What's the factor of probability that if something can happen, that it probably will happen growing over the course of time? Every day I'm alive, my odds of death grow, lol. Happy New Year from the mentally healthy United States!
I am not a probability estimator, and my math awareness is rusty. I am a beginner at spreadsheets, but I am a visual thinker and I thought it would be fun to play with a spreadsheet that graphed the probability of 100 successive 1% chances, similar to some of the risk estimates of nuclear war mentioned in the article.
At the link is a spreadsheet with two sheet tabs, one with 100 successive 1% chances graphed and the other with a progressive increase factor of increasing chances from ~1% to 11% over 100 trials.
If anyone wants to adjust the values on this, for the 90 days (fingers crossed) that this speadsheet should stay active it should be downloadable by clicking the file button and selecting export, then they can tweak it in whatever their favourite spreadsheet app is.
I am not sure my thoughts are sane, but I am very certain my country has a deteriorating mental health condition. I'm a UK resident FWIW. Happy New Year!
I'm not a great math guy, so I'm not the one to weigh in on your spreadsheet. I recall this thought problem from a grade school math class, though: If you walk towards a door and cut each step by half every time, do you ever cross the threshold? I would say no, too bad it doesn't apply here.
I read a fair amount about UK, and the similarities to us Yankees is sadly obvious. Happy New Year to you, too.
The issue, I think, is that we tend to be unable to fundamentally grasp the concept of infinity. We cannot grasp a (spacially) infinite Universe, for example, or why some mathematical ∞s are larger than others. More on all that here https://www.britannica.com/science/infinity-mathematics
When one hears that "infinite close to 1" is the same as "1" it doesn't make sense if one thinks in numbers. How can two different numbers be the same?
I would say they're not. They're concepts.
Mathematically, though, I like this "proof":
X = 0.999... (repeating)
10X = 9.999...
10X - 1X = 9.0
9X = 9
X = 1
Advanced theoretical physics deals with a lot of this nonsense in more interesting subjects than pure math (imo). I love "Seven Brief Lessons on Physics" (Carlo Rovelli, 2014) as a short but sweet and eminently readable appetiser.
I liked Jan's "As you get infinitely close to the door, you reach the door." explanation. I'd always thought of the problem that all infinitescimal distances leave you stranded some way from ever reaching anything, which on some subatomic level might also be true*, at least outside of black holes and when matter is converted to energy.
Thanks Laurence. I like the visualization of how a growing Y due to mounting stressors as things begin collapsing affects our nuclear war risks, too. Happy New Year!
As a visual thinker I like to have access to a visualisation of data. I did it for any visual thinkers in the audience, who hopefully would approve of the attempt to demonstrate the issue graphically.
While a a Nuclear War risk visualiser is potentially a disturbing thing, it helps me feel a bit better _seeing_ what other people are talking about.
Edit:
I did see some discussion on Reddit a while back about how as nuclear armed countries like Pakistan experience greater stresses like crop failures due to excessive heat they become more likely to use their nukes. I also saw some discussion about Israel having _possibly_ dropped a tactical nuke on Tartus in Syria on Dec 16th and also Biden having been shown plans to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. I think those graphs at climatelevels.org are a more difficult to escape threat than Nuclear war, so...
I agree. While nuclear war is a constant threat, it's not the inexorable reality of climate change and overshoot. The former we acknowledge in a fragile standoff, the latter we don't acknowledge at all. Where are the clocks for climate change and overshoot?
I expect two troubles with an overshoot clock to be how many people could partially understand what exceeding the capacity of their environment to support life means to immediately kneejerk to reacting about how that impacts their expectations to raise a family. Second I see that if such a clock were to exist what would governements that already support genocide (according to various respected human rights organisations) do with the information? On a technical level for that clock, how would it express phantom carrying capacity, would there be multiple hands on the clock one for before and after the EROI on oil reaches 1?
For a climate-change clock, I guess all it takes is to be able to understand an exponential and to look at the 5th graph on this article showing how "The Rate of Warming (RoW) has accelerated" https://richardcrim.substack.com/p/the-crisis-report-96
if people can't understand what that means, there's no point in a clock IMO.
I'd like to recreate that graph with my own spreadsheet too, but I want the data to be spot on. To be honest I'd only be doing it to confirm I understoood it, because the "clock" that I'm scared of is the one where humans panic. I think people should be doing their best to 'create love and experience beauty' while they can.
Quite honesty, my clock comment was intended to question why people aren't being informed of the state we're in, more than a literal suggestion, sorry I wasn't clear. As a former graphic designer, I would have to think through the best way to communicate these things graphically. Since everyone is familiar with the doomsday clock, it felt like a reasonable idea.
