Re: 9-Oct-18 World View -- UN: We have just 12 years to prevent global warming catastrophe
Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 5:48 pm
These are all good points, and as noted, relevant points that virtually everyone either dismisses as irrelevant (as in, relevant to politics/international-conflicts and/or future technology, but that's a different department) or else just runs away from because it makes their brain hurt to think about it.
But here's some twists on these points, and some (partial) fallacies in the fallacies.
Ignoring global climate change:
Some people still cling to the (misguided, I think) hope that global climate change is not a reality, and is just a bunch of nonsense trumped-up (pun intended) by business owners that don't want to pay their share of the cost to attempt to fix the problem. Others (my brother included, a source of many discussions) think it's real, but not at all human-caused, rather just a natural phenomenon (say, just like the ice ages) so that we should just let nature take its course, and sit by and watch it happen. I've seen the lecture with proof (and I wish I had the Powerpoint slides) by the climatologists/geologists, and I can tell you that climate change (hotter some places, colder other places, dryer some places, wetter other places) is a real thing that is scientifically proven, and at least partially caused by human's use of inefficient transportation, fossil fuels to heat and power the transportation, human's raising animals to eat (yes, I'm talking cow farts here, a huge problem somewhat akin to the 1800s NYC problem of too much horse shit), and insufficient use of nuclear energy along with too-slow switching to other green energies.
So even if humans are only partly to blame, and natural sunspot cycles are the cause of the other half, one would think that still, humans would almost unanimously want to take steps to remediate the problem, rather than sitting idly by and watch the polar ice caps melt and oceans rise to flood NYC and Boston and D.C. and LA and all of Florida. Of course, places like China may not give a crap, since Beijing is 100-200 feet in elevation, and only southeast suburbs would flood. Maybe that's why China continues to be the worst polluter and contributor to global climate change, most notably via harvesting and burning lots of coal to accomplish its own conversion from a backwards country to a modern technological country (I think I heard that one new coal burning plant comes on line per day over there).
Of course, all this doesn't mean that the Paris accords are a good idea - as I agree that it is largely a scam to let places like China continue to be the worst polluters while America pays what amounts to war reparations for past pollution that we've already committed. Sure, let's fix the problem in America as fast as we can (and we largely are, as pointed out, via new technology being invented and coming online). So yes, we're seemingly ignoring the effects of technology to counter the problem. However, at the same time, the worst polluters of the world seemingly have no desire, or maybe no incentive to use the available technology to the benefit of the entire earth. Maybe the do-gooder Paris accords idea is for the rich countries to give the poor countries money to help them get their shit in order. But realistically, they'll just accept the cash and keep on polluting. So the real problem is, we must force the world's worst polluters (both countries and businesses) to get with the program, and stop or at least drastically slash their carbon footprint.
Ignoring war:
Yes, that's a factor that nobody's really considering, that indeed may bring a partial self-correction to the problem before it reaches a critical "turning point" at which the anticipated negative effects cannot be stopped. I'll take the UN study at its word that this turning point may happen sooner rather than later. Does that mean we should hurry up and have a global war? Well, that sounds like a solution that might be worse than the problem.
Nevertheless, who knows? - that very well might happen. Maybe China will steal one to many territories in the South China Sea from the Philippines and other regional countries, and the U.S. and allies might feel obligated to take military steps to stop Chinese colonialism in its tracks - and that might lead to an all-out war in which enough people die to slow down the advancing problem of global climate change just enough to keep NYC and LA et al from becoming the next Venice(s) of the world. But even if that type of war does come about, the motivation for going to war with China might have more to do with punishing China for (at some time in the future) submerging NYC and Boston and LA and Florida, than whether or not some American Navy ships are allowed to navigate freely in the South China Sea. Trump is already (justifiably) bitching to China about stealing our technology. Why are we not also bitching to them about flooding our major cities (eventually)? Maybe we should give them some modern American eco-friendly energy technology in return for their banning future coal-fired power plants (and retrofitting existing ones with scrubbers).
