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The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

currentaffairs.org

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Re: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

#71

Post by joe_the_user »

rhaps0dy wrote: post #61
joe_the_user wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The article argues that putting things in term of the "existential" distracts from immediate problems - for example, if climate change can be terrible risk but still not an existential risk. And more broadly, you see the argument extrapolate to an almost purely hypothetical future evades discussion of real risks in the present.

That's fair, actually. This is an argument in the article. I would summarize it as "focusing on long-term risks necessarily means un-focusing on short-term ones, and that's bad". Would you agree? The latter part however ("and that's bad") is not well supported at all. That's what the article argues by emotional appeals. For a counterexample, most of the harms of climate change are still in the future, so addressing i…

That's fair, actually. This is an argument in the article. I would summarize it as "focusing on long-term risks necessarily means un-focusing on short-term ones, and that's bad". Would you agree?

-- I'd agree with the addition "risks so long term that any calculation of their value is wholly implausible, risks such as the risk of humanity 'not colonizing the galaxy'"

-- And yeah, the article pretty explicitly puts the situation as, this is the long view taken to the level of absurdity.

Re: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

#72

Post by sammalloy »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #50
sammalloy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wet bulb temperature, clathrate gun, food web collapse, albedo decrease, dormant virus release from permafrost, increase of tropical disease, water scarcity, crop and livestock failure—that /is/ almost certainly guaranteed extinction for humanity. How is this even debatable? We are already on this path.

Well, expert organizations like the IPCC produce reports on the expected impact of climate change, which don't include human extinction as even a worst-case possibility. I'm the last person who'd claim the experts are always right, but it's gotta be at least debatable.

This problem was discussed by Pratt and Dunlop in their 2019 policy paper for the National Centre for Climate Restoration:

> Climate scientists may err on the side of “least drama”, whose causes may include adherence to the scientific norms of restraint, objectivity and skepticism, and may underpredict or down-play future climate changes. In 2007, security analysts warned that, in the two previous decades, scientific predictions in the climate-change arena had consistently under-estimated the severity of what actually transpired.

> This problem persists, notably in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose Assessment Reports exhibit a one-sided reliance on general climate models, which incorporate important climate processes, but do not include all of the processes that can contribute to system feedbacks, compound extreme events, and abrupt and/or irreversible changes.

> Other forms of knowledge are downplayed, including paleoclimatology, expert advice, and semi-empirical models. IPCC reports present detailed, quantified, complex modelling results, but then briefly note more severe, non-linear, system-change possibilities in a descriptive, non-quantified form. Because policymakers and the media are often drawn to headline numbers, this approach results in less attention being given to the most devastating, difficult-to-quantify outcomes.

> In one example, the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report in 2014 projected a sea-level rise of 0.55-0.82 metre by 2100, but said “levels above the likely range cannot be reliably evaluated”. By way of comparison, the higher of two US Department of Defence scenarios is a two-metre rise by 2100, and the “extreme” scenario developed by a number of US government agencies is 2.5 metres by 2100.

> Another example is the recent IPCC 1.5°C report, which projected that warming would continue at the current rate of ~0.2°C per decade and reach the 1.5°C mark around 2040. However the 1.5°C boundary is likely to be passed in half that time, around 2030, and the 2°C boundary around 2045, due to accelerating anthropogenic emissions, decreased aerosol loading and changing ocean circulation conditions.

Re: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

#73

Post by marcinjachymiak »

joe_the_user wrote: post #37
marcinjachymiak wrote: post #29

> Hence, they point out that focusing on superintelligence gets you a way bigger bang for your buck than, say, preventing people who exist right now from contracting malaria by distributing mosquito nets. This comment and others in the article seem to be making a (bad) case that Effective Altruists don't care about the Global South. I find this bizarre because all EA enthusiasts I know are very much into mosquito net…

The argument is specifically against longtermism and against the idea that "existential risk" should be prioritized over immediately helping people. Maybe there are actually a lot of EA who don't approach things this way. Great but that's not countering the objection to longtermism producing bizarrely distorted priorities. I'll admit the article doesn't make explicit the point that hypothetical scenarios like trillio…

Yes, that is the main argument and I agree with it. But bundling it with EA is just inaccurate.

Longtermism seems to me like one of many deadends that utilitarianism takes you down if you embrace it and only it as your moral theory.

A little bit of utilitarian thinking can be fine when you have another theory to tell you the "why". That's why I don't have any problems with EA which is usually quite concrete

Re: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

#74

Post by s1artibartfast »

jablongo wrote: post #63
joe_the_user wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a passage from Toby Ord's PhD thesis quoted in the book. "Saving lives in poor countries may have significantly smaller ripple effects than saving and improving lives in rich countries. Why? Richer countries have substantially more innovation, and their workers are much more economically productive." It seems like the Longtermism critiqued by the article is discussing by article is indeed talking about the rea…

That quote in isolation is also evidence-free (and sort of appalling imo), I’ll have to look into all that Ord has to say about this. But I’d like to point out that choosing whether to improve lives in rich vs poor countries is not equivalent to choosing whether or not to engage with climate change aggressively.

You might be interested in my sibling post with a more complete statement. I think it is a lot less appalling in context.

