Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Quinn Norton (quinn@social.circl.lu)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Nov-2024 01:32:10 JST Quinn Norton

   The most maddening tech discourse these days is that we need AI to figure out how to solve climate change.

   We've known how to completely solve climate change for more than a decade, thanks. We just don't want to.

   • MortSinyx likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Quinn Norton (quinn@social.circl.lu)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Nov-2024 02:40:46 JST Quinn Norton

     in reply to

     • Teknikal_Domain

     @tek_dmn 😂

     i mean, i don't think you're right, because they might trust ai, but does it make them do anything? nah. but it's funny.

   • Embed this notice
     Teknikal_Domain (tek_dmn@mastodon.tekdmn.me)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Nov-2024 02:40:47 JST Teknikal_Domain

     in reply to

     @quinn No, no, no. They actually have a point. Because it seems that everybody is willing to blindly trust whatever an AI puts in front of them, so if we do get one to output how to fix climate change, people might actually pay attention for once.

     This might just be the thing we actually need to get some progress started. I can't believe that I'm actually saying that.

   • Embed this notice
     ErgonWolf (ergonwolf@pawb.fun)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Nov-2024 03:34:35 JST ErgonWolf

     in reply to

     @quinn I remember the first push about climate change was in the early 1970s. So we've known for 50 years.

   • Embed this notice
     Quinn Norton (quinn@social.circl.lu)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Nov-2024 03:34:35 JST Quinn Norton

     in reply to

     • ErgonWolf

     @ErgonWolf not really? we've known it was a problem since the 1800s, but the practical solutions are mostly in the last 20 years. solar/battery/wind etc hasn't been in a position to scale until very recently.

   • Embed this notice
     Quinn Norton (quinn@social.circl.lu)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Nov-2024 03:38:38 JST Quinn Norton

     in reply to

     • Kevin Russell

     @kevinrns not that we knew about climate change, that we had the knowledge and tech to solve it is pretty recent.

   • Embed this notice
     Kevin Russell (kevinrns@mstdn.social)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Nov-2024 03:38:40 JST Kevin Russell

     in reply to

     @quinn

     More than a hundred years. The amount of time we have known about burning carbon is longer than the amount of time, since we began the industrial revolution until we were warned.

     co2 warning history, 1800's

     https://daily.jstor.org/how-19th-century-scientists-predicted-global-warming/

   • Embed this notice
     she hacked you (ekis@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Nov-2024 04:30:59 JST she hacked you

     in reply to

     @quinn Well we have to build enough nuclear power plants to solve climate change, for the use of powering a computer to find the solution

     Its simple physics

   • Embed this notice
     *|FNAME|* 🇨🇦 (crispius@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Nov-2024 10:17:15 JST *|FNAME|* 🇨🇦

     in reply to

     @quinn
     And all ‘AI’ is going to do is repeat the solutions that are statistically most likely, which are going to be those same solutions we already know about but refuse to implement.

   • Embed this notice
     Quinn Norton (quinn@social.circl.lu)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Nov-2024 21:54:11 JST Quinn Norton

     in reply to

     • Marc Cooper
     • ErgonWolf

     @ortgard @ErgonWolf that's some wild retconning sir, that was a nuclear testing/waste protest, and the french did hundreds of tests right up to the ctbt.

   • Embed this notice
     Marc Cooper (ortgard@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Nov-2024 21:54:12 JST Marc Cooper

     in reply to

     • ErgonWolf

     @ErgonWolf @quinn Can confirm. I joined Greenpeace in 1984.

     Also, never forget that the French government sunk Greenpeace's ship, Rainbow Warrior, in New Zealand in 1985, killing Fernando Pereira. Nation states were clearly prepared to kill to prevent climate action. It was a genuinely scary time to be active back then.

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior

   • Embed this notice
     Quinn Norton (quinn@social.circl.lu)'s status on Thursday, 07-Nov-2024 03:59:39 JST Quinn Norton

     in reply to

     • Heretical_i

     @heretical_i "lifestyle" consumption is doing a helluva lift there

   • Embed this notice
     Heretical_i (heretical_i@kafeneio.social)'s status on Thursday, 07-Nov-2024 03:59:41 JST Heretical_i

     in reply to

     @quinn You know we could solve the Carbon issue by shooting the rich into the sun on Elon's space dick... along with anyone who would want to be rich. The latter IS the 'sticking point' though, because everyone in the industrial and post-industrial consumer societies (now including China), feel themselves to be rich, just temporarily financially 'embarrassed'.😎

   • Embed this notice
     Quinn Norton (quinn@social.circl.lu)'s status on Thursday, 07-Nov-2024 04:01:09 JST Quinn Norton

     in reply to

     • KINGofPDX

     @adhocster LLMs are not magic, and they can't mind control people anywhere near as other people can. there is no real I in AI, it's a next word picker basked on stats and vector math.

   • Embed this notice
     KINGofPDX (adhocster@synapse.cafe)'s status on Thursday, 07-Nov-2024 04:01:10 JST KINGofPDX

     in reply to

     @quinn But is it an open question whether intransigence can be better navigated by AI than by humans? If AI can write e-mails with a high probability to placate more than inflame, then what role might AI play in mediating, moving, and manipulating climate-averse intransigence? If some paths are more probable than others, can AI find those paths, regardless of how strange and convoluted they may be? Maybe in the climate change wars, we are all flat-earthers, unable to fathom that a point to the east may be reached by heading west. Food (or maybe junk food) for thought.