Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years • Hacker News Board

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#371

Post by daveguy » Wed, May 15, 2024, 5:27 PM UTC

_yb2s wrote: post #306

daveguy wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fear of AGI is very real. But our proximity to AGI is marketing hype. In terms of existential crisis #2 and #3 are serious and already worth investing in mitigation. But #1 (AGI) is science fiction.

Fiction is much more than just entertainment... science fiction has been pivotal in both shaping and preparing our society for changes caused by technology. Much of the best science fiction has been so prescient that it's hard for modern audiences to even understand that these things were written before the world was like this. When I share a lot of old sci-fi with my young son, he finds it unremarkable, as they seem…

I neither said nor implied that AGI being firmly in the realm of science fiction is a bad thing. There's nothing wrong with thinking about the implications and they would be significant. It's just such a stretch from where we currently are that it's not worth investing significant resources in mitigation. The threat from AI that is present and real is janky systems being depended upon for life and death decisions. Authors like Vernor Vinge (and I love his stories) depend on bending the rules of both physics and computation. Physics in that computation is somehow fundamentally different in different areas of the universe and computation in that known computability limits no longer apply.

It's easy to re-imagine science fiction as being closer to reality after the fact.

AI safety is an issue whether AGI is 10 or 100 years away.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#372

Post by trashtester » Wed, May 15, 2024, 5:28 PM UTC

mrguyorama wrote: post #353

trashtester wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many places could increase food production to twice what it is today if 5C warmer.

"5C warmer" doesn't mean a uniform increase in temperature of 5 degrees at all times. It means "5 * the thermal mass of the earth's biosphere" worth of extra energy in an extremely chaotic system that is currently in a local stable point, but doesn't have to stay there.

A 5C warming is indeed likely to make a few areas uninhabitable. I'm not saying climate change is not a problem. I'm just saying it's not an extinction event.

But keep in mind that the areas that tend to get the greatest warming tend to be the dry ones. In such places, sweating will still allow human bodies to regulate body heat, if air conditioning breaks down.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#373

Post by kypro » Wed, May 15, 2024, 5:28 PM UTC

darby_eight wrote: post #355

belter wrote: post #3

We are in the multilayered race between - The risk of the rise of AGI - The risk and madness of Nuclear conflict - The risk of runaway Climate change My money is on Mother Gaia. She will brutally and swiftly discipline her puppies.

> The risk of the rise of AGI can someone explain what the risk of this actually is? I just assumed it was a regulatory capture ploy. IMO it is massively distracting from the very real and very measurable impact the global industry has on our climate.

I understand why some people might not weight the probability and risk of AGI as highly as others, but to deny the risk entirely, or to act as if it's ridiculous to be concerned about such things in my opinion is just an intellectually ignorant position to hold.

Obviously near-term AGI and climate change present us with near zero risk, and therefore certain groups will dismiss both. This is despite clear trends plotting towards very clear risks, but because these individuals are yet to see any negative impact with their own eyes it's all too easy for them to dismiss the risk as some kind of hysteria. But these risks are real and rational because the trends are real and clear. We should take both seriously.

The nuclear risk is real too, but unlike AGI and climate change the risk isn't exponentially increasing with time. I think other weapons like bioweapons and drone weapons potentially fit that risk profile, however.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#374

Post by abdullahkhalids » Wed, May 15, 2024, 5:31 PM UTC

feverzsj wrote: post #53

Climate change is unavoidable. People should start moving to highland now.

There is no reliable water on the highlands because it depends on micro local precipitation. The lower down you go, the more reliable your water supply becomes because of the larger catchment area. But the lower down you go, the more chances you will get flooded.

There are no good answers.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#375

Post by liveoneggs » Wed, May 15, 2024, 5:32 PM UTC

darkwater wrote: post #33

liveoneggs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the purpose or context of this thinking? To infantilise and absolve China?

To put the blame in the right place, perhaps? Obviously China (and its government) has its own responsibilities as well, but it all started with Western companies (and the Western lifestyle)

playing the blame game is a trap where the polluters win and breathing humans lose because all it does it cause stupid delays and distraction

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#376

Post by darby_eight » Wed, May 15, 2024, 5:32 PM UTC

kypro wrote: post #373

darby_eight wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The risk of the rise of AGI can someone explain what the risk of this actually is? I just assumed it was a regulatory capture ploy. IMO it is massively distracting from the very real and very measurable impact the global industry has on our climate.

I understand why some people might not weight the probability and risk of AGI as highly as others, but to deny the risk entirely, or to act as if it's ridiculous to be concerned about such things in my opinion is just an intellectually ignorant position to hold. Obviously near-term AGI and climate change present us with near zero risk, and therefore certain groups will dismiss both. This is despite clear trends plott…

> deny the risk entirely, or to act as if it's ridiculous to be concerned about such things in my opinion is just an intellectually ignorant position to hold.

