https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
Normally I wouldn't want to honor your manner of discourse by responding to it, but I want to make the case that one can still discuss the contents of an argument despite emotionality;
> You turn to apathetic nihilism because your only alternative is panic. I myself have turned to opt-out nihilism\u2014I try not to own stuff, don\u2019t have progeny, looking to isolate on a small farm.
I personally am pretty optimistic and excited regarding the prospects of tackling this problem, because embedded in it a plethora of large scale multi-agent coordination problems we ought to solve, and we do have the capacity for it. Incidentally, I think individual level solutions don't necessarily have the strategic depth to address what is essentially a problem of scale. But if you think you're doing the right thing, more power to you, at least at your scale you couldn't harm things even if you wanted to.
> Greta seems to be on a much better track: trying to influence the people who can make the decisions that will improve the outcomes.
Does her influence look like a success to you? It doesn't to me. Maybe there is a self-fulfilling prophecy in talking down to people, or appeals to romantic emotionality, instead of bringing the best and the most rational in them. Maybe rampant consumerism and lack of higher-order thinking to maneuver climate change are sibling problems, both intimately related to the problem of stupefaction of the masses.
Maybe calling people names is part of the shame-politics that attempt to turn adults into temporary children. Hijacking our deepest fears of ostracism in the name of some ostensible "greater good", but inadvertently reducing people's agency and higher order thinking, both of which are deeply needed to steer out of the problem."},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["climate"],"value":"As climate warms, a rearrangement of world\u2019s plant life looms"},"story_url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["climate"],"value":"https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-climate-warms-a-rearrangement-of-worlds-plant-life-looms"}},"_tags":["comment","author_acituan","story_27751493"],"author":"acituan","children":[27758064],"comment_text":"I think you're confused about the forum you're in. If you have a counter argument to people's arguments, all the power to you and you're more than welcome to discuss, in the hopes that we can learn something more about it. But if your argument is mere willful assertion of what is already stated, or is calling people names, kindly back off.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
Normally I wouldn't want to honor your manner of discourse by responding to it, but I want to make the case that one can still discuss the contents of an argument despite emotionality;
> You turn to apathetic nihilism because your only alternative is panic. I myself have turned to opt-out nihilism\u2014I try not to own stuff, don\u2019t have progeny, looking to isolate on a small farm.
I personally am pretty optimistic and excited regarding the prospects of tackling this problem, because embedded in it a plethora of large scale multi-agent coordination problems we ought to solve, and we do have the capacity for it. Incidentally, I think individual level solutions don't necessarily have the strategic depth to address what is essentially a problem of scale. But if you think you're doing the right thing, more power to you, at least at your scale you couldn't harm things even if you wanted to.
> Greta seems to be on a much better track: trying to influence the people who can make the decisions that will improve the outcomes.
Does her influence look like a success to you? It doesn't to me. Maybe there is a self-fulfilling prophecy in talking down to people, or appeals to romantic emotionality, instead of bringing the best and the most rational in them. Maybe rampant consumerism and lack of higher-order thinking to maneuver climate change are sibling problems, both intimately related to the problem of stupefaction of the masses.
Maybe calling people names is part of the shame-politics that attempt to turn adults into temporary children. Hijacking our deepest fears of ostracism in the name of some ostensible "greater good", but inadvertently reducing people's agency and higher order thinking, both of which are deeply needed to steer out of the problem.","created_at":"2021-07-06T22:31:12Z","created_at_i":1625610672,"objectID":"27755215","parent_id":27754487,"story_id":27751493,"story_title":"As climate warms, a rearrangement of world\u2019s plant life looms","story_url":"https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-climate-warms-a-rearrangement-of-worlds-plant-life-looms","updated_at":"2024-09-20T08:55:27Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"pron"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["climate","agent","coordination"],"value":"If you only read one thing, read the last few paragraphs after the second line. They are relevant even if I were to agree with all the points you've made
-----------
Obviously I agree with 1. I'm not sure that's inevitable but I think it's very likely.
> If it is the case that humans can build human level intelligence (which I have argued they can and will), then it is also pretty self evidently the case that humans can improve on that intelligence.
That's not self-evident at all. We don't even know what intelligence is, so it's possible a human is as intelligent as possible.
