In Reasons and Persons, philosopher Derek Parfit wrote: I believe that if we destroy mankind, as we now can, this outcome will be much worse than most people think. Compare three outcomes: 1. Peace 2. A nuclear war that kills 99% of the world’s existing population.
The field tests of the concept of "nuclear winter" took place during the forest fires of 2007-2012, especially strongly in 2010, when about 12 million hectares or 120 thousand square kilometers were burned, that is, 12% of the scale adopted for the model of "nuclear winter". This is not to be dismissed, because if the effect had taken place, it would have manifested itself.The most interesting thing is that the calculations of soot formation in these fires were carried out, published in the journal "Meteorology and Hydrology", No. 7 for 2015. The result was overturning. Soot actually formed 2.5 grams per square meter of forest fire. Over the entire area of the fires, about 300 thousand tons of soot were formed, which is easy to translate into an estimated million square kilometers - 2.5 million tons, which is 1,600 times less than in the "nuclear winter" model. And this is in the best conditions of a dry and hot summer, when rain did not extinguish the fires, and extinguishing could not cope with the fire.
The methodology for the calculated monitoring of black carbon emissions from wildfires is presented and the calculation for the territory of Russia for the period 2007—2012 is carried out. The distribution of black carbon emissions by types of fires and by regions is given. During the period under review, the average value of black carbon emissions from wildfires was 81.9 ± 37.2 thousand tons / year, interannual fluctuations - from 53.8 thousand tons in 2011 to 143.5 thousand tons in 2008. The average value of black carbon emissions in forests from fire was 25.0 ± 3.7 kg / ha, from underground fire - 24.0 ± 0.1 kg / ha, from ground fire - 10.2 ± 1.2 kg / ha, from fire on non-forest and unforested lands - 4.1 ± 0.3 kg / ha.
Sorry for my tone, in that case. I had thought that this being now called a "group blog," you shared responsibility for its policies. I accept your correction of my premise. Thank you for your efforts.
"What "spam-related" terms should I have avoided."
I have no idea. I'm telling you what seems to be the best causal explanation of what happened to your comments. That doesn't mean I endorse spam filter false positives, nor that I will be deciding for Robin how to fix the problem. I thought you would want to know what happened rather than be left in the dark, so I told you. That's all.
Come on! That's an incredibly lame response. You have an example of one of the filtered items (that somehow got through when embedded in another post!) Was it spam? What "spam-related" terms should I have avoided.
Do you really intend to let Discus "filter" comments to this blog? If you're really serious about it, you should so announce. I don't think it's something readers reasonably expect: to be filtered permanently--not merely delayed--because of "spam-related terms"
If you have no control over arbitrary acts by Discus, get rid of it! It's only principled. (And Discus hasn't, to my perception, improved this blog in the least.)
Trike found that some of your comments have been triggering Disqus spam filters. If you systematically use more spam-associated language and post features when replying to my posts and comments, that may explain the pattern.
Are there valid reason for making decisions about deleting personal attacks public? Yes, but there are also reason against it. Claiming that no civilised place has such policis is wrong.
This comment is so irrelevant and blind to context that I'd expect to see it on Less Wrong.
"The point is that civilized behavior requires notification of deletions."
That's not how the modern web works. Running a blog or a forum means that you have to delete a lot of stuff. Most of that stuff happens to be commercial spam. As a result nearly nobody has a blanket policy of making every deletion public.
Are there valid reason for making decisions about deleting personal attacks public? Yes, but there are also reason against it. Claiming that no civilised place has such policis is wrong.
The claimed effects rely on burning cities throwing up material into the upper atmosphere. Nuclear test sites were selected not to create such enormous fires.
All of the aboveground nuclear testing in the 50s and 60s was equivalent to a modest-scale nuclear war, with no measurable effect on the global environment.
@f26939f398e5b2e21ea353b06370c426:disqus It seems to me that people involved with the SI, tend to disproportionately worry about "Pascal's mugging" risks that have very low probability but absolutely catastrophic outcomes.
Anything less than human extinction is not catastrophic enough to worry, apparently.
Maybe it's due to the total utilitarian ethics that's popular among these people: If everybody dies the aggregate utility goes to zero, while if a small but viable population remains, re-population can occur and the total utility can grow once again.
Or maybe it's just that thinking of yourself as the saviour of all mankind strokes your ego more than being the saviour of most of mankind.
He was not determining the probability of nuclear winter causing extinction,
Meant to say: He isn't prioritizing on the probability that nuclear winter will cause extinction, as his thesis is that a nonextinction nuclear winter is worse than outright extinction!
