Good_Burning_Plastic comments on 2016 LessWrong Diaspora Survey Analysis: Part Four (Politics, Calibration & Probability, Futurology, Charity & Effective Altruism) - Less Wrong

10 Post author: ingres 10 September 2016 03:51AM

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Comment author: skeptical_lurker 11 September 2016 02:41:05PM *  4 points [-]

Have you considered adding the geometric mean for certain questions? It should help a bit to deal with extreamly large answers.

Some things I found interesting:

1) The case for being pro-choice is so strong even neoreactionaries and fascists are pro-choice. Interestingly, on this specific issue, conservatives are to the right of fascists!

2) On political opinions, HBD is about an objective, falsifiable, scientifically mesureable characteristic of the world, whereas the other opinions are opinions. Opinions on HBD also correlates strongly with other views, and so I am interested as to how poeple's opinions would change if it was proved to them that the truth about HBD is the opposite of what they currently believe it to be. Would their other views change?

3) Some of the '90% of humanity die' risks seem extremely low probability to me, and I am perplexed by why so many people chose them:

Nuclear war: +4.800% 326 (20.6%)

The worst case scenario for nuclear war at the hight of the cold war was about 40% of humanity dies. I suppose that its possible that vast numbers of new bombs could be built, without similar investment in bomb shelters, but this does seem a little implausible.

Environmental collapse (including global warming): +1.500% 252 (16.0%)

In the 'Cretaceous hothouse' period CO2 levels were 8x higher, and there was still enough vegetation to support giant dinosaurs far bigger than the largest animal today. The worst-case scenarios are a decrease in economic growth and a migrant crisis, not 90% of humanity dies.

Economic / political collapse: -1.400% 136 (8.6%)

Its difficult enough to imagine political collapse killing 90% of the population in one country. The Syrian civil war has killed 3% of the population. The Japanese invasion of China killed 4%. I'm aware of some wars that killed 50% - parts of the thirty years war, the Mongol invasion of China - but I think these were combined with famines or disease outbreaks. In the 1870 Japanese civil war, the samurai combatants took over 99% casualties, but the non-combatants survived. 90% deaths of one country would be mind-boggling. But 90% deaths of the whole of humanity? A political collapse that affects the entire world, including countries of every culture? Including China and other countries that are not democracies?

Comment author: Good_Burning_Plastic 18 September 2016 07:36:16AM 1 point [-]

giant dinosaurs far bigger than the largest animal today

You mean largest land animal today. The blue whale is about the size of the largest dinosaur ever.

Comment author: skeptical_lurker 20 September 2016 07:18:25PM 1 point [-]

A valid nitpick, although sharks were also far bigger compared to modern sharks. Not sure to what extent this implies that there was more food.