Comment by anonym29 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonym29 | Hacker News Reader

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The influencer was citing a scientist, and the hyperbole (delivered seriously) is the root cause of the "boy who cried wolf" effect that caused large swaths of the population to now dismiss basically all climate science, including the valid, rational, non-hyperbolic findings.

It's also not just influencers, it's scientists and the leadership of scientific institutions directly, too.

"If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late."

- Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [August 19th, 2008]

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-economist-debat...

"We cannot now afford to put off change any longer. We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world."

- James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies [January 17th, 2009]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jan/18/obama-cl...

You're purposefully misinterpreting what is being said.

They're saying that unless we stop our behavior in the next X years then it will be too late. We will have added so much to the system that it will "run away". This will eventually lead to the environment being inhospitable to our ways of life. Most dates ive read are 2075 or so. That's not 5 years.

They are not saying that life will end in 5 years.

This is a purposeful misinterpretation so that the reader doesn't have to listen. It allows the reader to scoff and go about their excess.

This interpretation was pushed, very purposefully, to accomplish apathy and complacency in the general public.

But back on tbe point, nobody really ever said "humanity is OVER in 5 years if we don't stop". What has consistently been said is "we are changing our environment and it will eventually change in ways that won't support our life" with various dates, usually 50+ years, given.

Valid counterpoint. There's an incredibly widespread belief in those circles that if you don't crank up the hyperbole nobody will pay any attention at all.

Unfortunately there's some truth to it, especially in the mass media age. We have a President who became the most powerful person on Earth by more or less eating his own boogers, because it got attention, and "any attention is good attention as long as they spell your name right." It works, unfortunately.

But it's damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you crank up the hyperbole you discredit yourself. If you don't, you're ignored. Rational measured opinions get no press and have no "virality."

Some of the AI doomers are, I think, genuinely kind of nuts (the Rationalists), but I suspect that some of them (especially actual scientists like Hinton) are doing this. They think if they don't make bombastic claims nobody will listen.

Unfortunately it means everyone will dismiss the entire issue when, in a few years, AI has not destroyed humanity.

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