turchin

A Pin and a Bal­loon: An­thropic Frag­ility In­creases Chances of Ru­n­away Global Warm­ing

• turchinSep 10, 2022, 4:51 PM

  2 points

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  in reply to: John G. Halstead’s comment on: Cli­mate Change & Longter­mism: new book-length report

  I am going to have a post about the risks of runaway global warming soon.

• turchinSep 8, 2022, 4:01 PM

  7 points

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  on: Cli­mate Change & Longter­mism: new book-length report

  Hi!

  I have different understanding of moisture greenhouse based on what I’ve read. You said (oversimplifing) that the threshold for moisture greenhouse is 67C and the main risk from it is ocean evaporation.

  But in my understanding 67 C is the level of moisture greenhouse climate. The climate according to some models will be stable on this level. 67 C mean temperature seems to almost lethal to humans but some people could survive on high mountains.

  However, the threshold to moisture greenhouse, that is the tipping point after which the transition to the next meta-stable condition is inevitable, could be much less than at 67C and could be after just 10 C warming—you discussed this and different authors who wrote about that, but it contradicts the word “threshold” you used about moisture greenhouse.

  Transition to next meta-stable climate takes according to the article about water worlds like 4-40 years.

  As a result the whole catastrophic scenario of moisture greenhouse moved away from now, but it could happen in next 100 years and Ord’s estimation is justified.

• turchinSep 5, 2022, 7:42 AM

  6 points

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  in reply to: Michael Huang’s comment on: Igor Kiriluk (1974-2022)

  There are two translation into Russian. One from 2009 in which Igor participated is here https://​​proza.ru/​​avtor/​​unau&book=4#4

  But in 2020 a professional translation was made and is available here https://​​ubq124.wordpress.com/​​2019/​​12/​​22/​​the-hedonistic-imperative-pdf/​​

Igor Kiriluk (1974-2022)

• turchinJul 29, 2022, 10:50 PM

  1 point

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  in reply to: technicalities’s comment on: Sav­ing lives near the precipice: we’re do­ing it wrong?

  I think that downvoters didn’t like the word “resurrection”.

• turchinJul 29, 2022, 3:40 PM

  3 points

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  on: Sav­ing lives near the precipice: we’re do­ing it wrong?

  If we know that extinction event is inevitable soon, like asteroid impact, I think it will be reasonable to try to create remnants, perhaps on the Moon, that could provide possible aliens with information about humanity or even help to resurrect human beings.

• turchinJul 23, 2022, 5:49 PM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Tom Gardiner 🔸’s comment on: Mar­i­time ca­pa­bil­ity and post-catas­tro­phe re­silience.

  I also have an article about survival on islands and have been thinking about surviving in caves. The topic of survival on ships is a really interesting one and I hope to turn to it some day but now I am working on other problems.

• turchinJul 22, 2022, 7:04 PM

  2 points

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  on: Mar­i­time ca­pa­bil­ity and post-catas­tro­phe re­silience.

  I explored survival in submarines here: Aquatic refuges for surviving a global catastrophe

• turchinJul 22, 2022, 6:54 PM

  1 point

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  on: Ex­is­ten­tial Biorisk vs. GCBR

  I did this: The map of global catastrophic risks connected with biological weapons and genetic engineering

• turchinJul 10, 2022, 9:21 AM

  1 point

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  on: An­nounc­ing the Fu­ture Fund

  Hi!

  I got the following message after pressed Apply:
  “The form Future Fund: Application for Funding is no longer accepting responses.
  Try contacting the owner of the form if you think this is a mistake.” at https://​​docs.google.com/​​forms/​​d/​​e/​​1FAIpQLScp_pbbqS2OeecQlo_perE6Vz8mcKBivtRAfBSfKyDicZkEiQ/​​closedform

  Is your program closed or it is an error from my side? I wanted to apply on the topic Infrastructure to recover after catastrophes

• turchinJun 23, 2022, 10:59 AM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Jeffrey Kursonis’s comment on: Effec­tive al­tru­ism is similar to the AI al­ign­ment prob­lem and suffers from the same difficul­ties [Crit­i­cism and Red Team­ing Con­test en­try]

  Check my site about it: http://​​digital-immortality-now.com/​​

  Or my paper: Digital Immortality: Theory and Protocol for Indirect Mind Uploading

  And there is a group in FB about life-logging as life extension where a few EA participate: https://​​www.facebook.com/​​groups/​​1271481189729828

• turchinJun 22, 2022, 4:10 PM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Jeffrey Kursonis’s comment on: Effec­tive al­tru­ism is similar to the AI al­ign­ment prob­lem and suffers from the same difficul­ties [Crit­i­cism and Red Team­ing Con­test en­try]

  To collect all that information we need superintelligent AI, and actually we don’t need all vibrations, but only the most relevant pieces of data—the data which is capable to predict human behaviour. Such data could be collected from texts, photos, DNA and historical simulations—but it is better to invest in personal life-logging to increase ones chances to be resurrected.

