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The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

bbc.com

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Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

#21

Post by nosianu »

golemotron wrote: post #15

Rather than having one planet we should have a portfolio.

(I'm interpreting your comment as "portfolio of planets")

But the corporations would want to spread to all of them. Just like big cities all over the globe look the same, you can buy the same stuff. Trade is good, and I love corporations (never understood why anyone on the left would be against the concept - it's ideally suited to create a "container" for cooperating individuals), but even on our own main planet we can see that we have strong forces of equalization and winner takes all.

You would have to somewhat isolate the places if you want diversity. Same thing that helps with biological diversity. Otherwise it will all just be near-copies of sameness.

In that sense, it would just be like distributed storage of the same content. It helps when one place gets wiped out by accident, but it does not provide true robustness against the "unknown unknowns" (to quote Rumsfeld) that the universe occasionally throws at us.

Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

#22

Post by arglebarglegar »

golemotron wrote: post #15

Rather than having one planet we should have a portfolio.

we’re probably about a thousand years out from having anything close to earth, we’re squandering a ridiculously good thing here and more planets isn’t the solution

Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

#24

Post by sam_lowry_ »

I thought the article would talk about someone like Stanislav Petrov https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov or Vasily Archipov https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov_(vice_admira...

Or the latest Future of Life Award lareats https://futureoflife.org/future-of-life-award

Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

#25

Post by amelius »

whateveracct wrote: post #13
no_wizard wrote: post #2

It’s moments that I read articles like this that make me wonder why I’m putting so much energy into making a better SPA or trying to engineer solutions to faster more performant web animations. I feel like I’m not using any of my technical acumen to advance human civilization but instead to line my own coffers and those of the corporation I work for. With that said, it is always good to keep in mind just how fragile…

I mean .. do you enjoy the work? I write Haskell, I make computer games, I make web apps. Mostly because it's fun and satisfying. I'm also quite good at it and it comes easily to me. I remember when I decided to go into engineering, a peer of mine from high school said "whateveracct, you're top of your class. Why aren't you going into medicine in order to do something more Worthwhile with your life?" Stuck with me ev…

> I later realized that it smelled of a deeply nihilistic (as in Nietzsche's ideas) view of the world.

Who says you can't enjoy work in a different field, e.g. medicine? Perhaps you can even combine those skills with computer programming. E.g. build an exoskeleton that makes partially paralyzed people walk again.

Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

#26

Post by JasonFruit »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #7
sarbaz wrote: post #3

The article has some great examples of risks that were hyped out of proportion to their true severity. Should these things be considered? Yes. But only a little. If you halt programs completely for tail risks you'll never get anywhere. Modern examples, IMO, are: - Kessler Syndrome - Trying to prevent an asteroid hitting the earth - Nuclear war making the entire earth uninhabitable

> If you halt programs completely for tail risks you'll never get anywhere. If that "tail risk" though is "complete destruction of the planet", you only get to be wrong once.

Every action carries that risk somewhere in its very long tail. You have to assess the likelihood of the bad event occurring, and there is a point where it is so unlikely that it need not be considered at all. I don't think humanity is quite stupid enough to knowingly release its Ice-9 just yet.

Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

#28

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

forty wrote: post #18
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something with the spread rate of COVID-delta, and a high lethality rate after a long incubation period. I sometimes think how "lucky" (obviously, luck is relative) humanity is that HIV is an STD and not an airborne virus with the transmissibility of Delta.

For some reasons I feel HIV treatments would have been found much more quickly had it been the case. Just like I'm pretty sure mosquitos would have been eradicated (or another solution would have been found) if it had killed so many people in developed countries.

I think that's a good and fair point. Reagan famously didn't even mention AIDS publicly until 1985, 4 years after it was discovered. Urban gay ghettos in NY and SF were basically experiencing a plague with young, otherwise healthy men dropping like flies, and the world at large either (a) didn't care, or (b) was glad that AIDS was "killing all the right people".

Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

#29

Post by no_wizard »

whateveracct wrote: post #13
no_wizard wrote: post #2

It’s moments that I read articles like this that make me wonder why I’m putting so much energy into making a better SPA or trying to engineer solutions to faster more performant web animations. I feel like I’m not using any of my technical acumen to advance human civilization but instead to line my own coffers and those of the corporation I work for. With that said, it is always good to keep in mind just how fragile…

I mean .. do you enjoy the work? I write Haskell, I make computer games, I make web apps. Mostly because it's fun and satisfying. I'm also quite good at it and it comes easily to me. I remember when I decided to go into engineering, a peer of mine from high school said "whateveracct, you're top of your class. Why aren't you going into medicine in order to do something more Worthwhile with your life?" Stuck with me ev…

Yes, I genuinely do enjoy the work and I derive happiness in my field, in fact I want to do more not less to drive the field forward.

That does not mean I don’t sometimes feel the guilt of not being apart of something that drives humanity forward, though, even if all I could contribute was working the website that raises awareness instead! I just know what I’m capable of, but the reality vs the ideal is the philosophical struggle here for me.

I instead try to make conscious investments to try and move things forward and make personal choices consciously to issues like this as best as I reasonably can.

I still feel guilty sometimes I’m not working on something like raising the perception of the safety of nuclear energy ya know

Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

#30

Post by no_wizard »

beckman466 wrote: post #5
no_wizard wrote: post #2

It’s moments that I read articles like this that make me wonder why I’m putting so much energy into making a better SPA or trying to engineer solutions to faster more performant web animations. I feel like I’m not using any of my technical acumen to advance human civilization but instead to line my own coffers and those of the corporation I work for. With that said, it is always good to keep in mind just how fragile…

> I feel like I’m not using any of my technical acumen to advance human civilization What would you rather be working on?

I’m not saying I’m going to crack some crazy software problem like general AI or something, but theoretically I’d love to be working on something that pushes renewable energy forward.

In what capacity I don’t know. I’m pretty convinced we are overlooking geothermal energy in the USA at least. I often wonder if we could both relieve potentially dangerous pressure bellowing Yellowstone while simultaneously harnessing its geothermal energy for example

But alas, I think the reality is I lack the expertise to even talk about this with any authority

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