> For example, given we have the technology to build a machine with identical mental characteristics to a human, we would also have the requisite knowledge to, say expand that machine's working memory by 1%. Or to create the machine with swappable sensory organs so it can directly absorb lots of different types of data.
That's not so clear at all. You could say that the internet has already increased human memory by orders of magnitude, yet it hasn't made us "super intelligent". It is not certain that we can actually increase the "in brain" working memory of an intelligent machine without, say, giving it a mental illness at the same time.
You assume that we can take "intelligence" and make it as malleable as we like, change every parameter to our wishes, but until we know what intelligence is, that's not at all certain.
> You're not actually any smarter, but with 10 of you, you're more productive than any single human being could ever be.
But not more productive than 10 humans, and at some point you might become less productive. It's not at all unlikely that those 10 copies of you start hating one another and won't be able to work together.
And even if that were true, the self-improvement progress will likely be very slow: http://www.sphere-engineering.com/blog/the-singularity-is-no...
Of course, the big question I pose to you in the end is why do you think an improved mind is even an important goal in the first place, but we'll get there.
> Now your ideally-coordinated team of smart machines just got smarter across the board.
Like I said, 1/ you don't know that they'll be ideally coordinated, and 2/ you don't know how much harder it is to make them smarter. It may possibly require exponentially more resources.
> Soon you're millions strong, you have teams working on brain improvement, coordination improvement, science teams of all disciplines, a resource acquisition team playing the stock market, each moment shipping new improvements to your brain and amassing resources and power.
That's a very nice fantasy, but we already have lots of intelligent beings. Are they coordinating like that? To some degree, they are. But why do you think "smarter" things could do it better? Are smarter people better at amassing resources? At getting power?
> There you have a computer controlling hundreds or thousands of independent agents.
Yes, there's a non-intelligent machine that's doing that. But the intelligent machine playing that game can only play one. You have this incredibly powerful machine in your head, and it can only concentrate or one thing or maybe two. It is possible that if you want an intelligent mind that is both coherent with itself and able to concentrate on lots of things at once then you need a number of processing units (say, neurons) that grows exponentially with the number of things you want to do at once. And maybe that's not even possible at all. Maybe beyond some point, the intelligence simply goes mad.
> Why not just write the software for the robots you control to be mostly autonomous, and give yourself an API through which to issue commands that the robots can mostly execute on their own?
Why don't you do that? Because it's hard and may take years, and some guys with guns realize what you're doing before you finish and come arrest you.
> Further, why even do (b), when you have the ability to replicate your brain?
Because my brain replicas might very soon decide they don't want to play together.
> So, with this narrative of how it could work, do you see how dangerous an AI could be? One that isn't stably goal-aligned with basic things like life on earth?
Of course it could be dangerous (I never said I couldn't imagine a scenario where an AI would be so powerful and so dangerous), but I also think I've demonstrated why AI may not necessarily be as powerful as you think. Also, by the time all this happens, I think there are more serious threats to human existence, like pandemics and climate change. They won't kill us, but they might set us back AI-wise a few centuries. So of all possible dangers we must consider at this point in time, I would put a hostile and dangerous AI waaay down on the list. It's possible, but it's far more likely that other stuff would get us first.
-------
One of the dangers that are waay more likely than the scenario you've described, is a sub-intelligent "hostile" software (that is perhaps not intentionally hostile, but indifferently so). It's more likely that some far dumber-than-human machine would replicate itself with full coordination over its replicas and wipe us out.
I really think that this emphasis on intelligence as the danger is a personal fantasy of singularists who'd like to think of themselves as powerful and dangerous (or the only stopgap against that). You really don't need to be so smart in order to amass power.
Another example: What I fear more than a super-intelligent AI is a super charismatic AI. That AI, without replicating itself, without trying to improve itself, simply charms a lot of people into following it, and establishes a reign of terror. Alternatively, as charisma is more effective than intelligence in controlling others, I would find it more likely that a charismatic AI would be able to control her replicas. It doesn't need to improve its own intelligence, because it's intelligent enough to inflict all the damage it wants.
Or what about a cunning AI? Sure, cunning is correlated with intelligence to a degree, but beyond a certain point you don't see that very intelligent people are very cunning. Sometimes far from it (Eliezer Yudkowsky is a prime example; his thought process is so predictable, that if our AI deity were like him, some cunning people would quickly find ways to foil its plans; that's a very non-dangerous AI).
