Astral Codex Ten

climatologists

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climatologists

Article

climatologists is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between January 26, 2022 and March 21, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as ""petition like that signed by climatologists on anthropogenic global warming""; “Climatologists believe global warming is real”. It most often appears alongside Joe Biden, 2024 election, 2050.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: January 26, 2022
  • Last seen: March 21, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Bounded Distrust
January 26, 2022 · Original source
And that means you can trust the experts on some things, same as you can trust FOX on some things. The reason why there’s no giant petition signed by every respectable criminologist and criminological organization saying Swedish immigrants don’t commit more violent crime than natives is because experts aren’t quite biased enough to sign a transparently false statement - even when other elites will push that statement through other means. And that suggests to me that the fact that there is a petition like that signed by climatologists on anthropogenic global warming suggests that this position is actually true. And that you can know that - even without being a climatologist yourself - through something sort of like “trusting experts”.
(before you object that some different global-warming related claim is false, please consider whether the IPCC has said with certainty that it isn’t, or whether all climatologists have denounced the thing as false in so many words. If not, that’s my whole point.)
In Continued Defense Of Non-Frequentist Probabilities
March 21, 2024 · Original source
Some people get really mad if you mention that Yoshua Bengio said the probability of AI causing a global catastrophe is 20%. They might say “I have this whole argument for why it’s much lower, how dare you respond to an argument with a probability!” This is a type error. Saying “Yoshua Bengio’s p(doom) is 20%” is the same type as saying “Climatologists believe global warming is real”. If someone gives some long complicated argument against global warming, it’s perfectly fine to respond with “Okay, but climatologists have said global warming is definitely real, so I think you’re missing something”. That’s not an argument. It’s a pointer to the fact that climatologists have lots of arguments; the fact that these arguments have convinced climatologists (who are domain experts) ought to be convincing to you. If you want to know why the climatologists think this, read their papers. Likewise, if you want to find out why Yosuha Bengio thinks there’s 20% chance of AI catastrophe, you should read his blog, or the papers he’s written, or listen to any of the interviews he’s given on the subject - not just say “Ha ha, some dumb people think probabilities are a substitute for thinking!”