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Frustration over incompatible worldviews
Sep. 8th, 2017 07:56 pmI have been to a conference on existential risk to humanity today and yesterday. Basically I went because someone at my department was the organizer, and I was curious about the subject--it was aimed at a fairly popular (or at least multi-disciplinary) audience.
It was interesting but also super frustrating. This is best illustrated by a conversation I had with a leading AI researcher at the conference dinner. He was doing research on the risk to humanity from intelligent AI. I said that I don't know much about that, but if he thinks there is a risk I approve of him doing research on that risk and trying to lessen it. I then talked about things that I (from my perspective as being engaged in the environmental movement for 15 years) think are risks to humanity, such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, degradation of soils, overpopulation and overconsumption, etc. He dismissed all these and said that technology would definitely solve these minor issues and I did not need to worry. He also said that since there existed a scientific solution to climate change (stop emitting CO2) the problem was now trivial and he did not care about political stuff.
This is like telling a starving person that you have theoretically solved their issue (they need to eat) and the fact that they do not actually have any food is a trivial problem!!!
AAAAAAARRRRRRGH. I showed humility by acknowledging his potential risk, since it is not my subject. Did he show any humility by saying "well, you probably know more about environmental issues than I do, maybe your risks might be worth taking seriously as well, just in case." NO HE DID NOT. I found myself in the curious position of having much more in common with the economist from the business school who was on my other side--but then, he was actually working on environmental economics.
One of the speakers talked about how some risks were "sexy" (AI, aliens, etc) and got a lot of attention from the existential risk people while they ignored the mundane, "unsexy" risks such as the ones I listed above. Was it a coincidence that this speaker was a woman and almost all the other ones were male? I THINK NOT. I had a quite theurapeutic conversation with her afterwards where we vented at each other. She said that she had found that these techno-optimists had an almost religious worldview where it is very hard to reach them with arguments.
It was interesting but also super frustrating. This is best illustrated by a conversation I had with a leading AI researcher at the conference dinner. He was doing research on the risk to humanity from intelligent AI. I said that I don't know much about that, but if he thinks there is a risk I approve of him doing research on that risk and trying to lessen it. I then talked about things that I (from my perspective as being engaged in the environmental movement for 15 years) think are risks to humanity, such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, degradation of soils, overpopulation and overconsumption, etc. He dismissed all these and said that technology would definitely solve these minor issues and I did not need to worry. He also said that since there existed a scientific solution to climate change (stop emitting CO2) the problem was now trivial and he did not care about political stuff.
This is like telling a starving person that you have theoretically solved their issue (they need to eat) and the fact that they do not actually have any food is a trivial problem!!!
AAAAAAARRRRRRGH. I showed humility by acknowledging his potential risk, since it is not my subject. Did he show any humility by saying "well, you probably know more about environmental issues than I do, maybe your risks might be worth taking seriously as well, just in case." NO HE DID NOT. I found myself in the curious position of having much more in common with the economist from the business school who was on my other side--but then, he was actually working on environmental economics.
One of the speakers talked about how some risks were "sexy" (AI, aliens, etc) and got a lot of attention from the existential risk people while they ignored the mundane, "unsexy" risks such as the ones I listed above. Was it a coincidence that this speaker was a woman and almost all the other ones were male? I THINK NOT. I had a quite theurapeutic conversation with her afterwards where we vented at each other. She said that she had found that these techno-optimists had an almost religious worldview where it is very hard to reach them with arguments.
