The article was far better than I expect most reporting on climate change as a potential existential risk to be
This is in line with Kelsey Piper generally seeming to do great work
I particularly appreciated that it (a) emphasised how the concepts of catastrophes in general and extinction in particular are distinct and why that matters, but (b) did this in a way that I suspect has a relatively low risk of seeming callous, nit-picky, or otherwise annoying to people who care about climate change
But I also had some substantive issues with the article, which I’ll discuss below
The article conflated “existential threat”/“existential risk” with “extinction risk”, thereby ignoring two other types of existential catastrophe: unrecoverable collapse and unrecoverable dystopia
Some quotes from the article to demonstrate what the conflation I’m referring to:
“But there’s a standard meaning of that phrase [existential threat]: that it’s going to wipe out humanity — or even, as Warren implied Wednesday night, all life on our planet.”
“To academics in philosophy and public policy who study the future of humankind, an existential risk is a very specific thing: a disaster that destroys all future human potential and ensures that no generations of humans will ever leave Earth and explore our universe.”
I think this also means the article kind-of ignores or overconfidently dismisses the possibility that climate change might cause unrecoverable collapse or unrecoverable dystopia
(The article does mention collapse a few times, but not something that corresponds to unrecoverable collapse or unrecoverable dystopia)
I do think it is very unlikely (e.g., below 1 in 1000 chance) that climate change would relatively directly cause those things, but that’s only a tentative view, and I think uncertainty and further research is warranted
I expect that the fact that article kind-of ignores unrecoverable collapse would cause some non-EA-types to disagree with the article, and that they’d be right to do so
(Though I also expect that many of these people would be overconfident that climate change would cause a major collapse, that they’d pay insufficient attention to the question of whether this collapse is “unrecoverable”, and that they also wouldn’t consider reasonable scenarios of dystopias)
The article also failed to mention the term “existential risk factor” or allude to that basic idea
It thus ignores or overconfidently dismisses the possibility that climate change might make x-risks more likely, even if it doesn’t directly cause them
Finally, the article failed to mention one other, important reason why the distinction between catastrophes in general and extinction in particular matters: This distinction is relevnat to prioritisation, in a world where other things may indeed be plausible extinction risks
If people care about climate change because they think it’s fairly likely to cause extinction, but in reality it’s less likely to cause extinction and something else is more likely to do so, then (in theory!), by their own values, it should be really important for them to learn that and adjust their priorities
But this is more just something I think could’ve maybe made the article even better, rather than something that I felt was problematic about it
I think it’s totally understandable that Kelsey Piper didn’t discuss the above points in detail, but I think she could’ve:
Been more careful in her phrasing to at least avoid being actively misleading
Maybe briefly touched on (some) of these points and provided links to where they’re discussed more thoroughly
(Disclaimer-ish thing: I haven’t sent this to Kelsey because it doesn’t seem super important, the article is from 2019, I assume she’s quite busy, and I’m posting this as a shortform rather than something super prominent.)
Quick thoughts on Kelsey Piper’s article Is climate change an “existential threat” — or just a catastrophic one?
The article was far better than I expect most reporting on climate change as a potential existential risk to be
This is in line with Kelsey Piper generally seeming to do great work
I particularly appreciated that it (a) emphasised how the concepts of catastrophes in general and extinction in particular are distinct and why that matters, but (b) did this in a way that I suspect has a relatively low risk of seeming callous, nit-picky, or otherwise annoying to people who care about climate change
But I also had some substantive issues with the article, which I’ll discuss below
The article conflated “existential threat”/“existential risk” with “extinction risk”, thereby ignoring two other types of existential catastrophe: unrecoverable collapse and unrecoverable dystopia
See also Venn diagrams of existential, global, and suffering catastrophes
Some quotes from the article to demonstrate what the conflation I’m referring to:
“But there’s a standard meaning of that phrase [existential threat]: that it’s going to wipe out humanity — or even, as Warren implied Wednesday night, all life on our planet.”
“To academics in philosophy and public policy who study the future of humankind, an existential risk is a very specific thing: a disaster that destroys all future human potential and ensures that no generations of humans will ever leave Earth and explore our universe.”
I think this also means the article kind-of ignores or overconfidently dismisses the possibility that climate change might cause unrecoverable collapse or unrecoverable dystopia
(The article does mention collapse a few times, but not something that corresponds to unrecoverable collapse or unrecoverable dystopia)
I do think it is very unlikely (e.g., below 1 in 1000 chance) that climate change would relatively directly cause those things, but that’s only a tentative view, and I think uncertainty and further research is warranted
I expect that the fact that article kind-of ignores unrecoverable collapse would cause some non-EA-types to disagree with the article, and that they’d be right to do so
(Though I also expect that many of these people would be overconfident that climate change would cause a major collapse, that they’d pay insufficient attention to the question of whether this collapse is “unrecoverable”, and that they also wouldn’t consider reasonable scenarios of dystopias)
The article also failed to mention the term “existential risk factor” or allude to that basic idea
It thus ignores or overconfidently dismisses the possibility that climate change might make x-risks more likely, even if it doesn’t directly cause them
Finally, the article failed to mention one other, important reason why the distinction between catastrophes in general and extinction in particular matters: This distinction is relevnat to prioritisation, in a world where other things may indeed be plausible extinction risks
If people care about climate change because they think it’s fairly likely to cause extinction, but in reality it’s less likely to cause extinction and something else is more likely to do so, then (in theory!), by their own values, it should be really important for them to learn that and adjust their priorities
But this is more just something I think could’ve maybe made the article even better, rather than something that I felt was problematic about it
I think it’s totally understandable that Kelsey Piper didn’t discuss the above points in detail, but I think she could’ve:
Been more careful in her phrasing to at least avoid being actively misleading
Maybe briefly touched on (some) of these points and provided links to where they’re discussed more thoroughly
(Disclaimer-ish thing: I haven’t sent this to Kelsey because it doesn’t seem super important, the article is from 2019, I assume she’s quite busy, and I’m posting this as a shortform rather than something super prominent.)