There are numerous reasons the public isn't being informed, one being that the clowns driving the car want the system to continue exactly as it is. There's money to be made until the economy implodes. Although there is growing awareness of climate change, most people are oblivious of its true ramifications, and far less informed about (if at all) overshoot. Dumbing things down to graphics has a place in getting the message out.
Thanks for the links, I subscribe to and appreciate Richard's work. I think many would concur that people should 'create love and experience beauty' while they can — for me and perhaps you, that's not completely possible. Once our eyes are open, you know...hard to shut them again.
"My blog series on collapse only briefly mentions the risk of nuclear armageddon because it’s my measured opinion that this particular global catastrophic risk is among the least of our concerns. After all, it’s theoretically possible we keep rolling well."
Indeed... it doesn't actually concern me much because if it happens and I survive I have no interest in remaining alive... whereas, civilisational collapse due to climate change and biodiversity collapse is already baked in... what is hard to predict is the speed at which it continues to unfold.
Due to this, I'm actually in favour of some forms of geoengineering, such as the Arctic Ice Project, which set me in opposition to almost everyone else in my local XR group.
(Plus the fact that I still don't really understand the purpose of blocking traffic!)
The purpose of blocking traffic is to generate a fuss and get attention. Unfortunately, it completely backfires in the public eye, so it's a terribly strategy imho. People really hate being inconvenienced, and are unable to stop up long enough to think properly about why people are risking jail time in order to inconvenience them. Better to throw orange paint at stuff.
We're definitely going to resort to geo-enginering imo. We have no choice.
And yeah, who wants to remain alive in a world with nukes going off, anyway?
What's the factor of probability that if something can happen, that it probably will happen growing over the course of time? Every day I'm alive, my odds of death grow, lol. Happy New Year from the mentally healthy United States!
I am not a probability estimator, and my math awareness is rusty. I am a beginner at spreadsheets, but I am a visual thinker and I thought it would be fun to play with a spreadsheet that graphed the probability of 100 successive 1% chances, similar to some of the risk estimates of nuclear war mentioned in the article.
At the link is a spreadsheet with two sheet tabs, one with 100 successive 1% chances graphed and the other with a progressive increase factor of increasing chances from ~1% to 11% over 100 trials.
https://cryptpad.fr/sheet/#/2/sheet/view/3whjCI2fdgHvUki+C-uzdDCZ3zLrosOpe4u5+3hXj0k/
If anyone wants to adjust the values on this, for the 90 days (fingers crossed) that this speadsheet should stay active it should be downloadable by clicking the file button and selecting export, then they can tweak it in whatever their favourite spreadsheet app is.
I am not sure my thoughts are sane, but I am very certain my country has a deteriorating mental health condition. I'm a UK resident FWIW. Happy New Year!
I'm not a great math guy, so I'm not the one to weigh in on your spreadsheet. I recall this thought problem from a grade school math class, though: If you walk towards a door and cut each step by half every time, do you ever cross the threshold? I would say no, too bad it doesn't apply here.
I read a fair amount about UK, and the similarities to us Yankees is sadly obvious. Happy New Year to you, too.
You reach the door, mathematically speaking, because a number infinitely close to 1 equals 1.
As you get infinitely close to the door, you reach the door.
Not gonna argue with a better math brain than mine, but what's half of infinitely close. lol?
The issue, I think, is that we tend to be unable to fundamentally grasp the concept of infinity. We cannot grasp a (spacially) infinite Universe, for example, or why some mathematical ∞s are larger than others. More on all that here https://www.britannica.com/science/infinity-mathematics
When one hears that "infinite close to 1" is the same as "1" it doesn't make sense if one thinks in numbers. How can two different numbers be the same?
I would say they're not. They're concepts.
Mathematically, though, I like this "proof":
X = 0.999... (repeating)
10X = 9.999...
10X - 1X = 9.0
9X = 9
X = 1
Advanced theoretical physics deals with a lot of this nonsense in more interesting subjects than pure math (imo). I love "Seven Brief Lessons on Physics" (Carlo Rovelli, 2014) as a short but sweet and eminently readable appetiser.
It's a neat lil thought problem... It seems similar to Zeno's Paradox
https://platonicrealms.com/encyclopedia/Zenos-Paradox-of-the-Tortoise-and-Achilles
I liked Jan's "As you get infinitely close to the door, you reach the door." explanation. I'd always thought of the problem that all infinitescimal distances leave you stranded some way from ever reaching anything, which on some subatomic level might also be true*, at least outside of black holes and when matter is converted to energy.
