[LINK] John Baez Interview with astrophysicist Gregory Benford

multifoliaterose

The content of John Baez's This Week's Finds: Week 310:

Includes

Discussion of global warming and geoengineering.
A reference to a paper by David Wolpert and Gregory Benford on Newcomb's paradox

Note: The upcoming This Week's Finds: Week 311 is an interview with Eliezer Yudkowsky by John Baez.

The content of John Baez's This Week's Finds: Week 310:

Includes

Discussion of global warming and geoengineering.
A reference to a paper by David Wolpert and Gregory Benford on Newcomb's paradox

Note: The upcoming This Week's Finds: Week 311 is an interview with Eliezer Yudkowsky by John Baez.

The upcoming This Week's Finds: Week 311 is an interview with Eliezer Yudkowsky by John Baez.

I'm waiting for this for so long. I really hope that John Baez is going to explain himself and argue for why he is more concerned with global warming than risks from AI. So far there exists literally no valuable third-party critique.

XiXiDu wrote:

I really hope that John Baez is going to explain himself and argue for why he is more concerned with global warming than risks from AI.

Since I was interviewing Yudkowsky rather than the other way around, I didn't explain my views - I was getting him to explain his. But the last part of this interview will touch on global warming, and if you want to ask me questions, that would be a great time to do it.

(Week 311 is just the first part of a multi-part interview.)

For now, you might be interested to read about Gregory Benford's assessment of... (read more)

-3timtyler15y

The list is here: * Global warming - human caused climate change. * Extinction - mass die-offs caused by global warming and habitat changes. * Deforestation - loss of primary and secondary forests. * Ocean acidification - rise in ocean acidity due to rising CO2. * Dead zones - large areas of the ocean that can’t support life. * Water crisis - drawdowns in aquifers and freshwater supplies. * Peak oil - the decline in the availability of oil as an energy source. It looks like a conventional "confused environmentalist" prioritisation to me. I would council caution before attempting to drag conventional environmentalists into the fray. They usually just want to slam on the brakes - and the historical effects of that look mostly negative to me - take the case of GM crops, for example. Yudkowsky even advocated a "stealth" approach once: [...] * http://yudkowsky.net/obsolete/plan.html#strat_meme