[ExI] How vulnerable is the world?

[Darin Sunley]

Nick Bostrom is brilliant, but he /is/ an academic. That means that, at the
end of the day,
A ) he's paid by the published word, and
B ) he has a [probably unexamined and unconscious] deep-seated distrust and
[culturally-inherited] contempt for non-academics, and
C ) he has a deep-seated [and again, probably unconscious and unexamined]
opinion that academics really /should/ be running everything.

Academic pronouncements in general, and these in particular, should always
be seen in the light of these important background facts.

On Fri, Feb 12, 2021 at 10:08 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 12, 2021 at 8:16 AM Dave Sill via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> How does Bostrom know that these "black balls" exist? Sure, there are
>> technologies capable of destroying civilizations. But technologies that
>> unavoidably destroy all civilizations? Maybe they exist, but how could he
>> know? How could he know that all the technologies we've deployed so far are
>> not black balls?
>>
>
> Indeed, what if the fear of such a black ball is itself the only true
> black ball?  That is, the only way civilization can actually end is if it
> talks itself into ending over worries of what might happen.
>
> There is some evidence to suggest that this is the case.  Look what
> happens when the precautionary principle takes hold in regulators: existing
> problems don't get tended to, the base of people coming up with new ideas
> also turns out to be the base of people sustaining current technological
> bases so trying to shrink the former population shrinks the latter, and
> generally the area is worse off until years after the phobia passes.
>
> Bostrom speaks of "easy nukes".  We are now in "easy bioweapons".  And
> yet, we are not seeing entire cities devastated.  Bostrom might want to
> consider why that is.  (The answer, in part, is that even with "easy" WMDs,
> you still need some degree of technological sophistication - which is
> generally at odds with being truly homicidal.  Those who are learned enough
> to actually make WMDs are also learned enough to know that destroying major
> parts of the world won't reduce suffering for, or otherwise truly help,
> their own people.)
>
> The "freedom tag" would not accomplish the intended safety.  It would,
> inevitably, miss people actually making weapons; in practice, it would be
> all about the abuse, and deliver little if any actual safety.  Bostrom
> contemplates that resistance would diminish after a few cities are
> destroyed; he fails to realize that cities would continue to be destroyed
> even with the freedom tag, and proponents would just say it had not been
> sufficiently implemented yet - while jaliing and silencing anyone who
> produces evidence that it is not working.  If those implementing this tag
> also thought we might have reached a point where innovation could be about
> to produce a civilization-ending technology, the resulting oppression would
> guarantee mass starvation and death, and a lack of solutions to climate
> change (most notably among other potential civilization ending problems),
> resulting in the extinction of humanity.
>
> By publishing this article, Bostrom has made it ever so slightly more
> likely that civilization will worry itself to death.
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