Just out of curiosity, how much time did you spend on modelling and writing this?
I am asking, because you are saying that you probably need 0.75 hours to vote. Let's say your remaining life expectancy is 40 years. If we have a 4 year election cycle, this means 10 elections. So, in total you would need 7.5 hours in your remaining life to go vote.
And I wondered if convincing yourself to not go vote took more time than to just go vote?
In general I see this post as part of work around civilizational resilience (similar to ALLFED) and in particular this post is part of a blog series which is meant to help us understand societal collapse better: https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/introducing-a-living-literature-review
As hinted on in the other comment I made to your separate question, I think it makes more sense to stay in one reasonably good place and try to keep societal structures there intact as much as possible. Staying mobile only makes more sense if everything has broken down and you are just a scavenger. However, you will want to avoid this kind of outcome as much as possible, as everything will be so much harder.
I think the kinds of famine that would happen in the scenarios that I describe would be quite different to the ones of the past when it comes to the scale. If there is just no food locally where you are, it does not really matter how resourceful you are. Also, I think that cooperation is quite important in such events. My own research, as well as the conclusions I took from reading a lot on this is that when cooperation breaks down, things will get much much worse. Therefore, I think the main thing you should be concerned about is not trying to get as many...
That's the big question of contemporary history. I discussed this a bit more here: https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/lessons-from-the-past-for-our-global
But in general I think that while our societies have changed a lot, many things have stayed the same. Especially, the food system and its importance for societies is still very similar. Also, if you read a lot of history, you come to realize that humans often tend to follow the same trajectories, in the sense of "history does not repeat, but it rhymes".
Views like the one from Lenton that I dis...
Having such a accuracy in your prediction is still pretty impressive when it comes to history. There is no super clear cut on how you define the start and end of things like "crisis of the middle ages", so I think the prediction is actually quite good.
Thanks David. I think the paper you are referring to might be the one I cited. At least Herrington also looked at the rate of change as well (Table 2). There you can see that the current trajectory and rate of change is most similar to the CT and the BAU2 scenario. CT being a scenario like you described (we innovated ourselves out of limits to growth), while BAU2 being a scenario where we are still on a collapse trajectory, but the resources of Earth are 2x of the default limits to growth scenario. Therefore, I would argue that we still can't tell if we ju...
Just out of curiosity: Where is the word "schlep" originating from in the context of AI? Don't think I ever came across it before reading this post.
The food shock resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine ultimately turned out comparatively small. ALLFED is looking mainly at food shocks of >10% of global calories. For events below that, especially if they are regional, it is much more cost efficient to trade grain globally. ALLFED's work is about what we could do if this current mechanism fails. Therefore, Ukaine and the resulting food problems are not really solvable with resilient foods, but more of a political problem.
Though I agree with you that it would be great to test out many of the ALLFED solutions before a catastrophe. However, this would cost magnitudes more money than ALLFED currently has.
Just a thought here. I am not sure if you can literally read this as EA being overwhelmingly left, as it depends a lot on your view point and what you define as "left". EA exists both in the US and Europe. Policy positions that are seen as left and especially center left in the US would often be more on the center or center right spectrum in Europe.
In my personal experience you always get downvotes/disagree votes for even mentioning any problems with gender balance/representation in EA, no matter what your actual point is.
This is just another data point that the existential risk field (like most EA adjacent communities) has a problem when it comes to gender representation. It fits really well with other evidence we have. See, for example Gideon's comment under this post here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QA9qefK7CbzBfRczY/the-25-researchers-who-have-published-the-largest-number-of?commentId=vt36xGasCctMecwgi
While on the other hand there seems to be no evidence for your "men just publish more, but worse papers" hypothesis.
Yeah fair enough. I personally, view the Robock et al. papers as the "let's assume that everything happens according to the absolute worst case" side of things. From this perspective they can be quite helpful in getting an understanding of what might happen. Not in the sense that it is likely, but in the sense of what is even remotely in the cards.
Just a side note. The study you mention as especially rigorous in 1) iii) (https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017JD027331) was made in Los Alamos Labs, an organization who job it is to make sure that the US has a large and working stockpile of nuclear weapons. It is financed by the US military and therefore has a very clear inventive to talk down the dangers of nuclear winter. Due to this reason this study has been mentioned as not to be trusted by several well connected people in the nuclear space I talked to.