The (partial) fallacy in Fallacy #2 in climate change story: Technology
Technology will definitely help, but only if every country uses it. And the U.S. will through natural economic reasons, but many/most other countries won't. If not, maybe we need to force other countries to use the available technology. [See possible global war, above.] I'm not sure if the Singularity will actually help or not - maybe it might. But two things are relevant. One, the Singularity will not occur (if indeed it does occur) as soon as some people think. The projected date of 2030 noted in this blog (and supported by discussion at http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ ... 151228.htm) is probably way too optimistic/soon. Some of the projected accomplishments at projected dates in that article have not happened, even though the dates have come and gone. Singularity-caliber artificial cognitive capabilities require Hard-AI - and that is just that - extremely hard to do. Maybe we've recently sped up the progress in that direction a little bit by using novel approaches such as deep learning, but it's still really really difficult to achieve. There have been many AI Winters of disillusionment in AI in the past, and I predict another one approaching soon, when businesses realize that the AI hype is, well, over-hyped.
And I don't have a better date for projected achievement of Hard-AI, leading to a possible Singularity. I haven't read Ray Kurzweil's book on the "Singularity." I should have - it's on my future reading list - since my field of specialization is AI. But for now, let's just say that maybe Ray's guestimated date of Singularity is probably also overly optimistic. Yet, that may come some day. And there are lots of moral issues associated with prominence of autonomous thinking robots.
But if that does happen, that might ultimately accomplish (more nicely) the reduction in carbon-polluting people on this planet that is needed to avert an ecological calamity. The idea is that maybe instead of striving for 3-4 kids, future parents might settle for 1-2 kids plus 2 robot playmates and/or servants. It's a remote possibility, but let's at least consider it to be something that is semi-feasible. If that did happen, the extra robots would be more power efficient than the kids they substitute for - so less energy, less fossil fuels, less NYC flooding, etc. Also, that may break what is claimed to be the "Malthus Effect" that for any species (most notably humans) to survive, the population growth rate must be greater than the food supply growth rate (thus causing a problem, obviously, also leading quite naturally to wars and human kill-offs that bring the system back into balance). I recently took a class on population growth in which we studied Malthus in the original, and I believe that (sadly) Malthus was right-on in many of his conclusions. However Malthus did not consider either robots or the recent "green revolution" in farming efficiency, and so that part of Malthus' theory is not 100% true anymore. Robots and/or robotic farm instruments can take the place of the required humans to feed the world. Already, drones and satellite pictures are used in farming AI applications to farm more efficiently with exactly the right amount of water and no more pesticides than are needed. So Malthusian exponential growth in Earth population no longer has to be inevitable. The down-side though, is that number of children (to bear) is largely influenced by local/regional social tradition. And that takes up to 100 years to change. Some formerly impoverished parts of the world tend to have 8 kids just because they think 4 of them will die of starvation, and the parents want at least 4 left over to take care of them in their old age. But already, with more efficient "green technology" food production plus better (largely UN sponsored) medical treatment, these people are still bearing 8 kids, but all 8 survive - so we get hyper-exponential population growth (like Malthus on steroids). It takes generations for this knowledge to sink in (in somewhat of a manner that Generational Dynamics might have something to say about). The result is: population will get exponentially ever higher, before it begins to taper off, and possibly reduce.
I hate to say it, but the interim solution to that may well end up being more wars as well. The news seems to be bad - no good quick solutions, just lots of wars.
The (partial) Fallacy in Fallacy #1 in climate change story: Ignoring war
As pointed out elsewhere, the U.S. and others are getting better (via advanced AI and robot and drone technologies) at fighting wars using technology as the biggest warfighter, in addition to (a smaller number of) soldiers. Thus, in the future, wars might be decided by who has the best and smartest and most well-armed robots, rather than whose soldiers win the battle. It's the soldiers' robots that will win the battle. Thus, the number of human casualties may go down in future wars (decades from now - this is not an immediate thing). But then, if that becomes the case, then giant wars may no longer have the self-correcting features of making giant reductions in populations, that we would normally expect. True, if nuclear weapons get deployed on a large scale, then all bets may be off on this conjecture. Still, it might seem that World War III (if, god forbid, it might happen) might not eliminate 25% to 50% of the Earth population, after all. It might *only* eliminate 10% of the population. Enough to be a giant disaster, for sure, but not enough to be the self-correcting adjustment (downward) on population, such as to resolve the impending doom that is global climate change. So the (seemingly) inevitable wars may not be as big of an effect on restraining global climate change as one might suspect (if one even considered it, which, as pointed out, most don't).
So what is to be done? (Rhetorically speaking), should we adopt a world-wide ban on fighting wars using robots, just so that when such wars do come, they will kill off enough humans to correct the global climate-change disaster? I doubt that would go over too well in the next (Paris, or wherever) climate conference. It's probably as dumb an idea as the U.S. paying money to China, and other countries, as a bribe to get them to pollute less.
