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Global warming literally will kill everyone if it isn't stopped. The fact that you're more worried about AI than global warming is a real HN moment.

michaelmrose 3y ago
There is no reason to believe this is so. A less advantageous climate will almost certainly in any reasonable projections kill/impoverish only some and in all probability a small minority of the human race unless we under stress decide to kill the rest. No reasonable scientists are projecting human extinction and by positing it as such you are erecting a trivially demolished straw man for the opposition to mock.
travisjungroth 3y ago
Source? Every model I’ve seen from scientists is that climate change has a very high probability of killing a minority of people. I’m not acting like that’s a small amount. “Minority” would be tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people. I think it will be one of the greatest causes of human suffering. But it’s not an existential threat, it’s a different category.
- mcguire 3y ago
  Look up "Runaway greenhouse effect". Think, "Venus". Is that likely? No. Is that more or less likely than a rogue superintelligent AI? Well, we have one example of the first and none of the second...
  - lamontcg 3y ago
    That's at the extreme of unlikely. The carbon that we're digging up was in the atmosphere before, it has just been sequestered, we're returning to a state that the Planet has seen before. Across the entire Earth's history we're still at a fairly cold point and a long way from "Greenhouse Earth" and the temperatures at the Eocene Optimum. And according to the IPCC: "a 'runaway greenhouse effect'—analogous to [that of] Venus—appears to have virtually no chance of being induced by anthropogenic activities"
    - Freebytes 3y ago
      If the Earth warms significantly, we could have a situation where it triggers an ice age. (There are mechanisms for this to happen.) If the surface temperature of the water surface rises to a very high level, we could also have hypercanes.
    - mcguire 3y ago
      More or less unlikely than a superintelligent AI converting all of us into paperclips?
digging 3y ago
> The fact that you're more worried about AI than global warming is a real HN moment. This isn't an opinion the GP comment expressed, you assumed it, which is a real reddit moment. People can be equally worried about two existential threats. Being tied to the train tracks and hearing a whistle (this is climate change) is terrifying, but it doesn't mean you wouldn't care if somebody walked up and pointed a gun at you (this is AI, potentially). Either one's going to kill you.
waterheater 3y ago
Global warming may kill everyone...eventually. I remember reading articles from the 90s discussing scientific research predicting that the East Coast will be underwater by 2020. My point in highlighting that misprediction is to demonstrate the difficulty in knowing the precise effects of higher temperatures on a planet. AI has the possibility but not guarantee to kill everyone. We could shift to a lifestyle using electricity but avoiding modern computing technology. AI can be unplugged given sufficient will, whereas a planetary system cannot.

michaelmrose 3y ago

There is no reason to believe this is so. A less advantageous climate will almost certainly in any reasonable projections kill/impoverish only some and in all probability a small minority of the human race unless we under stress decide to kill the rest. No reasonable scientists are projecting human extinction and by positing it as such you are erecting a trivially demolished straw man for the opposition to mock.

travisjungroth 3y ago

Source? Every model I’ve seen from scientists is that climate change has a very high probability of killing a minority of people. I’m not acting like that’s a small amount. “Minority” would be tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people. I think it will be one of the greatest causes of human suffering. But it’s not an existential threat, it’s a different category.

mcguire 3y ago
Look up "Runaway greenhouse effect". Think, "Venus". Is that likely? No. Is that more or less likely than a rogue superintelligent AI? Well, we have one example of the first and none of the second...
- lamontcg 3y ago
  That's at the extreme of unlikely. The carbon that we're digging up was in the atmosphere before, it has just been sequestered, we're returning to a state that the Planet has seen before. Across the entire Earth's history we're still at a fairly cold point and a long way from "Greenhouse Earth" and the temperatures at the Eocene Optimum. And according to the IPCC: "a 'runaway greenhouse effect'—analogous to [that of] Venus—appears to have virtually no chance of being induced by anthropogenic activities"
  - Freebytes 3y ago
    If the Earth warms significantly, we could have a situation where it triggers an ice age. (There are mechanisms for this to happen.) If the surface temperature of the water surface rises to a very high level, we could also have hypercanes.
  - mcguire 3y ago
    More or less unlikely than a superintelligent AI converting all of us into paperclips?

digging 3y ago

> The fact that you're more worried about AI than global warming is a real HN moment. This isn't an opinion the GP comment expressed, you assumed it, which is a real reddit moment. People can be equally worried about two existential threats. Being tied to the train tracks and hearing a whistle (this is climate change) is terrifying, but it doesn't mean you wouldn't care if somebody walked up and pointed a gun at you (this is AI, potentially). Either one's going to kill you.

waterheater 3y ago

Global warming may kill everyone...eventually. I remember reading articles from the 90s discussing scientific research predicting that the East Coast will be underwater by 2020. My point in highlighting that misprediction is to demonstrate the difficulty in knowing the precise effects of higher temperatures on a planet. AI has the possibility but not guarantee to kill everyone. We could shift to a lifestyle using electricity but avoiding modern computing technology. AI can be unplugged given sufficient will, whereas a planetary system cannot.