An explanation of...
What exactly confused you about the code? It only strips down the names and counts them.
That the publications by someone are under counted makes sense, given how TERRA works, as likely not all publications are captured in the first place and probably not all publications were considered existential risk relevant. When I look at Bostrom's papers I see several that I would not count as directly x-risk relevant.
Where exactly did you find the number for Torres? On their own website (https://www.xriskology.com/scholarlystuff) they have listed 15 pap...
Exactly, this only counts the number.
Thanks for the kind words (sometimes feels like those are hard to come by in the forum).
"can't really draw much in the way of conclusions from this data" seems like a really strong claim to me. I would surely agree that this does not tell you everything there is to know about existential risk research and it especially does not tell you anything about x-risk research outside classic academia (like much of the work by Ajeya).
But it is based on the classifications of a lot of people on what they think is part of the field of existential risk studies and therefore I think gives a good proxy on what people in the field think what is part of...
Finally, I think that this surely tells you something about the participation of women in the field.
It presumably tells you something about the participation of women in the field, but it's not clear exactly what. For instance, my honest reaction to this list is that several of the people on it have a habit of churning out lots of papers of mediocre quality – it could be that this trait is more common among men in the field than among women in the field.
I've read it now and it was quite interesting. Though it did not really shift my conclusions. The only update I had was that we might even know less about the long term consequences (2100+) than I thought before.
I think that tipping elements could make a significant contribution to the destabilization of global civilization, which ultimately could contribute to collapse. This would likely not happen via temperature, but by other disruptive elements like significant sea level rise or destruction of ecosystem. However, the main effects of this are likely beyond 2100. Therefore, I am really unsure how this will ultimately play out. I think to make a good estimate of this we are currently knowing too little. Hopefully, the next special report of the IPCC will be about this. This would make things likely much clearer. Therefore, I'll probably not investigate this much further right now, as things seem to uncertain.
Hmm I feel like this is already a lot of line breaks. Most of the paragraphs are only ~ 5 sentences or less.
And at least for me bolding breaks the reading flow.
Just did a quick calculation. If you assume the minimal value as the trigger, you get ~0.61°C additional warming at 3°C warming.
Also, a lot more of the points are triggered at lower warming than this.
Yes, that is how I would interpret their Table S4, which seems like the main summary of their findings.
What was your impression of how the media represented their findings? It feels to me like the media often represents tipping points as happening instantaneous, while most of them are rather in the time scale of centuries.
However, you could make an argument that staying much below that is also sensible, as the tipping points are not only triggered by temperature, but also by physical processes like the dilution of salt concentrations in sea wat...
Thank you for the recommendation! I'll read through it and update the permanent version on Github.
Hi Corentin. Thanks for the comments. I plan to also look more into biodiversity and societal tipping points, but I haven't yet found the time.
Concerning the reformating, maybe it's just me, but I have a much harder time reading those executive summary style posts and therefore I would rather leave it the way it is.
This podcast episode feels like something out of a different timeline after the rough time EA has gone through since then. Would be very curious to hear if the opinions of the things said in the podcast are considerably different now?
Surely, they are more modern than utilitarianism. Utilitarianism has been developed in the 19th century, while all the other ones mentioned are from the 20th century. And it is not their "novelty" which is interesting, but that they are a direct follow up and criticism of things like utilitarianism. Also, I don't think that post above was an endorsement of using fascism, but instead a call to understand the idea why people even started with fascism in the first place.
The main contribution of the above mentioned fields of ideas to EA is that the...
It seems to me that we are talking about different definitions about what political means. I agree that in some situations it can make sense to not chip in political discussions, to not get pushed to one side. I also see that there are some political issues where EA has taken a stance like animal welfare. However, when I say political I mean what are the reason for us doing things and how do we convince other people of it? In EA there are often arguments that something is not political, because there has been an "objective" calculation of value. Howe...
Alternatives to QALYs (such as WELLBYs) have been put forward from within the EA movement. But if we’re trying to help others, it seems plausible that we should do it in ways that they care about. Most people care about their quality of life or well-being, as well as the amount of time they’ll have to experience or realise that well-being.