But here's some twists on these points, and some (partial) fallacies in the fallacies.
Ignoring global climate change:
Some people still cling to the (misguided, I think) hope that global climate change is not a reality, and is just a bunch of nonsense trumped-up (pun intended) by business owners that don't want to pay their share of the cost to attempt to fix the problem. Others (my brother included, a source of many discussions) think it's real, but not at all human-caused, rather just a natural phenomenon (say, just like the ice ages) so that we should just let nature take its course, and sit by and watch it happen. I've seen the lecture with proof (and I wish I had the Powerpoint slides) by the climatologists/geologists, and I can tell you that climate change (hotter some places, colder other places, dryer some places, wetter other places) is a real thing that is scientifically proven, and at least partially caused by human's use of inefficient transportation, fossil fuels to heat and power the transportation, human's raising animals to eat (yes, I'm talking cow farts here, a huge problem somewhat akin to the 1800s NYC problem of too much horse shit), and insufficient use of nuclear energy along with too-slow switching to other green energies.
So even if humans are only partly to blame, and natural sunspot cycles are the cause of the other half, one would think that still, humans would almost unanimously want to take steps to remediate the problem, rather than sitting idly by and watch the polar ice caps melt and oceans rise to flood NYC and Boston and D.C. and LA and all of Florida. Of course, places like China may not give a crap, since Beijing is 100-200 feet in elevation, and only southeast suburbs would flood. Maybe that's why China continues to be the worst polluter and contributor to global climate change, most notably via harvesting and burning lots of coal to accomplish its own conversion from a backwards country to a modern technological country (I think I heard that one new coal burning plant comes on line per day over there).
Of course, all this doesn't mean that the Paris accords are a good idea - as I agree that it is largely a scam to let places like China continue to be the worst polluters while America pays what amounts to war reparations for past pollution that we've already committed. Sure, let's fix the problem in America as fast as we can (and we largely are, as pointed out, via new technology being invented and coming online). So yes, we're seemingly ignoring the effects of technology to counter the problem. However, at the same time, the worst polluters of the world seemingly have no desire, or maybe no incentive to use the available technology to the benefit of the entire earth. Maybe the do-gooder Paris accords idea is for the rich countries to give the poor countries money to help them get their shit in order. But realistically, they'll just accept the cash and keep on polluting. So the real problem is, we must force the world's worst polluters (both countries and businesses) to get with the program, and stop or at least drastically slash their carbon footprint.
Ignoring war:
Yes, that's a factor that nobody's really considering, that indeed may bring a partial self-correction to the problem before it reaches a critical "turning point" at which the anticipated negative effects cannot be stopped. I'll take the UN study at its word that this turning point may happen sooner rather than later. Does that mean we should hurry up and have a global war? Well, that sounds like a solution that might be worse than the problem.
Nevertheless, who knows? - that very well might happen. Maybe China will steal one to many territories in the South China Sea from the Philippines and other regional countries, and the U.S. and allies might feel obligated to take military steps to stop Chinese colonialism in its tracks - and that might lead to an all-out war in which enough people die to slow down the advancing problem of global climate change just enough to keep NYC and LA et al from becoming the next Venice(s) of the world. But even if that type of war does come about, the motivation for going to war with China might have more to do with punishing China for (at some time in the future) submerging NYC and Boston and LA and Florida, than whether or not some American Navy ships are allowed to navigate freely in the South China Sea. Trump is already (justifiably) bitching to China about stealing our technology. Why are we not also bitching to them about flooding our major cities (eventually)? Maybe we should give them some modern American eco-friendly energy technology in return for their banning future coal-fired power plants (and retrofitting existing ones with scrubbers).
The (partial) fallacy in Fallacy #2 in climate change story: Technology
Technology will definitely help, but only if every country uses it. And the U.S. will through natural economic reasons, but many/most other countries won't. If not, maybe we need to force other countries to use the available technology. [See possible global war, above.] I'm not sure if the Singularity will actually help or not - maybe it might. But two things are relevant. One, the Singularity will not occur (if indeed it does occur) as soon as some people think. The projected date of 2030 noted in this blog (and supported by discussion at http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ ... 151228.htm) is probably way too optimistic/soon. Some of the projected accomplishments at projected dates in that article have not happened, even though the dates have come and gone. Singularity-caliber artificial cognitive capabilities require Hard-AI - and that is just that - extremely hard to do. Maybe we've recently sped up the progress in that direction a little bit by using novel approaches such as deep learning, but it's still really really difficult to achieve. There have been many AI Winters of disillusionment in AI in the past, and I predict another one approaching soon, when businesses realize that the AI hype is, well, over-hyped.