This would take someone actually articulating what this risk you refer to is. All I have to go off of is Terminator, which is patently ridiculous. People in power would never relinquish this power to a computer without being able to dictate whom it benefits.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#377

Post by trashtester » Wed, May 15, 2024, 5:34 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #367

trashtester wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually had sea level rise and radius from likely thermonuclear targets in mind when I bought my house. I hadn't read The Science yet, so I believed The Propaganda. Now that I've read The Science (IPCC reports), it turns out sea levels are unlikely to rise more than 50cm, and definitely not 10+ meters like I was preparing for.

> radius from likely thermonuclear targets which direction did you take it though? did you move to a place away from likely targets (which really, with as many nukes that are out there, what's not a target?), or did you move closer so that you'd be taken out in the first wave and spared the life of misery after? my dad used to say that one of the deciding factors where he chose to build the house I grew up in was bas…

I moved away from the most likely target, enough that I would be likely to survive a 400 kt nuke.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#378

Post by abdullahkhalids » Wed, May 15, 2024, 5:36 PM UTC

trashtester wrote: post #243

mjhay wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A simultaneous failure of multiple breadbasket regions (something made much more likely by climate change) would case mass global death. To be fair, first-worlders wouldn't be as affected, though. It's not good to assume all hope is lost, but it is also dangerous to bury your head in the sand.

Global food production per capita now is massively higher than 50 years ago (and still climbing). And also probably higher than any time in the past. Even if food production falls globally by 25% or so, any famines will be due to distribution, not lack of global food production. If we really screw up, we may have famines similar to what was relatively common up to about 1980. And why did we stop having them?

Many countries in the world can't feed themselves. They import food from others. If there are crop failures, food producing countries impose export bans. For example, India has a ban on wheat export this year [1] because of crop failure.

Once export bans become tit-for-tat (not dissimilar to the tit-for-tat export/import control bans between US-China right now), then some countries will be fine, and others will experience mass starvation. Global food production per capita only works if there is free trade of food.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-61590756

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#379

Post by _yb2s » Wed, May 15, 2024, 5:36 PM UTC

feoren wrote: post #346

_yb2s wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, even if something is worth fearing, it's not simply because people are afraid of it already. Did something I write make you think I was arguing otherwise? As an aside, I would argue that this deep rooted human fear of AI is related to the general ancient fear of humans being wiped out by other bands of more technologically advanced humans. Which for most of human history has been the single biggest danger by far…

> Did something I write make you think I was arguing otherwise? At the risk of having boring meta-commentary about comments, I feel like I see people often forgetting that their comments are in the context of a larger conversation and are going to be read as responses to the parent comment that they are, well, responding to. And then they get confused when their comments are interpreted in that context, rather than a…

I appreciate the thoughtful reply.

The seriousness of AGI risk is a big conversation our society is having right now, and I am not interested in laying out my position on it in detail on here... only that dismissing the fear of AGI as marketing hype is a straw-man argument - and ignores all of the history, discussions, and arguments on both sides of this debate going back decades, or arguably even thousands of years.

Sure, it is fair to suspect that, because I am making that point, that I might also think AGI is a real threat to human civilization. The debate is so widespread right now, with mostly aggressive and dismissive bad faith arguments on both sides, that it sounds pretty exhausting and pointless to discuss.

I share your concern, and objection to making discussions needlessly adversarial. In general, I've seen a huge rise recently in internet discussions mostly reducing to people yelling at each other that the other person is a narcissist. Even in niche technical and hobby forums, it is becoming the norm for disagreements. I feel it is infecting me as well, and it might be time to take a break from the internet and talk to people I actually like in real life more.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#380

Post by abdullahkhalids » Wed, May 15, 2024, 5:40 PM UTC

card_zero wrote: post #250

fmobus wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These numbers say more about the US than China, if you control for population. And also, I keep seeing those numbers thrown around, but it's never clear if it's on the production side or the consumption side. If it's the production side CO2, then we have to remember that a huge fraction of carbon emitted by China is for the benefit of consumers in the western countries. Which makes you think, just wtf is the us doing…

> if you control for population But why would you control for population? So there are a vast number of Chinese who can't afford a large share of China's emissions, so what? What's your mindset here, that we have to determine the most guilty individual person and ignore governments? There may be lots of people in China but it's one government and it's emitting a lot, in absolute terms. Is Liechtenstein (population un…

> But why would you control for population?

Because the amount of changes that a society has to make in how it lives to get to net zero is determined by how much each person emits.

The average US person emits 15 tons CO2 every year (there is distribution about it). The average China person emits half that. So obviously the US has to make a larger change in the structure of society.

Of course, it is better to subdivide even further. One way that is popular is to estimate how much do super rich emit and what the average emit, and of course the super rich have to be reigned in a lot more than the average person.