Re: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

#75

Post by AbrahamParangi »

sammalloy wrote: post #72
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, expert organizations like the IPCC produce reports on the expected impact of climate change, which don't include human extinction as even a worst-case possibility. I'm the last person who'd claim the experts are always right, but it's gotta be at least debatable.

This problem was discussed by Pratt and Dunlop in their 2019 policy paper for the National Centre for Climate Restoration: > Climate scientists may err on the side of “least drama”, whose causes may include adherence to the scientific norms of restraint, objectivity and skepticism, and may underpredict or down-play future climate changes. In 2007, security analysts warned that, in the two previous decades, scientific…

"adherence to the scientific norms of restraint, objectivity and skepticism"

This is science. It's what science is made of. Abandon these and you abandon science altogether. Which is fine, I guess, but it has no connection to reality.

Re: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

#76

Post by AbrahamParangi »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #32
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk, presumably is the outcomes of climate change- which are uncertain and almost certainly not guaranteed death for everyone

“Guaranteed death for everyone” is the current state of affairs . You will die. I will die. This is a terrible bar for “should we care about this issue”? Autocratic dictator of the world says “deciduous trees and the colour yellow are now banned, on pain of death”? Well, it's not guaranteed death for everyone , so why should I care?

I didn't say that you shouldn't care about it. I am saying that a 95th percentile negative outcome for climate change is still probably limited in its existential impact, not that you're gonna like it.

Re: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

#78

Post by joe_the_user »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #70
joe_the_user wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a passage from Toby Ord's PhD thesis quoted in the book. "Saving lives in poor countries may have significantly smaller ripple effects than saving and improving lives in rich countries. Why? Richer countries have substantially more innovation, and their workers are much more economically productive." It seems like the Longtermism critiqued by the article is discussing by article is indeed talking about the rea…

Its not from Toby Ord, it is from Nick Beckstead's Thesis.[1] The idea is introduced as an couple sentence thought experiment in a 200pg thesis (emphasis mine): >To take another example, saving lives in poor countries may have significantly smaller ripple effects than saving and improving lives in rich countries. Why? Richer countries have substantially more innovation, and their workers are much more economically pr…

Context is important, specifically the abstract assumptions of fixed cost for each life, and fixed innovative capacity.

Sorry for the mis-attribution, at the same time both the quote, your explication of the quote and the chapters you cite seem consonant with the longtermism the article (rightly imo) criticizes. One point the article makes is that reasoning this way can justify anything.

Reasoning with based on "Infinite Value, Long Shots, and the Far Future" is inherently fallacious, is no more plausible than arguments like pascal's wager. The only limit on "long shots" is one's ability to cook them up (which alien landing should we be preparing for anyway, etc).

Re: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

#79

Post by kazinator »

> This means that if you want to do the most good, you should focus on these far-future people rather than on helping those in extreme poverty today.

Lifting people out of poverty means you're just increasing the consumption that produces global warming. Lifting people out of poverty is therefore not an environmental good.

Therefore, it is not a valid argument if you want to discredit an environmentally-linked viewpoint. It is neither here nor there.

If you want to (at least somewhat) discredit longtermism, you have to show that if all human activity around the globe that is geared toward reducing environmental harm were to adopt longtermist values, and made decisions accordingly, then the environmental situation would get worse than otherwise. That would tend to indicate that longtermism is just a smokescreen for living it up and not caring about the environment.

What we have here is just pathetic whataboutism, instead: "never mind the future of civilization in the light of climate change; what about all the poor people here today?"

"You know I'm tired of hearing about people; for a good many of them, it's their own fault. How about all the toddlers with cancer?"

"No way, to heck with your toddlers with cancer, how about $GROUP_I_FEEL_SORRY_FOR?"

Oh my god, someone in the world doesn't care about exactly the same things I care about. Doesn't believe in the same god, or the same politics, use the same apps, like the same music ... outrage in 4, 3, 2, ...

Re: The Dangerous Ideas of “Longtermism” and “Existential Risk”

#80

Post by jablongo »

joe_the_user wrote: post #69
jablongo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quote in isolation is also evidence-free (and sort of appalling imo), I’ll have to look into all that Ord has to say about this. But I’d like to point out that choosing whether to improve lives in rich vs poor countries is not equivalent to choosing whether or not to engage with climate change aggressively.

The article is specific critique of the idea of longtermism. The article puts together a number of arguments and quotes showing people following the logic of weighing purely hypothetical far-future people against the actual interests of real people and advocating resource transfers accordingly. I've shown a bit of this in the quote above. That quote in isolation is also evidence-free -- Are you implying some caveat o…

No just that cherrypicking quotes like that (by the author, not by you) does not really show that longtermism and climate change efforts are mutually exclusive, _even if_ it shows one influential and potentially mistaken person believes they are. Like I said before, I'm just looking for a plausible example of where pursuit of environmental goals would negatively affect the lives of people 10^3, 10^4, 10^5, 10^6 years in the the future; basically I think one can be an adherent to longtermism without having to denigrate environmentalism. The strawman the article creates is that these things are mutually exclusive when they are not, and creating this false dichotomy is not helpful to any of the important causes in question.
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