And I don't have a better date for projected achievement of Hard-AI, leading to a possible Singularity. I haven't read Ray Kurzweil's book on the "Singularity." I should have - it's on my future reading list - since my field of specialization is AI. But for now, let's just say that maybe Ray's guestimated date of Singularity is probably also overly optimistic. Yet, that may come some day. And there are lots of moral issues associated with prominence of autonomous thinking robots.
But if that does happen, that might ultimately accomplish (more nicely) the reduction in carbon-polluting people on this planet that is needed to avert an ecological calamity. The idea is that maybe instead of striving for 3-4 kids, future parents might settle for 1-2 kids plus 2 robot playmates and/or servants. It's a remote possibility, but let's at least consider it to be something that is semi-feasible. If that did happen, the extra robots would be more power efficient than the kids they substitute for - so less energy, less fossil fuels, less NYC flooding, etc. Also, that may break what is claimed to be the "Malthus Effect" that for any species (most notably humans) to survive, the population growth rate must be greater than the food supply growth rate (thus causing a problem, obviously, also leading quite naturally to wars and human kill-offs that bring the system back into balance). I recently took a class on population growth in which we studied Malthus in the original, and I believe that (sadly) Malthus was right-on in many of his conclusions. However Malthus did not consider either robots or the recent "green revolution" in farming efficiency, and so that part of Malthus' theory is not 100% true anymore. Robots and/or robotic farm instruments can take the place of the required humans to feed the world. Already, drones and satellite pictures are used in farming AI applications to farm more efficiently with exactly the right amount of water and no more pesticides than are needed. So Malthusian exponential growth in Earth population no longer has to be inevitable. The down-side though, is that number of children (to bear) is largely influenced by local/regional social tradition. And that takes up to 100 years to change. Some formerly impoverished parts of the world tend to have 8 kids just because they think 4 of them will die of starvation, and the parents want at least 4 left over to take care of them in their old age. But already, with more efficient "green technology" food production plus better (largely UN sponsored) medical treatment, these people are still bearing 8 kids, but all 8 survive - so we get hyper-exponential population growth (like Malthus on steroids). It takes generations for this knowledge to sink in (in somewhat of a manner that Generational Dynamics might have something to say about). The result is: population will get exponentially ever higher, before it begins to taper off, and possibly reduce.
I hate to say it, but the interim solution to that may well end up being more wars as well. The news seems to be bad - no good quick solutions, just lots of wars.
The (partial) Fallacy in Fallacy #1 in climate change story: Ignoring war
As pointed out elsewhere, the U.S. and others are getting better (via advanced AI and robot and drone technologies) at fighting wars using technology as the biggest warfighter, in addition to (a smaller number of) soldiers. Thus, in the future, wars might be decided by who has the best and smartest and most well-armed robots, rather than whose soldiers win the battle. It's the soldiers' robots that will win the battle. Thus, the number of human casualties may go down in future wars (decades from now - this is not an immediate thing). But then, if that becomes the case, then giant wars may no longer have the self-correcting features of making giant reductions in populations, that we would normally expect. True, if nuclear weapons get deployed on a large scale, then all bets may be off on this conjecture. Still, it might seem that World War III (if, god forbid, it might happen) might not eliminate 25% to 50% of the Earth population, after all. It might *only* eliminate 10% of the population. Enough to be a giant disaster, for sure, but not enough to be the self-correcting adjustment (downward) on population, such as to resolve the impending doom that is global climate change. So the (seemingly) inevitable wars may not be as big of an effect on restraining global climate change as one might suspect (if one even considered it, which, as pointed out, most don't).
So what is to be done? (Rhetorically speaking), should we adopt a world-wide ban on fighting wars using robots, just so that when such wars do come, they will kill off enough humans to correct the global climate-change disaster? I doubt that would go over too well in the next (Paris, or wherever) climate conference. It's probably as dumb an idea as the U.S. paying money to China, and other countries, as a bribe to get them to pollute less.