Hi, I’m Florian. I am enthusiastic about working on large scale problems that require me to learn new skills and extend my knowledge into new fields and subtopics. My main interests are climate change, existential risks, feminism, history, hydrology and food security.
FJehn
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From what I have seen on TERRA I think this is almost all peer reviewed, but from time to time a preprint, non peer reviewed book or similar things slip in.
TERRA is based on Scopus.
The 25 researchers who have published the largest number of academic articles on existential risk
Lessons from the past for our global civilization
I’ve read it now and it was quite interesting. Though it did not really shift my conclusions. The only update I had was that we might even know less about the long term consequences (2100+) than I thought before.
I think that tipping elements could make a significant contribution to the destabilization of global civilization, which ultimately could contribute to collapse. This would likely not happen via temperature, but by other disruptive elements like significant sea level rise or destruction of ecosystem. However, the main effects of this are likely beyond 2100. Therefore, I am really unsure how this will ultimately play out. I think to make a good estimate of this we are currently knowing too little. Hopefully, the next special report of the IPCC will be about this. This would make things likely much clearer. Therefore, I’ll probably not investigate this much further right now, as things seem to uncertain.
Hmm I feel like this is already a lot of line breaks. Most of the paragraphs are only ~ 5 sentences or less.
And at least for me bolding breaks the reading flow.
I used table S4, which includes a longer list of possible tipping points.
Just did a quick calculation. If you assume the minimal value as the trigger, you get ~0.61°C additional warming at 3°C warming.
Also, a lot more of the points are triggered at lower warming than this.
Yes, that is how I would interpret their Table S4, which seems like the main summary of their findings.
What was your impression of how the media represented their findings? It feels to me like the media often represents tipping points as happening instantaneous, while most of them are rather in the time scale of centuries.
However, you could make an argument that staying much below that is also sensible, as the tipping points are not only triggered by temperature, but also by physical processes like the dilution of salt concentrations in sea water.
Also, for writing this section I used the estimated values. If you use the minimal values for triggering the tipping points the picture becomes more grim.
Thank you for the recommendation! I’ll read through it and update the permanent version on Github.
Hi Corentin. Thanks for the comments. I plan to also look more into biodiversity and societal tipping points, but I haven’t yet found the time.
Concerning the reformating, maybe it’s just me, but I have a much harder time reading those executive summary style posts and therefore I would rather leave it the way it is.
The trouble with tipping points: Are we steering towards a climate catastrophe or a manageable challenge?
Mapping out collapse research
This podcast episode feels like something out of a different timeline after the rough time EA has gone through since then. Would be very curious to hear if the opinions of the things said in the podcast are considerably different now?
Surely, they are more modern than utilitarianism. Utilitarianism has been developed in the 19th century, while all the other ones mentioned are from the 20th century. And it is not their “novelty” which is interesting, but that they are a direct follow up and criticism of things like utilitarianism. Also, I don’t think that post above was an endorsement of using fascism, but instead a call to understand the idea why people even started with fascism in the first place.
The main contribution of the above mentioned fields of ideas to EA is that they highlight that reason is not a strong tool, as many EA think it is. You can easily bring yourself into bad situation, even if you follow reason all the way. Reason is not something objective, but born from your standpoint in the world and the culture you grow up in.
And if EA (or you) have considered things like existentialism, structuralism, post-structuralism I’d love to see those arguments why it is not important to EA. Never seen anything in this regard.
It seems to me that we are talking about different definitions about what political means. I agree that in some situations it can make sense to not chip in political discussions, to not get pushed to one side. I also see that there are some political issues where EA has taken a stance like animal welfare. However, when I say political I mean what are the reason for us doing things and how do we convince other people of it? In EA there are often arguments that something is not political, because there has been an “objective” calculation of value. However, there is almost never a justification why something was deemed important, even though when you want to change the world in a different way, this is the important part. Or on a more practical level why are QUALYs seen as the best way to measure outcomes in many cases? Using this and not another measure is choice which has to be justified.
The main point I took from video was that Abigail is kinda asking the question: “How can a movement that wants to change the world be so apolitical?” This is also a criticism I have of many EA structures and people. I even have come across people who view EA and themselves as not political, even as they are arguing for longtermism. The video also highlights this.
When you are quantifying something you don’t become objective all over sudden. You cannot quantify everything, so you have to make a choice on what you want to quantify. And this is a political choice. There is not objective source of truth that tells you that for example quality adjusted life years are the best objective measure. People choose what makes the most sense to them given their background. But you could easily switch it to something else. There is only your subjective choice on what you want to focus. And I would really appreciate if this would be highlighted more in EA.
Right now the vibe is often “We have objectively compared such and such and therefore the obvious choice is this intervention or cause.” But this just frames personal preferences on what is important as an objective truth about the world. Would be great if this subjectivity would be acknowledged more.
And one final point the video also hints at: In EA basically all modern philosophy outside of consequentialism is ignored. Even though much of that philosophy is explicitly developed to crticise pure reason and consequentialism. But if you read EA material you get the impression to only notable philosophers of the 20th century are Peter Singer and Derek Parfit.
Good idea. I’ll look into this when I find the time and report back here.
Our conversation kinda feels like to me that we are talking a bit past each other. As I understand your message you are saying that the shift in temperature focus is due to the Paris Agreement. This is also what we say in the paper. However, you disagree in the conclusions from that, by saying that this does not imply a focus shift.
And this is the part I don’t get. If the IPCC focuses on different things due to the Paris Agreement, how is this not a shift in research focus? Especially after you said in your post before that your statement is based on a strong increase in the mentions of RCP8.5, which I showed to not have happened.
Concerning your statement: “I especially don’t think it is true to say that the climate science literature is ignoring impacts of more than 3 degree”. The paper does not claim that we ignore impacts of more than 3 degrees, merely that our focus has shifted away from that.
Could it be that our crux is that my model is something like:
Temperatures are more important to look at, because they are what ultimately decides the impact of climate change. Therefore, a shift in them is really concerning.
While your model seems to me:
Only RCPs are important and it does not really matter which temperatures they ultimately look at. As long as RCP8.5 is studied a lot, you cannot say that higher warming is underresearched.
“can’t really draw much in the way of conclusions from this data” seems like a really strong claim to me. I would surely agree that this does not tell you everything there is to know about existential risk research and it especially does not tell you anything about x-risk research outside classic academia (like much of the work by Ajeya).
But it is based on the classifications of a lot of people on what they think is part of the field of existential risk studies and therefore I think gives a good proxy on what people in the field think what is part of their field. Also, this is not meant to tell you that this is the ultimate list, but as stated in the beginning of the post, as a way to give people an overview of what is going on.
Finally, I think that this surely tells you something about the participation of women in the field. 1 out of 25 is really, really unlikely to happen by chance.