually found alternatives to fossil fuel long before we reached a crisis point.
  - lisper 4y ago
    These are fair questions. > Why? Because releasing energy is invariably accompanied by change of some sort. If that energy is released as part of an intentional effort by a technological civilization, then that change is also going to be intentional. The entities releasing the energy are doing it in order to produce change. That's the whole point. Note that the situation we are facing here on earth is actually not what you would expect from that dynamic. Our current climate change is not directly related to the changes we've unleashed with the industrial revolution. It's an ancillary side-effect, and a particularly annoying one. But even if we didn't have CO2 to worry about, sooner or later we would cause some other change that would disrupt the previously prevailing equilibrium. In fact, we've already done that in numerous smaller ways. Lots of species and non-technological civilizations have already gone extinct here on earth. The fundamental problem is that industrial revolutions produce exponential growth, which is not sustainable. Sooner or later that growth has to stop. (Even an arbitrarily advanced civilization is constrained by the speed of light to grow at a maximum rate of N^2 in the long run.) So either we have to decide to stop it or the laws of physics will do it for us, and the former seems unlikely. > why a change in equilibrium universally results in catastrophe? It doesn't necessarily, though it is very likely to be a catastrophe for someone. In any major upheaval there will be winners and losers. The reason I think it's likely is that there will always be a period where new technologies cause living standards to improve dramatically, and that induces techno-optimism, a belief that technology will always be able to solve any problem that happens to come down the pike. Techno-optimism will cause civilizations to go closer and closer to the edge of the existential precipice because the Malthusians warning about existential threats will always be empirically wrong until it's too late. > We actually found alternatives to fossil fuel long before we reached a crisis point. Yes, that's true. And it's quite possible that on a different trajectory it would have taken 1000 years or 10,000 years to reach the crisis point instead of just a few hundred. But what is killing us now is not CO2 per se, but rather techno-optimism and the prisoner's dilemma. No one wants to sacrifice their standard of living for the greater good of future generations. And that seems to me to be a universal dynamic.
    - stormbrew 4y ago
      But now we're not only relying on physical phenomena but on psychological ones and there lies the typical mind fallacy writ large. The prisoner's dilemma, technological overreach, etc are things characteristic of human brains but there's no reason to believe they're universal. It's not even clear that those psychological factors are universal across human history, since we only really know much about a few thousand years of it.
      - lisper 4y ago
        > there's no reason to believe they're universal Unfortunately you are mistaken about that. The PD is a fundamental feature of evolution. It is ubiquitous in biology. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene
        stormbrew 4y ago
        ... On earth. Again, this is a sample of one. But also, those articles aren't about facts, they're about books. Books that make an argument, maybe even a compelling one, but still just an argument. There's plenty of stuff in both those wikipedia articles about the rough edges around the ideas they present. In so far as they "prove" anything they only prove that these things are descriptive of the reality we perceive -- it takes a lot more to prove universality than mere observations of the nearby world.
        lisper 4y ago
        > those articles aren't about facts, they're about books I linked to the articles out of convenience. I could just as easily have linked to the Amazon listings for the books. > they only prove that these things are descriptive of the reality we perceive Maybe you should actually read them before you start pontificating about what they do and do not prove.

lisper 4y ago

That's true, except that it is plausible that any major new source of energy is going to disrupt the previously prevailing equilibrium somehow, and it will do so very rapidly on evolutionary time scales. So yes, I'm extrapolating from one data point. But I think it's a plausible extrapolation based on a plausible model of evolution and ecosystems in general. Call it a hypothesis. Nothing would please me more than to have it disproved by evidence.

stormbrew 4y ago
> it is plausible that any major new source of energy is going to disrupt the previously prevailing equilibrium somehow Why? Anyways even if I grant that, we then get to ask why a change in equilibrium universally results in catastrophe? Certainly the weeds in my unkempt garden would disagree that the lack of equilibrium there is a bad thing. To be honest even the hypothesis that where we are now was inevitable for us seems sketchy and unsupportable. What if we'd had a nuclear race instead of a space race? We actually found alternatives to fossil fuel long before we reached a crisis point.
- lisper 4y ago
  These are fair questions. > Why? Because releasing energy is invariably accompanied by change of some sort. If that energy is released as part of an intentional effort by a technological civilization, then that change is also going to be intentional. The entities releasing the energy are doing it in order to produce change. That's the whole point. Note that the situation we are facing here on earth is actually not what you would expect from that dynamic. Our current climate change is not directly related to the changes we've unleashed with the industrial revolution. It's an ancillary side-effect, and a particularly annoying one. But even if we didn't have CO2 to worry about, sooner or later we would cause some other change that would disrupt the previously prevailing equilibrium. In fact, we've already done that in numerous smaller ways. Lots of species and non-technological civilizations have already gone extinct here on earth. The fundamental problem is that industrial revolutions produce exponential growth, which is not sustainable. Sooner or later that growth has to stop. (Even an arbitrarily advanced civilization is constrained by the speed of light to grow at a maximum rate of N^2 in the long run.) So either we have to decide to stop it or the laws of physics will do it for us, and the former seems unlikely. > why a change in equilibrium universally results in catastrophe? It doesn't necessarily, though it is very likely to be a catastrophe for someone. In any major upheaval there will be winners and losers. The reason I think it's likely is that there will always be a period where new technologies cause living standards to improve dramatically, and that induces techno-optimism, a belief that technology will always be able to solve any problem that happens to come down the pike. Techno-optimism will cause civilizations to go closer and closer to the edge of the existential precipice because the Malthusians warning about existential threats will always be empirically wrong until it's too late. > We actually found alternatives to fossil fuel long before we reached a crisis point. Yes, that's true. And it's quite possible that on a different trajectory it would have taken 1000 years or 10,000 years to reach the crisis point instead of just a few hundred. But what is killing us now is not CO2 per se, but rather techno-optimism and the prisoner's dilemma. No one wants to sacrifice their standard of living for the greater good of future generations. And that seems to me to be a universal dynamic.
  - stormbrew 4y ago
    But now we're not only relying on physical phenomena but on psychological ones and there lies the typical mind fallacy writ large. The prisoner's dilemma, technological overreach, etc are things characteristic of human brains but there's no reason to believe they're universal. It's not even clear that those psychological factors are universal across human history, since we only really know much about a few thousand years of it.
    - lisper 4y ago
      > there's no reason to believe they're universal Unfortunately you are mistaken about that. The PD is a fundamental feature of evolution. It is ubiquitous in biology. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene
      - stormbrew 4y ago
        ... On earth. Again, this is a sample of one. But also, those articles aren't about facts, they're about books. Books that make an argument, maybe even a compelling one, but still just an argument. There's plenty of stuff in both those wikipedia articles about the rough edges around the ideas they present. In so far as they "prove" anything they only prove that these things are descriptive of the reality we perceive -- it takes a lot more to prove universality than mere observations of the nearby world.
        lisper 4y ago
        > those articles aren't about facts, they're about books I linked to the articles out of convenience. I could just as easily have linked to the Amazon listings for the books. > they only prove that these things are descriptive of the reality we perceive Maybe you should actually read them before you start pontificating about what they do and do not prove.