Agreed. Carl Schuman at hour 1:02 at the 80k podcast even notes: https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/carl-shulman-common-sense-case-existential-risks/ Rob Wiblin: I see. So because there’s such a clear motivation for even an altruistic person to exaggerate the potential risk from nuclear winter, then people who haven’t looked into it might regard the work as not super credible because it could kind of be a tool for advocacy more than anything.
Carl Shulman: Yeah. And there was some concern of that sort, that people like Carl Sagan, who was both an anti-nuclear and antiwar activist and bringing these things up. So some people, particularly in the military establishment, might have more doubt about when their various choices in the statistical analysis and the projections and assumptions going into the models, are they biased in this way? And so for that reason, I’ve recommended and been supportive of funding, just work to elaborate on this. But then I have additionally especially valued critical work and support for things that would reveal this was wrong if it were, because establishing that kind of credibility seemed very important. And we were talking earlier about how salience and robustness and it being clear in the minds of policymakers and the public is important.
Note earlier in the conversation demonstrating Schulman influenced the funding decision for the Rutgers team from open philanthropy: ”Robert Wiblin: So, a couple years ago you worked at the Gates Foundation and then moved to the kind of GiveWell/Open Phil cluster that you’re helping now.”
Notably, Reisner is part of Los Alamos in the military establishment. They build nuclear weapons there. So both Reisner and Robock from Rutgers have their own biases.
It seems like a much less biased middle ground, and generally shows that nuclear winter is still really bad, on the order of 1⁄2 to 1⁄3 as “bad” as Rutgers tends to say it is.
Agreed. Carl Schuman at hour 1:02 at the 80k podcast even notes:
https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/carl-shulman-common-sense-case-existential-risks/
Rob Wiblin: I see. So because there’s such a clear motivation for even an altruistic person to exaggerate the potential risk from nuclear winter, then people who haven’t looked into it might regard the work as not super credible because it could kind of be a tool for advocacy more than anything.
Carl Shulman: Yeah. And there was some concern of that sort, that people like Carl Sagan, who was both an anti-nuclear and antiwar activist and bringing these things up. So some people, particularly in the military establishment, might have more doubt about when their various choices in the statistical analysis and the projections and assumptions going into the models, are they biased in this way? And so for that reason, I’ve recommended and been supportive of funding, just work to elaborate on this. But then I have additionally especially valued critical work and support for things that would reveal this was wrong if it were, because establishing that kind of credibility seemed very important. And we were talking earlier about how salience and robustness and it being clear in the minds of policymakers and the public is important.
Note earlier in the conversation demonstrating Schulman influenced the funding decision for the Rutgers team from open philanthropy:
”Robert Wiblin: So, a couple years ago you worked at the Gates Foundation and then moved to the kind of GiveWell/Open Phil cluster that you’re helping now.”
Notably, Reisner is part of Los Alamos in the military establishment. They build nuclear weapons there. So both Reisner and Robock from Rutgers have their own biases.
Here’s a peer-reviewed perspective that shows the flaws in both perspectives on nuclear winter as being too extreme:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/25751654.2021.1882772
I recommend Lawrence livermore paper on the topic: https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1764313
It seems like a much less biased middle ground, and generally shows that nuclear winter is still really bad, on the order of 1⁄2 to 1⁄3 as “bad” as Rutgers tends to say it is.