Hey, thanks for sharing! I thought this was well researched and written. As somebody who’s pretty convinced by the arguments for AI risk, I do mostly disagree with it, but I’d just like to ask a question and share an interesting line of research:
First, do you think there was ever a time when climate change predictions were more similar to religious apocalypse claims? For example, before there was substantial evidence that the Earth was getting warmer, or when people first started hypothesizing how chemicals and the atmosphere worked. The greenhouse effect was first proposed in 1824 long before temperatures started to rise — was the person who proposed it closer to a religious prophet than a scientist?
(I would say no because scientists can make good predictions about future events by using theory and careful experiments. For example, Einstein predicted the existence of “gravitational waves” in 1916 based on theory alone, and his theory wasn’t confirmed with empirical evidence until nearly 100 years later by the LIGO project. AI risk is similarly a prediction based on good theory and careful experiments that we can conduct today, despite the fact that we don’t have AGI yet and therefore don’t know for certain.)
Second, you mention that no existential harm has ever befallen humanity. It’s worth pointing out that, if it had, we wouldn’t be here talking about it today. Perhaps the reason we don’t see aliens in the sky is because existential catastrophes are common for intelligent life, and our survival thus far is a long string of good luck. I’m not an expert on this topic and I don’t quite believe all the implications, but there is a field of study devoted to it called anthropics, and it seems pretty interesting.
I don’t think that there was a point where climate change predictions were more similar to religious apocalypses due to the pre-existing movements concerned with ecology that were already dealing with pre-existing forms of ecological destruction. It to me that combating climate change became part of those movements as it became a more credible threat, and it doesn’t seem like it was ever irrationally focused on.
That first paragraph is supposed to be a nod to the anthropic principle and is meant to situate the reader in the special epistemic situation of not being able to rely on the historical record. I love anthropic I’m about to submit another post on its implications for nuclear war.
Hey, thanks for sharing! I thought this was well researched and written. As somebody who’s pretty convinced by the arguments for AI risk, I do mostly disagree with it, but I’d just like to ask a question and share an interesting line of research:
First, do you think there was ever a time when climate change predictions were more similar to religious apocalypse claims? For example, before there was substantial evidence that the Earth was getting warmer, or when people first started hypothesizing how chemicals and the atmosphere worked. The greenhouse effect was first proposed in 1824 long before temperatures started to rise — was the person who proposed it closer to a religious prophet than a scientist?
(I would say no because scientists can make good predictions about future events by using theory and careful experiments. For example, Einstein predicted the existence of “gravitational waves” in 1916 based on theory alone, and his theory wasn’t confirmed with empirical evidence until nearly 100 years later by the LIGO project. AI risk is similarly a prediction based on good theory and careful experiments that we can conduct today, despite the fact that we don’t have AGI yet and therefore don’t know for certain.)
Second, you mention that no existential harm has ever befallen humanity. It’s worth pointing out that, if it had, we wouldn’t be here talking about it today. Perhaps the reason we don’t see aliens in the sky is because existential catastrophes are common for intelligent life, and our survival thus far is a long string of good luck. I’m not an expert on this topic and I don’t quite believe all the implications, but there is a field of study devoted to it called anthropics, and it seems pretty interesting.
More on anthropics: https://www.briangwilliams.us/human-extinction/doomsday-and-the-anthropic-principle.html, https://nickbostrom.com/papers/anthropicshadow.pdf
Hope to read more from you again!
I don’t think that there was a point where climate change predictions were more similar to religious apocalypses due to the pre-existing movements concerned with ecology that were already dealing with pre-existing forms of ecological destruction. It to me that combating climate change became part of those movements as it became a more credible threat, and it doesn’t seem like it was ever irrationally focused on.
That first paragraph is supposed to be a nod to the anthropic principle and is meant to situate the reader in the special epistemic situation of not being able to rely on the historical record. I love anthropic I’m about to submit another post on its implications for nuclear war.