We've seen how one charming person is far more powerful than thousands of really smart people. We also see how very dumb insects can coordinate themselves in very large numbers in a very impressive way.
I think intelligent people tend to overestimate the importance of intelligence and not to notice that other abilities we see around us every day are far more powerful. If anything, you'll note that very high intelligence is often correlated with low charisma or with a sort of timidity -- nebbishness if you will. A super-intelligent AI would probably be super-nebbish :)
Now, a super-charismatic AI -- now that's scary. Or a non-intelligent army of insects.
So if I were to ask you one question it would be this: Why do you place such a high emphasis on intelligence in the scenario you've described?"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"The AI-Box Experiment"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"http://www.yudkowsky.net/singularity/aibox/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_pron","story_9921180"],"author":"pron","children":[9939080],"comment_text":"If you only read one thing, read the last few paragraphs after the second line. They are relevant even if I were to agree with all the points you've made
-----------
Obviously I agree with 1. I'm not sure that's inevitable but I think it's very likely.
> If it is the case that humans can build human level intelligence (which I have argued they can and will), then it is also pretty self evidently the case that humans can improve on that intelligence.
That's not self-evident at all. We don't even know what intelligence is, so it's possible a human is as intelligent as possible.
> For example, given we have the technology to build a machine with identical mental characteristics to a human, we would also have the requisite knowledge to, say expand that machine's working memory by 1%. Or to create the machine with swappable sensory organs so it can directly absorb lots of different types of data.
That's not so clear at all. You could say that the internet has already increased human memory by orders of magnitude, yet it hasn't made us "super intelligent". It is not certain that we can actually increase the "in brain" working memory of an intelligent machine without, say, giving it a mental illness at the same time.
You assume that we can take "intelligence" and make it as malleable as we like, change every parameter to our wishes, but until we know what intelligence is, that's not at all certain.
> You're not actually any smarter, but with 10 of you, you're more productive than any single human being could ever be.
But not more productive than 10 humans, and at some point you might become less productive. It's not at all unlikely that those 10 copies of you start hating one another and won't be able to work together.
And even if that were true, the self-improvement progress will likely be very slow: http://www.sphere-engineering.com/blog/the-singularity-is-no...
Of course, the big question I pose to you in the end is why do you think an improved mind is even an important goal in the first place, but we'll get there.
> Now your ideally-coordinated team of smart machines just got smarter across the board.
Like I said, 1/ you don't know that they'll be ideally coordinated, and 2/ you don't know how much harder it is to make them smarter. It may possibly require exponentially more resources.
> Soon you're millions strong, you have teams working on brain improvement, coordination improvement, science teams of all disciplines, a resource acquisition team playing the stock market, each moment shipping new improvements to your brain and amassing resources and power.
That's a very nice fantasy, but we already have lots of intelligent beings. Are they coordinating like that? To some degree, they are. But why do you think "smarter" things could do it better? Are smarter people better at amassing resources? At getting power?
> There you have a computer controlling hundreds or thousands of independent agents.
Yes, there's a non-intelligent machine that's doing that. But the intelligent machine playing that game can only play one. You have this incredibly powerful machine in your head, and it can only concentrate or one thing or maybe two. It is possible that if you want an intelligent mind that is both coherent with itself and able to concentrate on lots of things at once then you need a number of processing units (say, neurons) that grows exponentially with the number of things you want to do at once. And maybe that's not even possible at all. Maybe beyond some point, the intelligence simply goes mad.
> Why not just write the software for the robots you control to be mostly autonomous, and give yourself an API through which to issue commands that the robots can mostly execute on their own?
Why don't you do that? Because it's hard and may take years, and some guys with guns realize what you're doing before you finish and come arrest you.
> Further, why even do (b), when you have the ability to replicate your brain?
Because my brain replicas might very soon decide they don't want to play together.
> So, with this narrative of how it could work, do you see how dangerous an AI could be? One that isn't stably goal-aligned with basic things like life on earth?
