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Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

I can't help but wonder why, now, someone has chosen to highlight what is still far too small a movement and treat it as though it were a dangerous threat, and then demonize it by associating it with a few of its wealthier proponents.

Things like Effective Altruism and looking at existential risk are hardly drawing a substantial amount of attention right now; they should be, but they could get ten times the attention and funding and still only have a miniscule fraction of the people and funding going towards more popular causes.

And the set of people who think climate change isn't an important problem has almost no overlap with anyone thinking about existential risk. At most, I've seen a very small number of people suggesting that there are other high-risk issues that also deserve attention and aren't getting it.

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Perhaps because some wealthy individuals with outsized influence+power are becoming so out of touch with the present they might cause outsized harm.

The founding of OpenAI was prompted by some of the ideas of Bostrom and co. So yeah, the ideas deserve to be looked by a wide segment of society than those who normally considered "rationalism".

Anyone seriously trying to tell people they shouldn't work to address climate change should rightfully be decried for causing harm. But the angle of trying to paint everyone thinking about existential risk with that brush is itself irresponsible and inaccurate.

There are lots of people spouting things like "don't bother about climate change", and that harmful group has almost no overlap with anyone thinking seriously about the future of humanity. Taking the vanishingly small intersection and drumming it up for outsized outrage is ridiculous and harmful.

Another, far less ridiculous angle would be "here's a tiny group of wealthy people with weirdly contradictory viewpoints". Perhaps that might not have gathered as many clicks, though.

Are they contradictory?

These supremacist ideas have a long and toxic history. And the moral foundations are always similar - some people today can be considered wholly disposable.

And they are supremacist - based on the unproven belief that humanity has an obvious manifest destiny which will incarnate (or perhaps insiliconate) super-intelligence across multiple galaxies.

It's juvenile Tom Swift fantasy.

Humanity has multiple immediate challenges now. They need actionable, practical intelligence.

If we can't find the relatively limited intelligence to deal with them, where are we going to find the IQ needed to colonise a galactic supercluster?

Of course some other species might evolve on Earth. But also - it might not. No matter what grand name this is given, "thinking" about it is just well-funded science fiction.

Yes, they're fundamentally contradictory.

You seem to be implying that ideas and goals about preserving and benefit humanity indefinitely are somehow only benefiting a subset of humanity, or worse, are used to harm some subset of humanity. Anyone looking to twist such ideas or goals to only benefit themselves or a subset of humanity should be called out on that. But right now you're attacking the entire concept over your perception that it only benefits the rich, or perhaps some other subset of people.

By all means, attack inequality. But let's work to fix it. The response to "other people have nicer things than me" should not be "people other than me shouldn't get to have nice things", it should be "more people should get to have nice things". That's even more critical when those things are fundamental improvements and safeguards of people's lives. Let's raise the baseline for everyone, rather than focusing excessive energy on cutting down the tall poppies.

And science fiction has a way of inspiring and driving science fact.

> It's juvenile Tom Swift fantasy.

This I agree with. Their future dream isn't super plausible, is much too specific, and doesn't even seem desirable.

> they are supremacist - based on the unproven belief that humanity has an obvious manifest destiny

Normally "supremacist" means "this group of humans is superior to this other group of humans". I don't see a lot of that in this, except in the bit about "resources should be invested in the developed world".

(And "manifest destiny" is of course incredibly loaded, but you knew that!)

But --

> Humanity has multiple immediate challenges now. They need actionable, practical intelligence.

-- yes. I agree with the "actionable, practical" bit. Solving climate change isn't some research problem. It just needs leadership to organize people to do things we already know how to do.

Another, far less ridiculous angle would be "here's a tiny group of wealthy people with weirdly contradictory viewpoints"

The article is quite clear that is criticizing an idea (This is a dangerous ideas). For any idea, if you at the people subscribing to it, you'll see they follow the idea in a somewhat contradictory fashion. But should hold back from looking at the idea itself 'cause otherwise one's ability to analyze is complete hobbled.