• turchinJun 22, 2022, 4:05 PM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Jeffrey Kursonis’s comment on: Effec­tive al­tru­ism is similar to the AI al­ign­ment prob­lem and suffers from the same difficul­ties [Crit­i­cism and Red Team­ing Con­test en­try]

  I wrote two articles about resurrection: You Only Live Twice: A Computer Simulation of the Past Could be Used for Technological Resurrection

  and

  Classification of Approaches to Technological Resurrection

• turchinJun 22, 2022, 4:01 PM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Jeffrey Kursonis’s comment on: Effec­tive al­tru­ism is similar to the AI al­ign­ment prob­lem and suffers from the same difficul­ties [Crit­i­cism and Red Team­ing Con­test en­try]

  Sure, it a typo, thanks, will correct.

• turchinJun 22, 2022, 4:00 PM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Marcel D’s comment on: Effec­tive al­tru­ism is similar to the AI al­ign­ment prob­lem and suffers from the same difficul­ties [Crit­i­cism and Red Team­ing Con­test en­try]

  I am serious about resurrection of the dead, there are several ways, including running the simulation of the whole history of mankind and filling the knowledge gaps with random noise which, thanks to Everett, will be correct in one of the branches. I explained this idea in longer article: You Only Live Twice: A Computer Simulation of the Past Could be Used for Technological Resurrection

• turchinJun 21, 2022, 3:25 PM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Marcel D’s comment on: Effec­tive al­tru­ism is similar to the AI al­ign­ment prob­lem and suffers from the same difficul­ties [Crit­i­cism and Red Team­ing Con­test en­try]

  I need to clarify my views: I want to save humans first, and after that save all animals, from closest to humans to more remote. By “saving” I mean resurrection of the dead, of course. I am pro resurrection of mammoth and I am for cryonics for pets. Such framework will eventually save everyone, so in infinity it converges with other approaches to saving animals.

  But “saving humans first” gives us a leverage, because we will have more powerful civilisation which will have higher capacity to do more good. If humans will extinct now, animals will eventually extinct too when Sun will become a little brighter, around 600 mln. years from now.

  But the claim that I want to save only my life is factually false.

• turchinJun 20, 2022, 6:43 PM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Marcel D’s comment on: Effec­tive al­tru­ism is similar to the AI al­ign­ment prob­lem and suffers from the same difficul­ties [Crit­i­cism and Red Team­ing Con­test en­try]

  The transition from “good” to “wellbeing” seems rather innocent, but it opens the way to rather popular line of reasoning: that we should care only about the number of happy observer-moments, without caring whose are these moments. Extrapolating, we stop caring about real humans, but start caring about possible animals. In other words, it opens the way to pure utilitarian-open-individualist bonanza, where value of human life and individuality are lost and badness of death is ignored. The last point is most important for me, as I view irreversible mortality as the main human problem.

  I wrote more about why death is bad in Fighting Aging as an Effective Altruism Cause: A Model of the Impact of the Clinical Trials of Simple Interventions – and decided not to say it again in the main post, as the conditions of the contest requires that only new material should be published, but I recently found that the similar problem was raised in another application in the section “Defending person-affecting views”.

• turchinJun 20, 2022, 8:04 AM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Marcel D’s comment on: Effec­tive al­tru­ism is similar to the AI al­ign­ment prob­lem and suffers from the same difficul­ties [Crit­i­cism and Red Team­ing Con­test en­try]

  The problem with (1) is that here it is assumed that fuzzy set of well-being has a subset of “real goodness” inside it, but we just don’t know how to define it correctly. But it could be the real goodness is outside well-being. In my view, reaching radical life extension and death-reversal is more important than well-being, if it is understood as comfortable healthy life.

  The fact that an organisation is doing good assumes that some concept of good exists in it. And we can’t do good effectively without measuring it, which requires even stricter model of good. In other words, altruism can’t be effective, if it escapes defining good.

  Moreover, some choices about what is good could be pivotal acts both for organisations and for AIs: like should we work more on biosafety, on nuclear war prevention, or digital immortality (data preservation). Here again we are ready to make such choices for organisation, but not for AI.

  Of cause I known that (2) is the main problem in AI alignment. But what I wanted to say here is that many problems which we encounter in AI alignment, also reappear in organisations, e.g. goodharting. Without knowing how to solve them, we can’t do good effectively.

• turchinJun 19, 2022, 8:16 PM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Marcel D’s comment on: Effec­tive al­tru­ism is similar to the AI al­ign­ment prob­lem and suffers from the same difficul­ties [Crit­i­cism and Red Team­ing Con­test en­try]

  Two things I am speaking about are:

  (1) what is terminal moral value (good) and

  (2) how we can increase it.

  EA have some understanding what are 1 and 2, like 1 = wellbeing and 2 = donations to effective charities.

  But if we ask AI safety researcher, he can’t point on what should be the final goal of a friendly AI. Maximum what he can say is that future superintelligence will solve this task. Any attempt to define “good” will suffer from our incomplete understanding.

  EA works both on AI safety, where good is undefined, and on non-AI-related issue where good is defined. This looks contradictory: either we know what is real good and could use this knowledge in AI safety, or we don’t know, and in that case we can’t do anything useful.