Of course it could be dangerous (I never said I couldn't imagine a scenario where an AI would be so powerful and so dangerous), but I also think I've demonstrated why AI may not necessarily be as powerful as you think. Also, by the time all this happens, I think there are more serious threats to human existence, like pandemics and climate change. They won't kill us, but they might set us back AI-wise a few centuries. So of all possible dangers we must consider at this point in time, I would put a hostile and dangerous AI waaay down on the list. It's possible, but it's far more likely that other stuff would get us first.
-------
One of the dangers that are waay more likely than the scenario you've described, is a sub-intelligent "hostile" software (that is perhaps not intentionally hostile, but indifferently so). It's more likely that some far dumber-than-human machine would replicate itself with full coordination over its replicas and wipe us out.
I really think that this emphasis on intelligence as the danger is a personal fantasy of singularists who'd like to think of themselves as powerful and dangerous (or the only stopgap against that). You really don't need to be so smart in order to amass power.
Another example: What I fear more than a super-intelligent AI is a super charismatic AI. That AI, without replicating itself, without trying to improve itself, simply charms a lot of people into following it, and establishes a reign of terror. Alternatively, as charisma is more effective than intelligence in controlling others, I would find it more likely that a charismatic AI would be able to control her replicas. It doesn't need to improve its own intelligence, because it's intelligent enough to inflict all the damage it wants.
Or what about a cunning AI? Sure, cunning is correlated with intelligence to a degree, but beyond a certain point you don't see that very intelligent people are very cunning. Sometimes far from it (Eliezer Yudkowsky is a prime example; his thought process is so predictable, that if our AI deity were like him, some cunning people would quickly find ways to foil its plans; that's a very non-dangerous AI).
We've seen how one charming person is far more powerful than thousands of really smart people. We also see how very dumb insects can coordinate themselves in very large numbers in a very impressive way.
I think intelligent people tend to overestimate the importance of intelligence and not to notice that other abilities we see around us every day are far more powerful. If anything, you'll note that very high intelligence is often correlated with low charisma or with a sort of timidity -- nebbishness if you will. A super-intelligent AI would probably be super-nebbish :)
Now, a super-charismatic AI -- now that's scary. Or a non-intelligent army of insects.
So if I were to ask you one question it would be this: Why do you place such a high emphasis on intelligence in the scenario you've described?","created_at":"2015-07-23T06:36:06Z","created_at_i":1437633366,"objectID":"9934322","parent_id":9933380,"points":null,"story_id":9921180,"story_title":"The AI-Box Experiment","story_url":"http://www.yudkowsky.net/singularity/aibox/","updated_at":"2023-09-07T03:16:37Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"NickNaraghi"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["climate","agent","coordination"],"value":"First of all, I really appreciate your positivity. I believe in the possibility of a better world, and am also hopeful for one.
However, finding stable peace and improving the world in the ways that you describe is not so simple. Based on the way our current civilization is set up, we are subject to a so-far-insurmountable problem that continuously pulls us away from this ideal.
I would roughly summarize this problem as \u201cthe tragedy of the commons.\u201d It is a unique category of coordination failure that undergirds many aspects of the world we might criticize right now, such as climate, disinformation, nuclear risk, and more. Scott Alexander[0] and Daniel Schmachtenberger[1] have written and spoken about this meta-level issue at length. I particularly like this quote from the Alexander piece:
> all these scenarios are in fact a race to the bottom. Once one agent learns how to become more competitive by sacrificing a common value, all its competitors must also sacrifice that value or be outcompeted and replaced by the less scrupulous. Therefore, the system is likely to end up with everyone once again equally competitive, but the sacrificed value is gone forever. From a god\u2019s- eye-view, the competitors know they will all be worse off if they defect, but from within the system, given insufficient coordination it\u2019s impossible to avoid.
To answer your question directly, I think it\u2019s possible that this meta-problem might now be solvable because we have technologies that empower us to create net new incentives and coordination games[2].
I have a hypothesis that this is particularly relevant today because same coordination failure patterns are very likely to play out with AI alignment - and the tools are showing promise to be able to help with this.
I feel very lucky that this is what I get to spend all my time working on. Making the world a better place in this way is almost all I can think about. There\u2019s a contingent of good people working on this problem in the context of the idea \u201cDAOs.\u201d If you feel called to try to address what might be the highest leverage problem of our time, definitely recommend you check it out.
