{"id":59549,"date":"2021-09-27T14:39:56","date_gmt":"2021-09-27T19:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59549"},"modified":"2021-09-27T14:39:56","modified_gmt":"2021-09-27T19:39:56","slug":"the-dangerous-ideas-of-longtermism-and-existential-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59549","title":{"rendered":"The Dangerous Ideas of \u201cLongtermism\u201d and \u201cExistential Risk\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"article-splash\">\n<div class=\"bound\">\n<div class=\"titling\">\n<h3 class=\"title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.currentaffairs.org\/2021\/07\/the-dangerous-ideas-of-longtermism-and-existential-risk?fbclid=IwAR0LsVXurB5P4CTHJHAjTUssjtnNZHaVSF1H7S69N3lgkL7_T0FDbRNbNkw\">The Dangerous Ideas of \u201cLongtermism\u201d and \u201cExistential Risk\u201d<\/a><\/h3>\n<aside class=\"stamp\" data-stamp-type=\"web\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"details\">\n<div class=\"primary\">\n<div class=\"tagline\">\n<p><strong>So-called rationalists have created a disturbing secular religion that looks like it addresses humanity\u2019s deepest problems, but actually justifies pursuing the social preferences of elites.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<article class=\"article-output\">\n<div class=\"bound\">\n<section class=\"essay-block wp-block-currentaffairs-group\" data-essay-block-type=\"plain\">In a late-2020\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2020\/12\/29\/skype-co-founder-jaan-tallinn-on-3-most-concerning-existential-risks-.html\">interview<\/a>\u00a0with CNBC, Skype cofounder Jaan Tallinn made a perplexing statement. \u201cClimate change,\u201d he said, \u201cis not going to be an existential risk unless there\u2019s a runaway scenario.\u201d A \u201crunaway scenario\u201d would occur if crossing one or more critical thresholds in the climate system causes Earth\u2019s thermostat to rise uncontrollably. The hotter it\u00a0<em>has<\/em>\u00a0become, the hotter it\u00a0<em>will<\/em>\u00a0become, via self-amplifying processes. This is probably\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/venus-was-once-more-earth-like-but-climate-change-made-it-uninhabitable-150445\">what happened<\/a>\u00a0a few billion years ago on our planetary neighbor Venus, a hellish cauldron whose average surface temperature is high enough to melt lead and zinc.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, the best science today suggests that a runaway scenario is\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/climate-explained-rising-carbon-emissions-probably-wont-make-the-earth-uninhabitable-155447\">unlikely<\/a>, although not impossible. Yet even without a runaway scenario, the best science also frighteningly affirms that climate change will have devastating consequences. It will\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/docs.wixstatic.com\/ugd\/d9aaad_b2e7f0f56bec40a195e551dd3e8c878e.pdf\">precipitate<\/a>\u00a0lethal heatwaves, megadroughts, catastrophic wildfires (like those seen recently in the Western U.S.), desertification, sea-level rise, mass migrations, widespread political instability, food-supply disruptions\/famines, extreme weather events (more dangerous hurricanes and flash floods), infectious disease outbreaks, biodiversity loss, mass extinctions, ecological collapse, socioeconomic upheaval,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/slate.com\/technology\/2015\/03\/study-climate-change-helped-spark-syrian-civil-war.html\">terrorism and wars<\/a>, etc. To quote an ominous\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/bioscience\/article\/70\/1\/8\/5610806\">2020 paper<\/a>\u00a0co-signed by more than 11,000 scientists from around the world, \u201cplanet Earth is facing a climate emergency\u201d that, unless immediate and drastic action is taken, will bring about \u201cuntold suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So why does Tallinn think that climate change\u00a0<em>isn\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0an existential risk? Intuitively, if anything should count as an existential risk it\u2019s climate change, right?