All of Andrew Morton's Comments + Replies

Interesting discussion, but I suggest in part going back to basics. I feel it would be helpful to mentally divide the nature of what is being discussed and at times hastily tossed into this forum into three general  topics:

A. intellectual diversity and an interesting debate space , which helps us all look deeper into  the real issues EA was initiated to try to address.

B. Governance failures and personnel misconduct : financial and legal red cards and suspicions, personnel scandals, examples of bad and very bad behaviour within or on the fringes o... (read more)

Getting academic here..

The search for impact of improved governance vs governance activity indicators (board hires etc..) will always be tough. This is due to the "prevented disaster" issue:  Success is measured by the absence of incidents. In a young, data poor, secretive or poorly defined sector,  statistical work with public data may end up with void or misleading result.  

In industry , over the last 100+ years, the general trend has been to note the universality of the risks ( as we are all human), the regularity of serious incidents pub... (read more)

Dear all

An interesting thread.

For what is worth, I have  over 15 years experience observing  governance failures at different levels in organization where I work (that shall name anonymous), as well a "bad actor" incident within one of the multiple project specific teams that I have developed and then disbanded or transferred once the work was complete. I fully agree with the analysis and the first part of the response/mitigation measure proposed by Grayden.

In addition, looking the EA sector personnel profiles and reading some of their posts, wha... (read more)

Hi Gideon and thanks for the response. Interesting  and important project you are working on... I will follow up 1:1.

Specifically on your response on framing efforts, I think any framing or initiating of contingency planning for the failure of mainstream efforts to avert catastrophe is going to be problematic and unpopular. However that does not mean that it should not be addresed and serious work started. Here's my thoughts on this stream...

In simplistic terms, Plan  A/ global mainstream efforts,  such as CC mitigation, at least in presenta... (read more)

Forgive me for dropping a new and potentially shallow point in on this discussion. The intellectual stimulation from the different theoretical approaches, thought experiments and models is clear. It is great to stretch the mind and nurture new concepts – but otherwise I question their utility and priority, given our situation today. 

We do not need to develop  pure World A and World B style thought experiments on the application of EA concepts, for want of other opportunities to test the model. We (collectively, globally), have literally dozens of... (read more)

Dear colleagues.

Thanks Seth for this comprehensive effort. 

This is a complex piece of highly personal work, which tries hard to do many different things for a diverse audience in one fluid package. Given this very difficult  target, it understandably only partially succeeds. Nonetheless within it I am sure many will find some new information, perspectives and links. Rather than critique it any further, I would prefer to follow on just one of the many discussion topics it opens up : climate change (CC) and existential risk (XR). My argument is tha... (read more)

0
GideonF
1y
Also, I tend to think the Plan A and Plan B framing can be relatively problematic, particularly when combined with SRM, as it could act to deter mitigation
0
GideonF
1y
Just FYI the RESILIENCER Project which I am leading www.resiliencer.org is working on SRM and X-Risk, both on hwo it adds to and reduces X-Risk, so if you wanted to chat about that, I would be up for that!
1
Noah Scales
1y
EDIT: made a few light edits 3 hours after posting. My bachelors is in geophysics, I got started in Earth Science out of interest in the environment and Earth Systems modeling. My take on geo-engineering is that there's already some interest in Marine Cloud brightening to try and rescue the Arctic Ice. Also, we are already using aerosols (pollution) that cool the planet, with strong results.  In fact, there's fears that we will warm the planet by reducing our aerosol pollution. Maybe I'm biased by my background, but I think it's important for us to improve the computer models used to predict tipping point changes and global warming scenarios. Modelers need smaller mesh sizes for modeling earth's atmosphere but even more the oceans and also inclusion of more physical processes into their models (for example, water-pooling and drainage, bottom lubrication, rain, and ocean current effects on Greenland melt). I'm not a modeler myself, but improving model quality seems like a no-brainer to me. The climate science community needs hardware and software expertise and funds to make that happen fast. Your appeal to EA folks makes sense, I hope you get the response you're looking for, though I'm unclear on the value of a plan B. Yes, we need adaptation plans for extreme scenarios as their risks grow. Collecting seeds and DNA samples makes good sense, as the 6th great extinction rolls forward. However, adaptation is a near-term concern, more plan A than plan B. I don't think there really is a plan A with any viability, at least from a public perspective. Just limiting the meat and fish supply would seem like armageddon to some folks, but doesn't that qualify as part of plan A? I would hope so, it's an easy, obvious, and powerful intervention to forestall famine and produce fewer GHG's.  Well, it's not easy politically, but its easy in every other way.  I guess there are legitimate concerns about what will supply EAA's (essential amino acids), but there'll be soy (a lot of it
2
SethBaum
1y
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. To all: Let me just briefly add that I believe this to be a compelling perspective worth taking seriously. Anyone wishing to contact Morton can find his email address on his page at UNEP here.

Congratulations on a very interesting piece of work, and on the courage to set out ideas on a topic that by its speculative nature will draw significant critique.

Very positive that you decided on a definition for "civilizational collapse", as this is broadly and loosely  discussed without the associated use of common terminology and meaning. 

A suggested further/side topic for work on civilizational collapse and consequences is more detailed work on the hothouse earth scenario (runaway cliamte change leading to 6C+ warming + ocean chemistry change... (read more)