[0]: https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/Meditations-On-Moloch
[1]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4kBoLVvoqVY
[2]: https://medium.com/@virgilgr/ethereum-is-game-changing-techn..."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Ask HN: Making a better world, how important is that to you?"}},"_tags":["comment","author_NickNaraghi","story_38144709"],"author":"NickNaraghi","comment_text":"First of all, I really appreciate your positivity. I believe in the possibility of a better world, and am also hopeful for one.
However, finding stable peace and improving the world in the ways that you describe is not so simple. Based on the way our current civilization is set up, we are subject to a so-far-insurmountable problem that continuously pulls us away from this ideal.
I would roughly summarize this problem as \u201cthe tragedy of the commons.\u201d It is a unique category of coordination failure that undergirds many aspects of the world we might criticize right now, such as climate, disinformation, nuclear risk, and more. Scott Alexander[0] and Daniel Schmachtenberger[1] have written and spoken about this meta-level issue at length. I particularly like this quote from the Alexander piece:
> all these scenarios are in fact a race to the bottom. Once one agent learns how to become more competitive by sacrificing a common value, all its competitors must also sacrifice that value or be outcompeted and replaced by the less scrupulous. Therefore, the system is likely to end up with everyone once again equally competitive, but the sacrificed value is gone forever. From a god\u2019s- eye-view, the competitors know they will all be worse off if they defect, but from within the system, given insufficient coordination it\u2019s impossible to avoid.
To answer your question directly, I think it\u2019s possible that this meta-problem might now be solvable because we have technologies that empower us to create net new incentives and coordination games[2].
I have a hypothesis that this is particularly relevant today because same coordination failure patterns are very likely to play out with AI alignment - and the tools are showing promise to be able to help with this.
I feel very lucky that this is what I get to spend all my time working on. Making the world a better place in this way is almost all I can think about. There\u2019s a contingent of good people working on this problem in the context of the idea \u201cDAOs.\u201d If you feel called to try to address what might be the highest leverage problem of our time, definitely recommend you check it out.
[0]: https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/Meditations-On-Moloch
[1]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4kBoLVvoqVY
[2]: https://medium.com/@virgilgr/ethereum-is-game-changing-techn...","created_at":"2023-11-04T21:27:39Z","created_at_i":1699133259,"objectID":"38145308","parent_id":38144709,"story_id":38144709,"story_title":"Ask HN: Making a better world, how important is that to you?","updated_at":"2025-08-14T22:53:53Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"acituan"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["climate","agent","coordination"],"value":"I am not advocating that, in fact I am with you in how bad it is, but I am also telling what the incentive structure looks like and what would it take to move it to the other equilibrium point. There are many and different types of agents in this game and appeals to morality or apocalypticism just don't work on them. There needs to be a concrete, depolarizing, global leadership that coordinates this transition, to make sure parties don't defect despite cheating being very profitable, and they also believe that this will be the case with others.
Paris agreement was an attempt at this but also demonstrated that we still couldn't muster the political will to do anything sufficiently concrete. Unlike nuclear weapons, which has much fewer agents to coordinate with and a more immediately imaginable impact, climate change proves to be difficult problem regarding the nature of coordination it requires and ease of popularizing the policies around it. We need tools to match that difficulty."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Wildlife in \u2018catastrophic decline\u2019 due to human destruction, scientists warn"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54091048"}},"_tags":["comment","author_acituan","story_24445067"],"author":"acituan","children":[24461258],"comment_text":"I am not advocating that, in fact I am with you in how bad it is, but I am also telling what the incentive structure looks like and what would it take to move it to the other equilibrium point. There are many and different types of agents in this game and appeals to morality or apocalypticism just don't work on them. There needs to be a concrete, depolarizing, global leadership that coordinates this transition, to make sure parties don't defect despite cheating being very profitable, and they also believe that this will be the case with others.
