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I like Max, and he's definitely a very smart guy. He knows how AI works. Yet I still think this argument is like snake oil in this way: 1. AI kills us all; M

I like Max, and he's definitely a very smart guy. He knows how AI works. Yet I still think this argument is like snake oil in this way: 1. AI kills us all; Max: "See, I told you! ayeee!" 2. AI integrates smoothly into Society. Max: "Sure was good I got you worried about the risks, so we avoided them!" 3. AI keeps improving, little by little, causing hiccups along the way but nothing disastrous; Max: "Just wait, there will be doooom!" He can't lose with this type of argument. Heads he wins, tails he wins.

spacetime_cmplx 4y ago
You could apply the same logic to anyone ringing the alarm bells about climate change (or alarm bells in general). Just because snake oil is usually unfalsifiable doesn't mean everything _currently_ unfalsified is snake oil.
- 93po 4y ago
  To be fair a large amount of the doomsaying around climate change has been proven to be hyperbole and wrong. The data around climate change is very real, but the most vocal people about it have been saying stuff like cities being underwater and ice caps melting and extreme weather like never before seen, and all in the timescale of 10-20 years. And this is going back to the 60s. We're now 60 years in the future and things are basically the same.
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    Climate change doesn't impact every part of the world equally. If the temperature rises a couple of degrees in the US Midwest, it's probably not going to be catastrohpic. If it rises a couple of degrees in Bangladesh, it's going to make the place unlivable. Personally, living in a hot tropical country, I've experienced weather patterns becoming weirder and weirder, and generally trending towards way too hot. Last year, the summer was so long and dry and hot that I really felt that I can't physically live here any longer. And that's when I had the luxury of AC - something the vast majority of my country can't afford. So yeah, it's easy to dismiss climate change if you live in a cold climate. It's much more real in warm, dry countries.
Kinrany 4y ago
Huh? In 1 he dies. In 2 and 3 he becomes irrelevant eventually and can only claim credit to the extent his predictions were true, while fighting off all the actual snake oil salesmen claiming that all of this was obvious.
- Kinrany 4y ago
  Perhaps a better response is that this seems like a fully general argument against listening to any warnings ever.
darkwater 4y ago
Well, just like in every other case where acting to prevent something will avoid that something to happen. Accident prevention, quit smoking to avoid cancers, vaccines against a pandemic etc etc

spacetime_cmplx 4y ago

You could apply the same logic to anyone ringing the alarm bells about climate change (or alarm bells in general). Just because snake oil is usually unfalsifiable doesn't mean everything _currently_ unfalsified is snake oil.

93po 4y ago
To be fair a large amount of the doomsaying around climate change has been proven to be hyperbole and wrong. The data around climate change is very real, but the most vocal people about it have been saying stuff like cities being underwater and ice caps melting and extreme weather like never before seen, and all in the timescale of 10-20 years. And this is going back to the 60s. We're now 60 years in the future and things are basically the same.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Climate change doesn't impact every part of the world equally. If the temperature rises a couple of degrees in the US Midwest, it's probably not going to be catastrohpic. If it rises a couple of degrees in Bangladesh, it's going to make the place unlivable. Personally, living in a hot tropical country, I've experienced weather patterns becoming weirder and weirder, and generally trending towards way too hot. Last year, the summer was so long and dry and hot that I really felt that I can't physically live here any longer. And that's when I had the luxury of AC - something the vast majority of my country can't afford. So yeah, it's easy to dismiss climate change if you live in a cold climate. It's much more real in warm, dry countries.

Kinrany 4y ago

Huh? In 1 he dies. In 2 and 3 he becomes irrelevant eventually and can only claim credit to the extent his predictions were true, while fighting off all the actual snake oil salesmen claiming that all of this was obvious.

Kinrany 4y ago
Perhaps a better response is that this seems like a fully general argument against listening to any warnings ever.

darkwater 4y ago

Well, just like in every other case where acting to prevent something will avoid that something to happen. Accident prevention, quit smoking to avoid cancers, vaccines against a pandemic etc etc