<\/p>\n<p>Cynical readers might suspect that, given Tallinn\u2019s immense fortune of an\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2020\/11\/13\/jaan-tallinn-ai-safety-bitcoin-cryptocurrency-elon-musk\/\">estimated $900 million<\/a>, this might be just another case of a super-wealthy tech guy dismissing or minimizing threats that probably won\u2019t directly harm\u00a0<em>him personally<\/em>. Despite being\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2021\/01\/26\/oxfam-report-the-global-wealthy-are-main-drivers-of-climate-change.html\">disproportionately responsible<\/a>\u00a0for the climate catastrophe, the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2018\/03\/01\/144958\/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance\/\">super-rich<\/a>\u00a0will be the least affected by it. Peter Thiel\u2014the libertarian who voted for a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politifact.com\/factchecks\/2016\/jun\/03\/hillary-clinton\/yes-donald-trump-did-call-climate-change-chinese-h\/\">climate-denier<\/a>\u00a0in 2016\u2014has his \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/news\/2018\/feb\/15\/why-silicon-valley-billionaires-are-prepping-for-the-apocalypse-in-new-zealand\">apocalypse retreat<\/a>\u201d in New Zealand, Richard Branson owns his own\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/hurricane-irma-richard-branson-private-island-bunker-2017-9\">hurricane-proof island<\/a>, Jeff Bezos bought some\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/africa.businessinsider.com\/finance-billionaires-are-stockpiling-land-that-could-be-used-in-the-apocalypse-heres\/pmfybd4\">400,000 acres<\/a>\u00a0in Texas, and Elon Musk wants to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.extremetech.com\/extreme\/318959-elon-musk-richest-man-mars-colony\">move to Mars<\/a>. Astoundingly, Reid Hoffman, the multi-billionaire who cofounded LinkedIn,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.imd.org\/research-knowledge\/articles\/what-techs-survivalist-billionaires-should-be-doing-instead\/\">reports<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cmore than 50 percent of Silicon Valley\u2019s billionaires have bought some level of \u2018apocalypse insurance,\u2019 such as an underground bunker.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s one possibility, for sure. But I think there\u2019s a deeper reason for Tallinn\u2019s comments. It concerns an increasingly influential moral worldview called\u00a0<em>longtermism<\/em>. This has roots in the work of philosopher Nick Bostrom, who\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nickbostrom.com\/existential\/risks.html\">coined<\/a>\u00a0the term \u201cexistential risk\u201d in 2002 and, three years later, founded the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) based at the University of Oxford, which has received large sums of money from both\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2020\/11\/13\/jaan-tallinn-ai-safety-bitcoin-cryptocurrency-elon-musk\/\">Tallinn<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fhi.ox.ac.uk\/elon-musk-funds-oxford-and-cambridge-university-research-on-safe-and-beneficial-artificial-intelligence\/\">Musk<\/a>. Over the past decade, \u201clongtermism\u201d has become one of the main ideas promoted by the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2015\/8\/10\/9124145\/effective-altruism-global-ai\">Effective<\/a>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lrb.co.uk\/the-paper\/v37\/n18\/amia-srinivasan\/stop-the-robot-apocalypse\">Altruism<\/a>\u201d (EA) movement, which generated controversy in the past for encouraging young people to work for\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2015\/8\/10\/9124145\/effective-altruism-global-ai\">Wall Street<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/assets.ctfassets.net\/es8pp29e1wp8\/4C7WHsxZLWeaQgiIksMS0y\/73404620d8c355f94f7d4d1130e967e8\/Gabriel_published_14_April_3.pdf\">petrochemical companies<\/a>\u00a0in order to donate part of their income to charity, an idea called \u201cearn to give.\u201d According to the longtermist Benjamin Todd, formerly at Oxford University, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/80000hours.org\/articles\/future-generations\/\">longtermism<\/a>\u00a0might well turn out to be one of the most important discoveries of effective altruism\u00a0so far.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Dangerous Ideas of \u201cLongtermism\u201d and \u201cExistential Risk\u201d So-called rationalists have created a disturbing secular religion that looks like it addresses humanity\u2019s deepest problems, but actually justifies pursuing the social preferences of elites. In a late-2020\u00a0interview\u00a0with CNBC, Skype cofounder Jaan Tallinn made a perplexing statement. \u201cClimate change,\u201d he said, \u201cis not going to be an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[141,31855,31858,16632,288,31857,31856],"class_list":["post-59549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-climate-change","tag-crisesexistential-risk","tag-current-affairs","tag-ecological-collapse","tag-extreme-weather","tag-longtermism","tag-phil-torres"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59550,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59549\/revisions\/59550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}