#GlobalCatastrophicRisk

Happy to share our new #preprint—the first-ever #SystematicReview on global catastrophic risk.

We explores the growing field of #GlobalCatastrophicRisk and #ExistentialRisk, which focus on global threats like #NuclearWar. This bibliometric analysis shows how the field has expanded and diversified over the past 20 years and has made substantial contributions to understanding and preparing for #humanity's biggest risks.

https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/8145/

3/ Our findings highlight the need for enhanced preparedness to protect global food trade from #GlobalCatastrophicRisk.

Read the full preprint: https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/7339/

I'll be at #egu24 in Vienna until Friday. If you are also at the conference or in the area and want to have a chat about the interactions of #GlobalCatastrophicRisk, #FoodSecurity and #EnvironmentalScience or similar topics, just reply here or write me a message and we can schedule something.

New preprint: https://zenodo.org/record/8198966 We looked at how #yield will change after events that would disrupt our #ElectricalGrid globally, like a #SolarStorm. Yields globally could drop 40-50 %, with some regions like #CentralEurope declining by up to 75 % #FoodSecurity #agriculture #GlobalCatastrophicRisk

@johnwehrle It's on my radar, though that radar is rather crowded ....

As for fringe / cultish things: there is a long history of such schemes existing Largely To Separate Rich Idiots From Their Money, and it turns out that you can also find a through line through much cultish-thinking generally that it's a #MakeMOneyFast scheme.

All the more so if there is #InsanelyComplexReasoning behind the core notions, in which we find again that #SmartPeopleAreMoreEasilyFooled. I've been meaning to mention #Kant and his #CritiqueOfPureReason in this thread before, so let's do it now. If what Kant showed is that #reason is very often inferior to #epmiricism, that is direct #evidence and #experience, then the field of #GlobalCatastrophicRisk, for all the reasons (ahem, go with me here, please) given above is absolute fucking catnip because there can be no definitive evidence.

That's the fundamental problem of forecasting, prediction, and/or prophecy: it's inherently non-empirical. At best you can point to a track record of past successes, though that has some obvious issues:

Sufficiently vague / subjective predictions that judging is a crapshoot. A/K/A the Nostradamus and/or Cold Reading problems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading (I suspect that much the success of current LLM Generative AI models has foundations here.)
The Stock Picker's Scam: Find 1,024 marks, send each a stock pick prediction, half saying it goes up, half down. Whichever proves correct, repeat the mailing to the remaining 512, then 256, then 128, then 64. Finally offer your next set of predictions for some fee to the final 32. Each of those 32 has just seen a record of five perfect predictions. What they don't see are the 992 others who received incorrect predictions. So a full prediction history is required.

Beyond that, as noted above, similarities, mechanisms, mathematical foundations (e.g., thermodynamics), etc., are the best guides we have.

Of Risk, Traffic Accidents, and Giant Flaming Meteors of Death

...The question of risk, and risk pricing has been on my mind. In particular, the difficulty in portraying the significance of small, contained, individual risk vs. global, catastrophic, highly correlated, and/or existential risk. This is a distinction which is poorly captured in much discussion....

Here's the fallacy: the risk of you dying is not in fact the equivalent risk. The asteroid impact risk is one of everyone on Earth dying, or possibly, all life on Earth. That is, the comparison is of two entirely different outcomes.

[This is] the false equivalence of a risk affecting one person vs. the entire human race (or planet)....

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6vh47p/of_risk_traffic_accidents_and_giant_flaming/

#risk #GlobalCatastrophicRisk #FalseEquivalence