Two things that can both be true: 1. The world is getting better, by most metrics of human well-being 2. The risk of a major catastrophe is going up over time Yet I often see ppl try to dismiss 2 by saying "The doomsayers are wrong, things are getting better, [argument for 1]"
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(It's an especially pointless response because just about everyone I know who's worried about 2 already agrees w/1)
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Replying to @juliagalef
The steelman version of optimism that
#2ians give insufficient credit to is that even given #2 is true #1 is outrunning it. Put another way: given any harm you care about, would you rather face it as a community with the wealthy/technology/GDP available in 2018 or in 1818?5 replies 2 retweets 7 likes -
Replying to @patio11
This seems orthogonal to the debate, though. The fact that 1 makes us better equipped to cope w/2, doesn't mean 2 wouldn't still be devastating. Like, maybe we could recover faster from a nuclear war in 2018 than if it happened in 1818, but nuclear war would still be a huge deal
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Replying to @juliagalef
We're currently living happily in what is, considered from the vantage point of our poor ancestors, any number of
#2s. We, present day, are the poor ancestors of the future. That fact is not orthogonal to whether things we think would be devastating would be so to them.3 replies 1 retweet 3 likes -
Replying to @patio11 @juliagalef
I'm glad I'm not on 1918 Twitter. "What if -- and I am aware that this is crazy, but run with it -- what if I can *imagine* -- Oh God, please don't kill me -- a United States which could be involved in a war for 15 years and that would be bad but not The End Of Things."
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Shouldn't we avoid generalizing from reduced cost spread of e.g. war, naturally-occurring plagues wrt overall risk of catastrophe, for the same reasons that future humans with good climate change solutions shouldn't look to climate change when there's a death ray pointed at them?
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