I’m sure there are people who would say they are most effectively helping others by “saving their souls” or promoting their “natural rights”. They’re free to act as they wish. But the reason that EAs (and not just EAs, be...
The main point I took from video was that Abigail is kinda asking the question: "How can a movement that wants to change the world be so apolitical?" This is also a criticism I have of many EA structures and people. I even have come across people who view EA and themselves as not political, even as they are arguing for longtermism. The video also highlights this.
When you are quantifying something you don't become objective all over sudden. You cannot quantify everything, so you have to make a choice on what you want to quantify. And this is a political cho...
The main point I took from video was that Abigail is kinda asking the question: "How can a movement that wants to change the world be so apolitical?" This is also a criticism I have of many EA structures and people.
I think it's surprising that EA is so apolitical, but I'm not convinced it's wrong to make some effort to avoid issues that are politically hot. Three reasons to avoid such things: 1) they're often not the areas where the most impact can be had, even ignoring constraints imposed by them being hot political topics 2) being hot political topics ma...
Our conversation kinda feels like to me that we are talking a bit past each other. As I understand your message you are saying that the shift in temperature focus is due to the Paris Agreement. This is also what we say in the paper. However, you disagree in the conclusions from that, by saying that this does not imply a focus shift.
And this is the part I don't get. If the IPCC focuses on different things due to the Paris Agreement, how is this not a shift in research focus? Especially after you said in your post before that your statement is based on...
We also looked into the RCP mentions. Going from AR5 to AR6 RCP8.5 increases ~ 10 %. Same goes for RCP2.5. The change is mainly caused by RCP6.0 mentioned less. RCP4.5 roughly stays the same.
As the RCPs weren't really used before AR5, we cannot compare it to anything before that. This is also one of the reason for using temperature, as we can look compare all reports and not only the last two.
The shift in temperature mentions is way stronger than the shift in RCPs. Especially if you compare it to the reports before AR5.
I think the shift i...
I think the shift in temperature focus is almost entirely because of the Paris Agreement. It's pretty natural that they would mention 2 degrees and 1.5 degrees a lot given Paris. Indeed, they had a special report on 1.5 degrees for that reason. I don't think it implies a change in research focus in the main reports since, as we have seen almost all impacts lit assesses the effects of RCP8.5.
Given that the RCP mentions have been pretty constant (barring RCP6 being mentioned less), I don't really see that there has been any change in research focus. I ...
I get your reasons and I hope I lose the 100 $. I also think the probable temperature for 2100 will continue to go down. However, we still have quite a long way to go to get to 2°C.
The IPCC does not really attach probabilities to temperatures. Therefore, it is not really possible to directly go for the IPCC reports as resolution. One possibility would be the Internationale Energy Agency. They regularly publish estimates of likely temperature trajectories. Their current estimate is that with currently (in 2021) stated policies we'll get 2.6°C in 2100....
Sounds reasonable enough to me.
The bet will resolve in your favor if the median temperature increase in the stated policies scenario of the 2032 IEA report is above 2°C.
If the IEA report does not exist or does not report an equivalent of their stated policies scenario the bet resolves ambiguously.
Very curious to see what will actually happen!
I don't see how this contradicts with the paper above. It does not say we should focus on RCP8.5 or a warming of 4.3°C. The main takeaway is the IPCC reports now focus on lower temperatures as they did before. I think this implies a shift in research. If you have another explanation for this I'd be happy to hear it.
Hiya, I think the latest IPCC report reflects the literature in that it also focuses on RCP8.5 (i.e. 4 degrees). You have sampled temperature mentions but I think if you has sampled RCP mentions, your main finding would no longer stand.
For example, for the latest IPCC report, pretty much every graph includes the impact of RCP8.5.
Agriculture
Ocean ecosystems
Coral reef
Shoreline change
Phytoplankton phenology
Marine species richness
Marine biomass
etc
Thanks for your comment. Unsurprisingly, I am less optimistic. While I also think that climate news gotten better over the last years, I still think there is a big chance we end up at over 2°C. The Twitter thread you linked to says "It finds that, if all the countries of the world fulfilled their climate commitments, the world would most likely limit climate change to just under 2 degrees C." That's quite a big if.
The post by John and Johannes mainly argues that extreme warming is not likely, which I also agree with. However, I see the research gap m...
