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taw comments on The things we know that we know ain't so - Less Wrong
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Truth value of "global warming has a serious chance of destroying the world" statement is entirely unverifiable to an average person. The media are saying it's true, quoting many leading scientists and politicians. By what mechanism do you suggest people reach an alternative conclusion?
There's outside view, but it's not accepted even here, as many have the same world-destroying beliefs about AI, and countless other subjects.
1- I can't remember anybody stating that "global warming has a serious chance of destroying the world". The world is a pretty big ball of iron. I doubt even a 10K warming would have much of an impact on it, and I don't think anybody said it would - not even Al Gore.
2- I can remember many people saying that "man-made global warming has a serious chance of causing large disruption and suffering to extant human societies", or something to that effect.
3- If I try to apply "reference class forecasting" to this subject, my suggested reference class is "quantitative predictions consistently supported by a large majority of scientists, disputed by a handful of specialists and a sizeable number of non-specialists/non-scientists".
4- More generally, reference class forecasting doesn't seem to help much in stomping out bias, since biases affect the choice and delineation of which reference classes we use anyway.
Well, I do recall a scientist using explicit "save the word"/"destroy the world" rhetoric. Of course this was rhetoric, not a scientific claim. A lot of non-scientist environmentalists do seem to think that global warming threatens the whole biosphere, though that seems very implausible based on what I know.
I think mass video advertising would probably work. A 30 second summary of the most recent IPCC report.
If anyone reading this has $5 million, we can convince the US public that global warming will not destroy the world. Maybe we can even hint at some more realistic existential threats.
Please define "destroy the world". It could mean:
rip the earth into chunks and disperse them separately through space
eliminate all life on earth
eliminate all humans on earth
ruin the fabric of our current civilization
Some of these are more plausible than others w.r.t. climate change
Destroy the world means somewhere between #3 and #4 depending on the person with the mistaken belief.