[2018]

[tomf@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@xgranade @ireneista @emaytch @mcc ...but then you try to apply it to something like intercepting killer asteroids and they suddenly get all "well, let's be reasonable and practical." It's all just different forms of confirmation bias.

[xgranade@wandering.shop]

@ireneista @aud @mcc @jplebreton @emaytch Yeah, absolutely. I disagree about some of the specifics, but "TESCREAL" as a term to point to the intersection of all of those related but distinct philosophical schools is useful nonetheless.

[xgranade@wandering.shop]

@TomF @ireneista @emaytch @mcc I love how in e/acc and xrisk language, climate change is not "existential," only these pretend billion-year-future things.

[mcc@mastodon.social]

Quotes from Jeff Miller @jmeowmeow in a followers-only discussion I wanted to foreground:

"Runaway inflation in the philosophical flattery economy."

"As wealth and power is narrowly concentrated, the reward of flattery as a practice increases. If there's competition for flattery work as verbally charming people lose other opportunities for subsistence, there's motivation to go bigger and bigger."

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@xgranade @TomF @ireneista @emaytch There's this idea from indigenous philosophy (the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois, I think? i found about it from uh, a cleaning products company) that you should do all things while considering its impact on people seven generations from now. I think that's a really good rule actually. That's a really reasonable timespan. I don't know if people exist in 10^10 years. I'm certain people exist in 7 generations, or at least, what we do now decides whether they exist.

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@xgranade @TomF @ireneista @emaytch Notably, seven generations turns out to be right in the sweet spot for "work to hold back greenhouse emissions now results in benefits then".

[nev@status.nevillepark.ca]

@xgranade @ireneista @emaytch @mcc as i like to say, i wouldn't say there's such a thing as reading too much science fiction…but there is such a thing as not reading enough stuff that isn't science fiction

[xgranade@wandering.shop]

@nev @ireneista @emaytch @mcc Or at least, forgetting the "fiction" part of "science fiction." Fiction is a wonderful thing, but you still need critical reading skills!

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@lambdatotoro @mcc the fun thing is that they aren't even doing THAT right. As an example (and shameless plug) some time ago I did some back of the napkin calculations to check what energy requirements world be like if we didn't stop pushing for “growth at all costs”. Billions of years? Turns out that at current growth rates we'd exhaust the entire Milky Way in a couple thousand years even if we could convert it to energy at 100% efficiency.

https://wok.oblomov.eu/tecnologia/nuclear-will-not-save-us/

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@mcc @natevw @emaytch the worst possible combination of Goodhart's law and the one I forgot the name of, about choosing a metric only because it's easy to measure.