Good points, I agree that the articles I linked dont directly imply a less than 50% chance of 2ºC warming.
And FWIW Metaculus disagrees with me here, the community prediction is 85% probability of >2ºC warming.
I still hold my position, where my model is that:
Thank you. I'll probably won't have the time to make a full post out of this, but this was strongly inspired by the series about 1848 in the Revolutions Podcast and especially this episode: https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/2017/08/707-the-hungry-forties-.html
So, if you are looking for additional information, you'll likely find it there.
I'll use this post to add some other potato related thoughts I had some time ago, as this chance might never come up again in the EA Forum:
Are the potato famine and the revolutions of 1848 an example for the fragility of the modern world?
Recently I came across the potato famine and how it contributed or even caused the revolutions of 1848. I wondered if this is an good example to show how cascading failures lead from an natural event to an agricultural crisis, to an economic crisis, to an financial crisis and finally resulting in a political cr...
Is it an important research topic to explore the availability of flammable materials in major NATO cities to assess the effects of nuclear war?
Today I read "Examining the Climate Effects of a Regional Nuclear Weapons Exchange Using a Multiscale Atmospheric Modeling Approach". It models the effect of a regional nuclear war between Pakistan and India. One quote stood out to me:
"The assumed 16 g cm−2 fuel loading and 100% burn rate for the fire is actually uncertain, and in fact, Reisner et al. (2018) assume only ∼1 g cm−2 fuel loading. Reisner et al. (2018) ...
Oh wow, did not really enter to win anything. I just participated because I thought the idea is really cool and it gave me a good opportunity diving into a variety of topics. A pleasant surprise :)
I am a bit surprised by how few people participated. If I remember correctly, 4/13 submissions were by me. I talked about this prize with several people and all seemed eager to participate, but apparently they didn't. So, I am not sure if the lack of forecasters is due to too little promotion (though more would probably helped as well). Seems like the...
Thank you for the answer. I thought this might be a topic discussing in the forum, as the shape of future wars seems like a thing that could influence the long term future by a lot.
I don't think that tanks shifted WWI on their own, but more in a combination of changed strategies and tactics. I fear more that a future war would grind to a kind of stalemate quickly, as modern weapons are so lethal (as you described) and favor the defender. Nuclear weapons would be a way to break such a stalemate. Therefore, I fear that this change in war might make the use of nuclear weapons more likely.
Not sure if this is a direct answer of your question, but what worked good for me was using my position on my university to allow students to work on ALLFED topics as their master thesis. This resulted in one very good master thesis on loss of industry scenarios.
Maybe you could reach out to academics with a bunch of possible thesis topics that they could do in cooperation with EA orgs. If they are a good fit for the researcher you reached out to, this might be an interesting offer for them.
Thank you for writing this. I think this contains lots of good information for the people you are aiming at.
An interesting read might be this paper here: https://journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/121/11/1771/30038/The-importance-of-stupidity-in-scientific-research I think some of the struggles you ran into are just a part of doing research and do not make your fit for research smaller.
This comment was mainly inspired by the revolutions podcast: https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/2017/08/707-the-hungry-forties-.html
Are the potato famine and the revolutions of 1848 an example for the fragility of the modern world?
Recently I came across the potato famine and how it contributed or even caused the revolutions of 1848. I wondered if this is an good example to show how cascading failures lead from an natural event to an agricultural crisis, to an economic crisis, to an financial crisis and finally resulting in a political crisis.
So what happened?
In the 19th century potatoes became a staple crop in Europe, because they were easy to plant and harvest, cheap and filled ...
This is a bit harder, as awards are usually given for a specific piece of research and as long as you haven't produced anything, you cannot get an award. However, there are some opportunities. For example, on conferences there are often things like poster awards for work in progress research you can participate in.
I do think that things like voting are dominated in their impact not by direct, but by indirect effects, which cannot really be captured in simple numbers. For example, if I vote I set a good example for my friends, which in turn makes them more likely to vote, which in turn makes their friends more likely to vote. Repeat this enough times and you have more stable democracy. I get that you could also model this in a relatively simple way, but my point is that there are a lot of interacting factors like this.
Making a only numbers based argument in such and ... (read more)