Alright, the title sounds super conspiratorial, but I hope the content is just boring. Epistemic status: speculating, somewhat confident in the dynamic existing.
Climate science as published by the IPCC tends to
1) Be pretty rigorous
2) Not spend much effort on the tail risks
I have a model that they do this because of their incentives for what they’re trying to accomplish.
They’re in a politicized field, where the methodology is combed over and mistakes are harshly criticized. Also, they want to show enough damage from climate change to make it clear that it’s a good idea to institute policies reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Thus they only need to show some significant damage, not a global catastrophic one. And they want to maintain as much rigor as possible to prevent the discovery of mistakes, and it’s easier to be rigorous about things that are likely than about tail risks.
Yet I think longtermist EAs should be more interested in the tail risks. If I’m right, then the questions we’re most interested in are underrepresented in the literature.
On the incentives of climate science
Alright, the title sounds super conspiratorial, but I hope the content is just boring. Epistemic status: speculating, somewhat confident in the dynamic existing.
Climate science as published by the IPCC tends to
1) Be pretty rigorous
2) Not spend much effort on the tail risks
I have a model that they do this because of their incentives for what they’re trying to accomplish.
They’re in a politicized field, where the methodology is combed over and mistakes are harshly criticized. Also, they want to show enough damage from climate change to make it clear that it’s a good idea to institute policies reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Thus they only need to show some significant damage, not a global catastrophic one. And they want to maintain as much rigor as possible to prevent the discovery of mistakes, and it’s easier to be rigorous about things that are likely than about tail risks.
Yet I think longtermist EAs should be more interested in the tail risks. If I’m right, then the questions we’re most interested in are underrepresented in the literature.