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Risk-management of a risk for which there is evidence is not the same as picking among imaginary entities for which there is effectively no evidence. Plus, Pasc

Risk-management of a risk for which there is evidence is not the same as picking among imaginary entities for which there is effectively no evidence. Plus, Pascal's wager suffers from the issue that for every god X, there is a possible opposite god who really hates people who mistakenly believe in X. This offsets the value of believing in X. Evaluating the wager under that observation leaves you with a net belief change of nil. Contrariwise, there's no evidence of a countervailing benefit to global warming that offsets the possible risk of doing nothing about it. That said, I do have one issue with the argument in that one possible outcome of global warming has effectively infinite cost. That is when everyone dies. I do not know how to multiply (low probability) x (infinity). Maybe someone can explain how a rationalist would handle this case. (Actually, I don't think it's right to call this an "issue." Point of confusion is more accurate.)

InclinedPlane 13y ago
You're overlooking the opportunity cost that comes with spending effort and money on "forestalling climate change" today. Read my other post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6388344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6388344) for why this is likely an extremely bad idea.
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  Good point, I did overlook that. Pascal's wager is still way too dismissive of a weighing of evidenced costs and benefits.
- graeme 13y ago
  Your argument in the other post only makes sense if economic growth per capita continues. That's not inevitable. We've grown using fossil fuels since the industrial revolution. Those let us use the stored solar energy of millions of years. Wind, solar, etc allow us to use the solar energy from single year, and at least currently require fossil fuels to build. It's possible we'll find a way out of our predicament, but the rapid growth we've seen in the past three centuries is not necessarily good evidence for the continuance of such growth.
  - InclinedPlane 13y ago
    In effect you are saying that we have a better understanding of the long-term evolution of the climate than we do of the long-term evolution of Earth's economy. There is absolutely no evidence that this is the case and considerable evidence that the exact opposite is true.
    - DaniFong 13y ago
      I'd actually like to see the comparison. It seems to me that there is a case for us understanding the long-term evolution of climate. We have a decent record of atmospheric composition and temperature in ice cores, and, after all, we do know something about the effect of greenhouse gases -- the direct physics is not too complex. It's the feedback loops -- clouds, biology and so on, that are the challenge. Likewise with economics. But it seems that the details of the dismal science are even more turbulent...
      - InclinedPlane 13y ago
        > It's the feedback loops -- clouds, biology and so on, that are the challenge. There's a name for those systems. It's called "the climate".
    - Anderkent 13y ago
      >There is absolutely no evidence that this is the case and considerable evidence that the exact opposite is true. What kind of evidence? I've heard of no credible claims for future evolution of Earths economy... with perhaps the exception of R. Hansons rather informal blog posts.
- leot 13y ago
  So, you think the U.S. would be much poorer today if it had implemented tighter vehicle emission standards, as Europe did, in the 70s? Do you think human development requires Lincoln Navigator-sized cars with zippy acceleration? Would progress and wealth creation have been significantly impeded if it were more expensive for people to build massive homes in the desert? We get to make lots of choices. We get to decide how we spend our free time and what our preferences are. Much of GHG emissions are the product of relatively arbitrary (and often externality-exploiting) human druthers. It would be nice to see this fully quantified, but I suspect we would see a massive reduction in GHG emissions if we all just chose to value reading, soccer, hiking, and vegetarian food over Jetski-ing, NASCAR, motorbike touring, and meat at every meal; if 90% of the people driving < 17 MPG cars went to driving ones that did better than 28. CO2 emissions would go down a fair bit; how would human progress and wealth creation be hindered if our value system changed thusly?
smsm42 13y ago
Rationalist would first abandon that notion that cost of adjusting to different climate is infinite, as it flies in the face of all evidence - humans had adjusted to the very wide range of conditions - and would avoid promoting actions for which positive consequences can not be sufficiently substantiated but negative consequences are readily apparent. Once you postulate that global warming is the ultimate boogeyman which justifies any expense spent on preventing it, rationalism is going out of the window. One can not operate rationally within the framework that postulates irrational assumptions.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

You're overlooking the opportunity cost that comes with spending effort and money on "forestalling climate change" today. Read my other post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6388344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6388344) for why this is likely an extremely bad idea.

jamesaguilar 13y ago
Good point, I did overlook that. Pascal's wager is still way too dismissive of a weighing of evidenced costs and benefits.
graeme 13y ago
Your argument in the other post only makes sense if economic growth per capita continues. That's not inevitable. We've grown using fossil fuels since the industrial revolution. Those let us use the stored solar energy of millions of years. Wind, solar, etc allow us to use the solar energy from single year, and at least currently require fossil fuels to build. It's possible we'll find a way out of our predicament, but the rapid growth we've seen in the past three centuries is not necessarily good evidence for the continuance of such growth.
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  In effect you are saying that we have a better understanding of the long-term evolution of the climate than we do of the long-term evolution of Earth's economy. There is absolutely no evidence that this is the case and considerable evidence that the exact opposite is true.
  - DaniFong 13y ago
    I'd actually like to see the comparison. It seems to me that there is a case for us understanding the long-term evolution of climate. We have a decent record of atmospheric composition and temperature in ice cores, and, after all, we do know something about the effect of greenhouse gases -- the direct physics is not too complex. It's the feedback loops -- clouds, biology and so on, that are the challenge. Likewise with economics. But it seems that the details of the dismal science are even more turbulent...
    - InclinedPlane 13y ago
      > It's the feedback loops -- clouds, biology and so on, that are the challenge. There's a name for those systems. It's called "the climate".
  - Anderkent 13y ago
    >There is absolutely no evidence that this is the case and considerable evidence that the exact opposite is true. What kind of evidence? I've heard of no credible claims for future evolution of Earths economy... with perhaps the exception of R. Hansons rather informal blog posts.
leot 13y ago
So, you think the U.S. would be much poorer today if it had implemented tighter vehicle emission standards, as Europe did, in the 70s? Do you think human development requires Lincoln Navigator-sized cars with zippy acceleration? Would progress and wealth creation have been significantly impeded if it were more expensive for people to build massive homes in the desert? We get to make lots of choices. We get to decide how we spend our free time and what our preferences are. Much of GHG emissions are the product of relatively arbitrary (and often externality-exploiting) human druthers. It would be nice to see this fully quantified, but I suspect we would see a massive reduction in GHG emissions if we all just chose to value reading, soccer, hiking, and vegetarian food over Jetski-ing, NASCAR, motorbike touring, and meat at every meal; if 90% of the people driving < 17 MPG cars went to driving ones that did better than 28. CO2 emissions would go down a fair bit; how would human progress and wealth creation be hindered if our value system changed thusly?

smsm42 13y ago

Rationalist would first abandon that notion that cost of adjusting to different climate is infinite, as it flies in the face of all evidence - humans had adjusted to the very wide range of conditions - and would avoid promoting actions for which positive consequences can not be sufficiently substantiated but negative consequences are readily apparent. Once you postulate that global warming is the ultimate boogeyman which justifies any expense spent on preventing it, rationalism is going out of the window. One can not operate rationally within the framework that postulates irrational assumptions.