I continue to be amazed at how the author's very point is missed in the service of understanding the essay as contribution against existential risk.
(Sorry for the number of corrections. Annoyance makes for carelessness.)
Personally, my main altruistic concern is reducing existential risk in particular, so the value of those activities depends on the extent to which nuclear war constitutes an existential risk. This information seems obviously relevant.
But the argument doesn't concern the risks of nuclear war but the relative risks of outright extinction versus destruction of what we value in humanity without killing every singe human. I would think both of those risks would be termed existential.
For example, there are existing efforts to mitigate the risk of nuclear war, or decrease the size of nuclear arsenals, to which we can contribute.
As I pointed out responding to Maxwell 4, it isn't enough to point out that an analysis is somehow connected with the subject of existential risk. You have to show some relation between the particulars of the analysis and some different courses of action. Carl Schulman's argument has no practical bearing on whether we should take measures to reduce the chances of nuclear war. (Nobody has tried to argue otherwise.)
These replies, yours and Maxwell 4's, seem to reinforce that this is all about signaling far-mode concerns while doing nothing about them except irrelevant analysis that mentions the appropriate high-status terms.
While it's not true apparently that any deletions have occurred, the possibility has at least smoked you out as a person ready to defends arbitrary announced arbitrary measures and stands ready to justify them as defense of common sense.
Should be: a person who stands ready to defend unnoticed deletions, justifying them as defense of common sense.
But--My apologies to Robin for jumping to conclusions.
That's a really shameful remark, Maxwell 4. Obviously, I think many of your remarks are stupid. The point is that civilized behavior requires notification of deletions. It seems pretty much everyone but you agrees with that
While it's not true apparently that any deletions have occurred, the possibility has at least smoked you out as a person ready to defends arbitrary announced arbitrary measures and stands ready to justify them as defense of common sense.
On the topic in question, you in fact didn't even understand the poster's concern--making you rather unqualified to understand my criticism of it and decidedly pompous trying to evaluate it. He was not determining the probability of nuclear winter causing extinction, as his thesis was that a nonextinction nuclear winter is worse than outright extinction! So, your proposed use is not his point. Nor is it a sensible point--unless someone can show how we can and should calibrate our policies so that if nuclear winter occurs, it will produce the "better" result of outright extinction!
No it isn't, all four bloggers are accounted for. Trike Apps is on the case, looking for the cause of the commenting problems (there have apparently been some other problems with comments not appearing involving the Disqus system).
The field tests of the concept of "nuclear winter" took place during the forest fires of 2007-2012, especially strongly in 2010, when about 12 million hectares or 120 thousand square kilometers were burned, that is, 12% of the scale adopted for the model of "nuclear winter". This is not to be dismissed, because if the effect had taken place, it would have manifested itself.The most interesting thing is that the calculations of soot formation in these fires were carried out, published in the journal "Meteorology and Hydrology", No. 7 for 2015. The result was overturning. Soot actually formed 2.5 grams per square meter of forest fire. Over the entire area of the fires, about 300 thousand tons of soot were formed, which is easy to translate into an estimated million square kilometers - 2.5 million tons, which is 1,600 times less than in the "nuclear winter" model. And this is in the best conditions of a dry and hot summer, when rain did not extinguish the fires, and extinguishing could not cope with the fire.
The methodology for the calculated monitoring of black carbon emissions from wildfires is presented and the calculation for the territory of Russia for the period 2007—2012 is carried out. The distribution of black carbon emissions by types of fires and by regions is given. During the period under review, the average value of black carbon emissions from wildfires was 81.9 ± 37.2 thousand tons / year, interannual fluctuations - from 53.8 thousand tons in 2011 to 143.5 thousand tons in 2008. The average value of black carbon emissions in forests from fire was 25.0 ± 3.7 kg / ha, from underground fire - 24.0 ± 0.1 kg / ha, from ground fire - 10.2 ± 1.2 kg / ha, from fire on non-forest and unforested lands - 4.1 ± 0.3 kg / ha.
Sorry for my tone, in that case. I had thought that this being now called a "group blog," you shared responsibility for its policies. I accept your correction of my premise. Thank you for your efforts.
"What "spam-related" terms should I have avoided."
I have no idea. I'm telling you what seems to be the best causal explanation of what happened to your comments. That doesn't mean I endorse spam filter false positives, nor that I will be deciding for Robin how to fix the problem. I thought you would want to know what happened rather than be left in the dark, so I told you. That's all.
Come on! That's an incredibly lame response. You have an example of one of the filtered items (that somehow got through when embedded in another post!) Was it spam? What "spam-related" terms should I have avoided.