*or infinitely close to truth?
Thank you for the link. I remember this story. If humanity concentrated on problems like this, we would have far fewer problems!
Thanks Laurence. I like the visualization of how a growing Y due to mounting stressors as things begin collapsing affects our nuclear war risks, too. Happy New Year!
As a visual thinker I like to have access to a visualisation of data. I did it for any visual thinkers in the audience, who hopefully would approve of the attempt to demonstrate the issue graphically.
While a a Nuclear War risk visualiser is potentially a disturbing thing, it helps me feel a bit better _seeing_ what other people are talking about.
Edit:
I did see some discussion on Reddit a while back about how as nuclear armed countries like Pakistan experience greater stresses like crop failures due to excessive heat they become more likely to use their nukes. I also saw some discussion about Israel having _possibly_ dropped a tactical nuke on Tartus in Syria on Dec 16th and also Biden having been shown plans to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. I think those graphs at climatelevels.org are a more difficult to escape threat than Nuclear war, so...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs [Tom Lehrer - We Will All Go Together When We Go]
I agree. While nuclear war is a constant threat, it's not the inexorable reality of climate change and overshoot. The former we acknowledge in a fragile standoff, the latter we don't acknowledge at all. Where are the clocks for climate change and overshoot?
It's not exactly a clock for overshoot but there's Earth Overshoot Day
https://www.clubofrome.org/impact-hubs/climate-emergency/earth-overshoot-day/
I expect two troubles with an overshoot clock to be how many people could partially understand what exceeding the capacity of their environment to support life means to immediately kneejerk to reacting about how that impacts their expectations to raise a family. Second I see that if such a clock were to exist what would governements that already support genocide (according to various respected human rights organisations) do with the information? On a technical level for that clock, how would it express phantom carrying capacity, would there be multiple hands on the clock one for before and after the EROI on oil reaches 1?
For a climate-change clock, I guess all it takes is to be able to understand an exponential and to look at the 5th graph on this article showing how "The Rate of Warming (RoW) has accelerated" https://richardcrim.substack.com/p/the-crisis-report-96
if people can't understand what that means, there's no point in a clock IMO.
I'd like to recreate that graph with my own spreadsheet too, but I want the data to be spot on. To be honest I'd only be doing it to confirm I understoood it, because the "clock" that I'm scared of is the one where humans panic. I think people should be doing their best to 'create love and experience beauty' while they can.
Quite honesty, my clock comment was intended to question why people aren't being informed of the state we're in, more than a literal suggestion, sorry I wasn't clear. As a former graphic designer, I would have to think through the best way to communicate these things graphically. Since everyone is familiar with the doomsday clock, it felt like a reasonable idea.
There are numerous reasons the public isn't being informed, one being that the clowns driving the car want the system to continue exactly as it is. There's money to be made until the economy implodes. Although there is growing awareness of climate change, most people are oblivious of its true ramifications, and far less informed about (if at all) overshoot. Dumbing things down to graphics has a place in getting the message out.
Thanks for the links, I subscribe to and appreciate Richard's work. I think many would concur that people should 'create love and experience beauty' while they can — for me and perhaps you, that's not completely possible. Once our eyes are open, you know...hard to shut them again.
FWIW the Doomsday Clock incorporates climate change and threats like AI these days.
Good to know. I should probably visit it to get my week off to a sunny start!
"My blog series on collapse only briefly mentions the risk of nuclear armageddon because it’s my measured opinion that this particular global catastrophic risk is among the least of our concerns. After all, it’s theoretically possible we keep rolling well."
Indeed... it doesn't actually concern me much because if it happens and I survive I have no interest in remaining alive... whereas, civilisational collapse due to climate change and biodiversity collapse is already baked in... what is hard to predict is the speed at which it continues to unfold.
Due to this, I'm actually in favour of some forms of geoengineering, such as the Arctic Ice Project, which set me in opposition to almost everyone else in my local XR group.
(Plus the fact that I still don't really understand the purpose of blocking traffic!)
The purpose of blocking traffic is to generate a fuss and get attention. Unfortunately, it completely backfires in the public eye, so it's a terribly strategy imho. People really hate being inconvenienced, and are unable to stop up long enough to think properly about why people are risking jail time in order to inconvenience them. Better to throw orange paint at stuff.
We're definitely going to resort to geo-enginering imo. We have no choice.
And yeah, who wants to remain alive in a world with nukes going off, anyway?