Climate change could make a large difference to FAI issues, in addition to matters of biodiversity.
In particular, climate change could make the world a good bit poorer simply because the infrastructure is built around specific expectations about weather, climate, and atmospheric composition. This isn’t just the buildings (though that’s important and not easily changed), but the seed stocks and specific details of large scale agriculture.
Amateur FAI research is possible because there’s a lot of money floating around that doesn’t have more urgent uses and isn’t under the control of people who mostly use money for conventional status signaling.
Climate change could make a large difference to FAI issues
Sudden, drastic climate change, sure. But I’m not aware of any reason to believe we should be expecting that.… certainly not on the kind of time scales that the LW consensus seems to predict for the singularity.
Climate change could make a large difference to FAI issues, in addition to matters of biodiversity.
In particular, climate change could make the world a good bit poorer simply because the infrastructure is built around specific expectations about weather, climate, and atmospheric composition. This isn’t just the buildings (though that’s important and not easily changed), but the seed stocks and specific details of large scale agriculture.
Amateur FAI research is possible because there’s a lot of money floating around that doesn’t have more urgent uses and isn’t under the control of people who mostly use money for conventional status signaling.
Sudden, drastic climate change, sure. But I’m not aware of any reason to believe we should be expecting that.… certainly not on the kind of time scales that the LW consensus seems to predict for the singularity.