The real concern is that this philosophy has terrifying possibilities (even if they're in the fringe), and being associated with powerful and wealthy people like Musk threatens to validate and realize those possibilities.

"...demonize it by associating it with a few of its wealthier proponents"

It's a bit, uh, odd to complain about associating an idea with it's proponents. That's what most people do with most ideas. It seems like a lot of arguments being made here have the quality of "the authors are unfairly summarizing the arguments being actually made ... rather than taking the whole thing as a light-hearted experiment with no consequences if you don't want them...."

> It's a bit, uh, odd to complain about associating an idea with it's proponents

Not when they're non-representative proponents used to advance an inaccurate sensationalized viewpoint.

That viewpoint is completely opposite of the reality of people thinking about existential risks. The people thinking about existential risks decades ago would have been working on climate change. Now, climate change is in the mainstream consciousness, and though there still isn't enough being done about it, it hardly needs more attention. So it's also reasonable to ask, what problems will have mainstream attention many years from now but we'll wish we'd started working on today?

> I can't help but wonder why, now, someone has chosen to highlight what is still far too small a movement and treat it as though it were a dangerous threat, and then demonize it by associating it with a few of its wealthier proponents.

I agree. It's a clear signal of people trying to nip an idea in the bud.

The thing that they don't mention is that we have a way of dealing with risk that isn't "all or nothing" - insurance.

When people pile on billionaires for paving the way toward having people on more than one planet, I just consider it an extremely small premium to pay relative to global GDP to avert a real risk. The world can do many things like that.

They are attacked because they are committing blasphemy against the church of climate change.

There is no threshold for blasphemy, even the tiniest one must be punished and made an example of so that others don't get any ideas that blasphemy will be tolerated.

You’re smart to use a throw away, but you’re on to something. Take Bjorn Lomberg who’s work has likely helped guide governments to make decisions which have done immeasurable good for the poor and sick, can’t even have his voice heard in the climate change debate. He’s simply called a denier and shouted down (even though he says climate change is real). His work with Nobel prize winning scientists didn’t buy him an ounce of forbearance from the modern Grand Inquisition.

You mentioned that Bjørn Lomborg's work has "likely helped guide governments to make decisions which have done immeasurable good for the poor and sick" - I am interested to know, because it isn't something I am familiar with, what of his work are you referring to?

After Copenhagen Consensus, Lomberg and his advising group offered advice to several nations about the optimal issues they should be investing in to maximize lives saved and improvements in quality of life. I don't remember details off the top of my head, but that is what I was referring to.

One of the hardest books to read and see that for a pittance the world could eradicate several types of horrific diseases or drastically improve large numbers of lives, through simple targeted investments, and yet it never happens.

Here's a more personal example. After reading the book, a friend who made a mint in the oil industry bought four mobile drilling rigs, fitted them for digging water wells, paid to ship them to a state in I can't remember which country, but it was a poor one in Africa, where he hired a crew to run the operation and dig wells for free. He said it was a nightmare of red tape to operate, but wells got dug and people got fresh water that used to get dirty water.

Identifying which problems can be most readily addressed with limited funding certainly seems like valuable work, and definitely worth supporting. I imagine the major constraint is funders' (i.e. rich nations') willingness to actually pay for these projects. Convincing them that they are getting the most bang for their buck seems like a good idea in today's optimisation-obsessed world.

However, having read a bit about their approach, it isn't clear to me that the methods used in that process are particularly effective at assessing longer terms problems such as climate change (and this seems to be a common critique).

There are some interesting analogues between the limitations of the CCC approach and those of longtermism, in that both focus on timescales (respectively short and very long) that diminish the importance of climate change, which is most significant as a medium-term risk. Having said that, at least the CCC work has some methodological rigour on its own terms, and actual utility - as I noted in another comment the longtermism "methodology" seems pretty hopelessly naive, and uninformative.

He is the leader of the Copenhagen Consensus Center https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/

Which does research into the most cost-effective ways to fight global poverty. Absolutely marvellous work.

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