Do you really intend to let Discus "filter" comments to this blog? If you're really serious about it, you should so announce. I don't think it's something readers reasonably expect: to be filtered permanently--not merely delayed--because of "spam-related terms"
If you have no control over arbitrary acts by Discus, get rid of it! It's only principled. (And Discus hasn't, to my perception, improved this blog in the least.)
Trike found that some of your comments have been triggering Disqus spam filters. If you systematically use more spam-associated language and post features when replying to my posts and comments, that may explain the pattern.
Are there valid reason for making decisions about deleting personal attacks public? Yes, but there are also reason against it. Claiming that no civilised place has such policis is wrong.
This comment is so irrelevant and blind to context that I'd expect to see it on Less Wrong.
"The point is that civilized behavior requires notification of deletions."
That's not how the modern web works. Running a blog or a forum means that you have to delete a lot of stuff. Most of that stuff happens to be commercial spam. As a result nearly nobody has a blanket policy of making every deletion public.
Are there valid reason for making decisions about deleting personal attacks public? Yes, but there are also reason against it. Claiming that no civilised place has such policis is wrong.
The claimed effects rely on burning cities throwing up material into the upper atmosphere. Nuclear test sites were selected not to create such enormous fires.
All of the aboveground nuclear testing in the 50s and 60s was equivalent to a modest-scale nuclear war, with no measurable effect on the global environment.
@f26939f398e5b2e21ea353b06370c426:disqus It seems to me that people involved with the SI, tend to disproportionately worry about "Pascal's mugging" risks that have very low probability but absolutely catastrophic outcomes.
Anything less than human extinction is not catastrophic enough to worry, apparently.
Maybe it's due to the total utilitarian ethics that's popular among these people: If everybody dies the aggregate utility goes to zero, while if a small but viable population remains, re-population can occur and the total utility can grow once again.
Or maybe it's just that thinking of yourself as the saviour of all mankind strokes your ego more than being the saviour of most of mankind.
He was not determining the probability of nuclear winter causing extinction,
Meant to say: He isn't prioritizing on the probability that nuclear winter will cause extinction, as his thesis is that a nonextinction nuclear winter is worse than outright extinction!
I continue to be amazed at how the author's very point is missed in the service of understanding the essay as contribution against existential risk.
(Sorry for the number of corrections. Annoyance makes for carelessness.)
Personally, my main altruistic concern is reducing existential risk in particular, so the value of those activities depends on the extent to which nuclear war constitutes an existential risk. This information seems obviously relevant.
But the argument doesn't concern the risks of nuclear war but the relative risks of outright extinction versus destruction of what we value in humanity without killing every singe human. I would think both of those risks would be termed existential.
For example, there are existing efforts to mitigate the risk of nuclear war, or decrease the size of nuclear arsenals, to which we can contribute.
As I pointed out responding to Maxwell 4, it isn't enough to point out that an analysis is somehow connected with the subject of existential risk. You have to show some relation between the particulars of the analysis and some different courses of action. Carl Schulman's argument has no practical bearing on whether we should take measures to reduce the chances of nuclear war. (Nobody has tried to argue otherwise.)
These replies, yours and Maxwell 4's, seem to reinforce that this is all about signaling far-mode concerns while doing nothing about them except irrelevant analysis that mentions the appropriate high-status terms.
While it's not true apparently that any deletions have occurred, the possibility has at least smoked you out as a person ready to defends arbitrary announced arbitrary measures and stands ready to justify them as defense of common sense.
Should be: a person who stands ready to defend unnoticed deletions, justifying them as defense of common sense.
But--My apologies to Robin for jumping to conclusions.
That's a really shameful remark, Maxwell 4. Obviously, I think many of your remarks are stupid. The point is that civilized behavior requires notification of deletions. It seems pretty much everyone but you agrees with that
While it's not true apparently that any deletions have occurred, the possibility has at least smoked you out as a person ready to defends arbitrary announced arbitrary measures and stands ready to justify them as defense of common sense.
On the topic in question, you in fact didn't even understand the poster's concern--making you rather unqualified to understand my criticism of it and decidedly pompous trying to evaluate it. He was not determining the probability of nuclear winter causing extinction, as his thesis was that a nonextinction nuclear winter is worse than outright extinction! So, your proposed use is not his point. Nor is it a sensible point--unless someone can show how we can and should calibrate our policies so that if nuclear winter occurs, it will produce the "better" result of outright extinction!
John,
No it isn't, all four bloggers are accounted for. Trike Apps is on the case, looking for the cause of the commenting problems (there have apparently been some other problems with comments not appearing involving the Disqus system).