Desrtopa comments on Stanislav Petrov Day - Less Wrong

35 Post author: gwern 26 September 2011 02:49PM

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Comment author: roland 27 September 2011 11:57:47PM *  1 point [-]

You, on the other hand, seem to be seeing 99% of humanity suffering and/or losing their lifes as good because it would cause less shortage of space, and less global warming.

No, I don't see it as good, I guess I was misunderstood.

I'm considering two alternative scenarios:

  • 1) Nuclear war and hypothetically huge climate problems.
  • 2) No nuclear war and hypothetically huge climate problems.

Everyone here seems to automatically see scenario 1 as worse than scenario 2. But I have the impression that this is mostly a cached thought. Did people really think it through, compare the scenarios?

A lot of comments here pointed out that the climate problems of 1 would be terrible. The thing is though, what are the climate problems of scenario 2? Both of them are unknowns, we don't know for sure.

Scenario 2 is the status quo scenario, just let the world run as it is, it certainly will be better than the so-terrible scenario 1. Maybe it will, maybe not.

Global warming won't manage to kill nearly as much as 99% of humanity, after all: and yet you seem to think it

Why not? How do you know this? AFAIK once there is a global warming chain reaction it may well be the end of all forests the Amazon including and the end of most agriculture. What are we going to eat afterwards?

I'm not claiming that 1 would be better, I'm just questioning the reasoning of choosing 2 over 1 without providing the burden of proof.

At the end it boils down to the basic question of rationality: How do you know what you know?

Comment author: Desrtopa 29 September 2011 03:53:44AM 0 points [-]

Our agricultural methods are going to have to change substantially within the next few decades whether we face a warming catastrophe or not, since global agricultural productivity is on a downtrend due to desertification and loss of arable soil as global food needs rise.

Of course, we've jacked up the carrying capacity of the earth several times before, and it's certainly possible to do it again. Like many problems, this would be easy to address if we had access to a superabundance of energy, so any major advancements on that front in the near term would make it possible to avert catastrophe.