There's another category:
This is not a special case of 1 since by the time everybody's talking about these things it's generally too late to take effective action.
Can you give examples of people profiting from these early warning signs by reading generic news as opposed to being experts in that field?
Initially downvoted because I disliked your reason, then on reconsideration decided this merely discourages you from disclosing your reason, and does nothing to discourage you from downvoting for that reason, so retracted.
ETA: This comment was added to spread the information encapsulated here, that downvoting reasons-for-downvoting that we disagree with only results in a less transparent system which conveys less information overall, without actually changing anybody's upvoting or downvoting habits.
Conveying less information is good. Too much "information" is spam. I would rather have unexplained downvotes and fewer wasted comments explaining them.
I went to an LW meetup once or twice. With one exception the people there seemed less competent and fun than my university friends, work colleagues, or extended family, though possibly more competent than my non-university friends.
I have the opposite experience! Most people at LW meetups I've been to have tended to be succesful programmers or people with or working on stuff like math phds. Generally more socially awkward but that's not a great proxy for "competence" in this kind of crowd.
they can decide to lawfully run a business.
So why can't they decide to lawfully run a barony under feudalism? Or be a lawful satrap/pasha/governor/whatever?
Because you don't generally get to DECIDE to be a baron? You can inherit one, in which case a psychopath can to a large extent do what he wants with it without suffering repercussions, you can be granted one by the king (which is at least SOME sort of incentive system), or you can get a bunch of random guys together, start and army, and take one. At which point you can usually do whatever you want with it.
Of course rich guys can do a lot with the power they have once they have it, but the path to getting it is far more likely to involve helping a lot of people if it needs you to convince a bunch of different people to give you money for your services.
I'm confused by your last comment - what use would the LHC be in a global economic crisis or nuclear war? I don't suppose you mean something like "rig the LHC to activate if the market does not recover by date X according to measure Y, and then we will only be able to *observe* the scenario in which the market does recover" or something like that, do you?
I think the idea is you only run it if you're already indifferent to the world being destroyed?
A friend of mine attributes the refugee crisis in the Levantine countries to a severe drought caused by "climate change."
Does "climate change" mysteriously stop at Israel's borders? I haven't heard of any political breakdown or mass emigration from that country.
Israel is far more stable politically and far more wealthy than many of its neighbors.
As far as climate change goes, the geological record shows that global warming would be expected to cause the opposite of a drought, as the hottest times for hundreds of thousands of years coincide with greater rainfall and plant growth.
One could perhaps argue that it helps stabilizing the world which can be beneficial for yourself with small probability (which would be sort of an investment) or beneficial for your children with slightly greater probability (which would be sort of an investment with offspring empathy reward as a strong proxy).
How do you know that it helps stabilize the world? This is a trick question: You have no idea. You just think and hope that it does! This is why it's not INVESTING. You're comparing putting money into a quantifiable profitable enterprise with putting money into a dream.
How do you know it's beneficial to your children? You know what's REALLY beneficial to your children? Paying for them to have access to good healthcare and living in an expensive neighborhood.
Most colonized places were net money-losers for the colonizer for most of their history
But then why did people keep conquering and colonizing new lands?
More importantly, there are a few "control-group" countries which were not colonized while their neighbors were, like Siam (modern Thailand) and Ethiopia, and they don't seem better off than their neighbors.
There is also Japan, which was better off than its neighbors. In 1905 Japan was strong enough to win a war against Russia.
Because the people directly responsible for the colonization profited, even if their nation as a whole did not. To go back further in history, the general of a roman legion often came home from a campaign fabulously wealthy, while the people back home saw far less of the plunder. And asking modern italians to pay spain for what ceasar looted is kind of absurd
Shut up and did the impossible:
In the course of seven office days, I browsed through 139 scientific articles and wrote an extremely dense, 8-page summary (actually 5.5 pages of text and 2.5 pages of citations). I ended up using 69 articles and discarding the rest as not useful for my chosen subject.
can I read this summary?
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This is signalling and not an actual attempt to answer.
The correct answer is: If you care about existential risk you should not pay any attention to politics.