Paris agreement was an attempt at this but also demonstrated that we still couldn't muster the political will to do anything sufficiently concrete. Unlike nuclear weapons, which has much fewer agents to coordinate with and a more immediately imaginable impact, climate change proves to be difficult problem regarding the nature of coordination it requires and ease of popularizing the policies around it. We need tools to match that difficulty.","created_at":"2020-09-13T07:05:07Z","created_at_i":1599980707,"objectID":"24458997","parent_id":24458501,"story_id":24445067,"story_title":"Wildlife in \u2018catastrophic decline\u2019 due to human destruction, scientists warn","story_url":"https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54091048","updated_at":"2024-09-20T06:58:16Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"CWuestefeld"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["climate","agent","coordination"],"value":"Remember also that the vast majority of logistical challenges with climate change aren't developing new products, but handling coordination problems around deploying existing ones.
Yes, that was exactly my point. There simply aren't enough people making electric cars, heat pumps, and all those other new products, to eliminate fossil fuel dependence by 2030, which was what AOC was advocating. Diverting enough resources would be disastrous to other industries, and then once we've made the huge investment to build all that, we suddenly don't need the capacity once we hit the goal. It's economic suicide.
Emergent properties of human behavior responding to incentives would take care of the rest.
You're outlining programs that would push us in the right direction, which is good. These are not things which will eliminate fossil fuel dependence by 2030, which is what AOC was shooting for, and which I'm criticizing."},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["climate"],"value":"Ocasio-Cortez Says 70% Ultra-Rich Tax Could Pay for Climate Plan"},"story_url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["climate"],"value":"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-04/ocasio-cortez-says-70-ultra-rich-tax-could-pay-for-climate-plan"}},"_tags":["comment","author_CWuestefeld","story_18827393"],"author":"CWuestefeld","comment_text":"Remember also that the vast majority of logistical challenges with climate change aren't developing new products, but handling coordination problems around deploying existing ones.
Yes, that was exactly my point. There simply aren't enough people making electric cars, heat pumps, and all those other new products, to eliminate fossil fuel dependence by 2030, which was what AOC was advocating. Diverting enough resources would be disastrous to other industries, and then once we've made the huge investment to build all that, we suddenly don't need the capacity once we hit the goal. It's economic suicide.
Emergent properties of human behavior responding to incentives would take care of the rest.
You're outlining programs that would push us in the right direction, which is good. These are not things which will eliminate fossil fuel dependence by 2030, which is what AOC was shooting for, and which I'm criticizing.","created_at":"2019-01-04T21:32:39Z","created_at_i":1546637559,"objectID":"18827835","parent_id":18827666,"story_id":18827393,"story_title":"Ocasio-Cortez Says 70% Ultra-Rich Tax Could Pay for Climate Plan","story_url":"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-04/ocasio-cortez-says-70-ultra-rich-tax-could-pay-for-climate-plan","updated_at":"2024-09-20T03:29:41Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"L_Rahman"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["climate","agent","coordination"],"value":"I'll leave the tax plan aside to respond to this. As slow and creaky as the world is, when a government as powerful as the United States aggressively puts forth a vision for the world the systems of the world bend to make it work.
Remember also that the vast majority of logistical challenges with climate change aren't developing new products, but handling coordination problems around deploying existing ones.
Things that might happen if America decided to commit seriously to a Green New Deal:\n- automotive roadmap overhaul to 80% electric drivetrain for all deliveries in the United States by 2030\n- tectonic shift in land use around the country to higher density zoning, mass transit, HSR\n- hundreds of billions of dollars of research to public and private institutions to map all the carbon in our system and the most effective ways to remove it
But these are all giant changes. Here are simple ones that are straight up applications of government power:\n- switch all major urban areas to Tokyo style zoning with property taxes tied to mass transit investment\n- steep cliff on ICE vehicles delivered in the United States hitting some x00% in 2030\n- end all fossil fuel subsidies\n- move all energy supply to a Texas style market
Emergent properties of human behavior responding to incentives would take care of the rest."},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["climate"],"value":"Ocasio-Cortez Says 70% Ultra-Rich Tax Could Pay for Climate Plan"},"story_url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["climate"],"value":"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-04/ocasio-cortez-says-70-ultra-rich-tax-could-pay-for-climate-plan"}},"_tags":["comment","author_L_Rahman","story_18827393"],"author":"L_Rahman","children":[18827835],"comment_text":"I'll leave the tax plan aside to respond to this. As slow and creaky as the world is, when a government as powerful as the United States aggressively puts forth a vision for the world the systems of the world bend to make it work.
