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The numbers appear to be more or less made up.
http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/143718406034/the-future-of-humanity-institute-seems-very
That seems like an accurate analysis.
I'm actually more concerned about an error in logic. If one estimates a probability of say k that in a given year that climate change will cause an extinction event, then the probability of it occurring in any given string of years is not the obvious one, since part of what is going on in estimating k is the chance that climate change can in fact cause such an incident.
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Open Thread May 2 - May 8, 2016
Mainstream discussion of existential risk is becoming more of a thing, A recent example is this article in The Atlantic. They do mention a variety of risks but focus on nuclear war and worst case global warming.
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"3 Reasons It’s Irrational to Demand ‘Rationalism’ in Social Justice Activism"
Getting five downvotes on this immediately after posting is bizarre
When people arguing with VoiceOfRa got several downvotes in a row, the conclusion drawn was sockpuppets.
So to be fair, lets assume there's an SJW with a sockpuppet army too. Now both sides can claim its just tit-for-tat.
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"3 Reasons It’s Irrational to Demand ‘Rationalism’ in Social Justice Activism"
When people arguing with VoiceOfRa got several downvotes in a row, the conclusion drawn was sockpuppets.
There was substantially more evidence that VoiceOfRa was downvoting in a retributive fashion, including database evidence.
I mean, there's sound psychological reasons that having karma would increase participation and quality. That's why reddit overtook classic newsboards
Slashdot had Karma years before Reddit and was not nearly as successful. Granted it didn't try to do general forum discussions but just news articles, but this suggests that karma is not the whole story.
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Open thread, Nov. 23 - Nov. 29, 2015
Further possible evidence for a Great Filter: A recent paper suggests that as long as the probability of an intelligent species arising on a habitable planet is not tiny, at least about 10^-24 then with very high probability humans are not the only civilization to have ever been in the observable universe, and a similar result holds for the Milky Way with around 10^-10 as the relevant probability. Article about paper is here and paper is here.
The most interesting unknown in the future is the time of creation of Strong AI. Our priors are insufficient to predict it because it is such a unique task.
I'm not sure this follows. The primary problems with predicting the rise of Strong AI apply to most other artificial existential risks also.
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Open thread, Nov. 02 - Nov. 08, 2015
If you had to select just 5 mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive variables to predict the the outcome of something *you have expert knowledge (relative to say...me) * about:
- what is that situation?
what are the 5 things that best determine the outcome?
Please tell us about multiple things if you are an expert at multple things. No time for humility know, it is better that you are kind teacher than a modest mute.
If you can come up with a better way I could ask this, please point it out! It sounds clumsy, but the question has a rather technical background to it's composition:
Research on expert judgement indicates experts are just as bad as nonexperts in some counterintuitive ways, like predicting the outcome of a thing, but consistently good at identifying the determinants that are important to consider in a given thing within their field of expertise, such as what are the variables that determine a given thing. The human working memory can only hold 7+/-2 things at a given time. So, tending to even more stressful situations where our memories may be situanionally brought down to a level of functioning commiserate with someone with a poorer memory, I want to ask for 5 things anyone could think about when they come across one or more of your niches of expertise that they can pay attention to in order to gather the most relevant information from the experience
Research on expert judgement indicates experts are just as bad as nonexperts in some counterintuitive ways, like predicting the outcome of a thing,
Do you have a citation for this? My understanding was that in many fields experts perform better than nonexperts. The main thing that experts share in common with non-experts is overconfidence about their predictions.
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LINK: An example of the Pink Flamingo, the obvious-yet-overlooked cousin of the Black Swan
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LINK: An example of the Pink Flamingo, the obvious-yet-overlooked cousin of the Black Swan
If people want to lock in their predictions they can do so on Prediction Book here.
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[Link]: KIC 8462852, aka WTF star, "the most mysterious star in our galaxy", ETI candidate, etc.
I estimate total probability of human extinction because of SETI attack in 1 per cent. But much smaller in case of this star. There are several needed conjunctions: 1.ET exist but are very far from each other, so communication is wining over travel. 1 milion light years or more. 2. Strong AI is possible.
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[Link]: KIC 8462852, aka WTF star, "the most mysterious star in our galaxy", ETI candidate, etc.
Can you explain why you see a SETI attack as so high? If you are civilization doing this not only does it require extremely hostile motivations but also a) making everyone aware of where you are (making you a potential target) and b) being able to make extremely subtle aspects of an AI that apparently looks non-hostile and c) is something which declares your own deep hostility to anyone who notices it.
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In the context of religious arguments, some say that the constants of the universe are improbably finely tuned for the existence of life and order. The constants refer to things like the gravitational constant, the strength of the atomic weak force, etcetera.
It is my understanding that the order part is key; most other possible constants wouldn't allow for an alternate form of life, for example, because everything would be so far apart as to never interact, or so close together as to never vary in its state.
Some will respond that there may be a multiverse of universes, with random universal constants, so that some improbable universes are bound to crop up.
To this, it is responded that inventing a multiverse to explain away apparently purposeful tuning of universal constants doesn't really work. It's an excuse.
Now, I know that MWI was NOT invented to explain away anything, that it was presented as a possible explanation for certain observations well in advance of this kind of argument.
But, here is my question. Does MWI limit itself to alternate universes with the same universal constants, or does it predict also the existence of universes with different universal constants?
MWI doesn't say anything about other constants- the other parts of our wavefunction should have the same constants. However, other multiverse hypotheses do suggest that physical constants could eb different.