Remember also that the vast majority of logistical challenges with climate change aren't developing new products, but handling coordination problems around deploying existing ones.
Things that might happen if America decided to commit seriously to a Green New Deal:\n- automotive roadmap overhaul to 80% electric drivetrain for all deliveries in the United States by 2030\n- tectonic shift in land use around the country to higher density zoning, mass transit, HSR\n- hundreds of billions of dollars of research to public and private institutions to map all the carbon in our system and the most effective ways to remove it
But these are all giant changes. Here are simple ones that are straight up applications of government power:\n- switch all major urban areas to Tokyo style zoning with property taxes tied to mass transit investment\n- steep cliff on ICE vehicles delivered in the United States hitting some x00% in 2030\n- end all fossil fuel subsidies\n- move all energy supply to a Texas style market
Emergent properties of human behavior responding to incentives would take care of the rest.","created_at":"2019-01-04T21:11:53Z","created_at_i":1546636313,"objectID":"18827666","parent_id":18827533,"story_id":18827393,"story_title":"Ocasio-Cortez Says 70% Ultra-Rich Tax Could Pay for Climate Plan","story_url":"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-04/ocasio-cortez-says-70-ultra-rich-tax-could-pay-for-climate-plan","updated_at":"2024-09-20T03:29:41Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"jdlyga"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["climate","agent","coordination"],"value":"Covid and climate change aren't one country problems. Just like a building on fire doesn't affect just one office. The problem is we need top-down coordination for worldwide threats. We need the UN, or a UN-like organization (United Earth?)."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"The world should think better about catastrophic and existential risks"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/06/25/the-world-should-think-better-about-catastrophic-and-existential-risks"}},"_tags":["comment","author_jdlyga","story_23685886"],"author":"jdlyga","children":[23698886],"comment_text":"Covid and climate change aren't one country problems. Just like a building on fire doesn't affect just one office. The problem is we need top-down coordination for worldwide threats. We need the UN, or a UN-like organization (United Earth?).","created_at":"2020-07-01T01:10:06Z","created_at_i":1593565806,"objectID":"23696673","parent_id":23685886,"story_id":23685886,"story_title":"The world should think better about catastrophic and existential risks","story_url":"https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/06/25/the-world-should-think-better-about-catastrophic-and-existential-risks","updated_at":"2024-09-20T06:31:19Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"harimau777"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["climate","agent","coordination"],"value":"If we assume that governments aren't going to address climate change and coordination between private citizens is unlikely to be enough to stop it, has anyone written anything on what individuals should do to avoid its effects?
It feels like we are at the point where we should be talking a lot more about how live decent lives assuming that prevention and mitigation are unlikely."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"A graph that should be front-page news"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.lyrebirddreaming.com/post/the-graph-that-should-be-front-page-news"}},"_tags":["comment","author_harimau777","story_48888331"],"author":"harimau777","children":[48892757,48893589,48894591],"comment_text":"If we assume that governments aren't going to address climate change and coordination between private citizens is unlikely to be enough to stop it, has anyone written anything on what individuals should do to avoid its effects?
It feels like we are at the point where we should be talking a lot more about how live decent lives assuming that prevention and mitigation are unlikely.","created_at":"2026-07-13T12:40:48Z","created_at_i":1783946448,"objectID":"48891814","parent_id":48888331,"story_id":48888331,"story_title":"A graph that should be front-page news","story_url":"https://www.lyrebirddreaming.com/post/the-graph-that-should-be-front-page-news","updated_at":"2026-07-14T18:06:33Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"crazygringo"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["climate","agent","coordination"],"value":"> Nobody is willing to accept responsibility for the problems and everybody believes they will somehow be resolved without their personal intervention.
But not without reason. Making a difference requires coordination. Coordination at such a large level requires government action (companies/NGO's/charities/etc. can't do it). And for climate/environment-related things, often action on the part of several/many/all governments.
But the fact is, the way democracies are built, they tend to be bad at this, and there's lots of research to back that up. People don't vote on candidates based on unproven consequencies that are decades from now, period. And non-democracies aren't going to worry about this stuff too much either.
Things change for reasons, which involve clear incentives. "Accepting responsibility" on a personal level doesn't really have a lot to do with it, I'm afraid, unless you're a world leader, and even as a world leader, you're awfully constrained in what you do."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"They're Taking Over - jellyfish bloom and the future of the ocean."},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/sep/26/jellyfish-theyre-taking-over/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_crazygringo","story_6347557"],"author":"crazygringo","children":[6349297],"comment_text":"> Nobody is willing to accept responsibility for the problems and everybody believes they will somehow be resolved without their personal intervention.
But not without reason. Making a difference requires coordination. Coordination at such a large level requires government action (companies/NGO's/charities/etc. can't do it). And for climate/environment-related things, often action on the part of several/many/all governments.
But the fact is, the way democracies are built, they tend to be bad at this, and there's lots of research to back that up. People don't vote on candidates based on unproven consequencies that are decades from now, period. And non-democracies aren't going to worry about this stuff too much either.
Things change for reasons, which involve clear incentives. "Accepting responsibility" on a personal level doesn't really have a lot to do with it, I'm afraid, unless you're a world leader, and even as a world leader, you're awfully constrained in what you do.","created_at":"2013-09-08T15:59:28Z","created_at_i":1378655968,"objectID":"6349130","parent_id":6348371,"story_id":6347557,"story_title":"They're Taking Over - jellyfish bloom and the future of the ocean.","story_url":"http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/sep/26/jellyfish-theyre-taking-over/","updated_at":"2024-09-19T20:01:23Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"corimaith"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["climate","agent","coordination"],"value":"I think it's the opposite actually. I think the moment you're consciously, systematically trying to optimize for "smartest and most ambitious" on a meritocratic basis is the point in which your respective field falls into decline and is relegated to slow, incremental improvements rather than revolutionary jumps. Primairly because "the smartest and most ambitious" are more about seeing that specific field as vehicle for wealth and prestige rather than actual passion. Many of the legends of the past were not good enough for the elite institutions of their time.
I mean really, it's the question of why this over preexisting patronage systems. And looking at the "achivements" of this so-called "meritocratic elite" this last century (especially in enshittification) leaves alot to be desired.
It's just one self-serving 1% attempting to ursurp another 1%. And they certainly aren't going to be solving your problems. They don't have the ability to solve the coordination problem, the housing crisis, involution, climate change and Donald Trump."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Stanford to continue legacy admissions and withdraw from Cal Grants"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2025/08/08/stanford-to-continue-legacy-admissions-and-withdraw-from-cal-grants/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_corimaith","story_44846130"],"author":"corimaith","children":[44851005,44852239],"comment_text":"I think it's the opposite actually. I think the moment you're consciously, systematically trying to optimize for "smartest and most ambitious" on a meritocratic basis is the point in which your respective field falls into decline and is relegated to slow, incremental improvements rather than revolutionary jumps. Primairly because "the smartest and most ambitious" are more about seeing that specific field as vehicle for wealth and prestige rather than actual passion. Many of the legends of the past were not good enough for the elite institutions of their time.
I mean really, it's the question of why this over preexisting patronage systems. And looking at the "achivements" of this so-called "meritocratic elite" this last century (especially in enshittification) leaves alot to be desired.
It's just one self-serving 1% attempting to ursurp another 1%. And they certainly aren't going to be solving your problems. They don't have the ability to solve the coordination problem, the housing crisis, involution, climate change and Donald Trump.","created_at":"2025-08-09T22:16:10Z","created_at_i":1754777770,"objectID":"44850823","parent_id":44849661,"story_id":44846130,"story_title":"Stanford to continue legacy admissions and withdraw from Cal Grants","story_url":"https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2025/08/08/stanford-to-continue-legacy-admissions-and-withdraw-from-cal-grants/","updated_at":"2026-03-05T22:31:34Z"}],"hitsPerPage":10,"nbHits":29,"nbPages":3,"page":0,"params":"query=climate+agent+coordination&hitsPerPage=10&advancedSyntax=true&analyticsTags=backend","processingTimeMS":22,"processingTimingsMS":{"_request":{"queue":1,"roundTrip":20},"afterFetch":{"format":{"highlighting":1,"total":1},"merge":{"mergeLoop":{"prepareNextHit":4,"total":4},"total":5},"total":5},"fetch":{"query":12,"scanning":3,"total":16},"total":22},"query":"climate agent coordination","serverTimeMS":25}