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Steve Downie's avatar

Thanks, enjoyed that. For p(danger|^T) I think the balance shifts towards a higher probability when you add in second order effects such as impact on food production, mass migrations and war over resources. Likewise p(extinction|danger) the root cause could be due to nonlinear effects, e.g. nuclear war or geo-engineering gone wrong. The longer we live as a species I suspect the probability of causing our own extinction tends to one.

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John M's avatar

Malthusian arguments are frequently rebutted by using anecdotal arguments involving success and failure of various societies: e.g https://reason.com/2005/08/01/under-the-spell-of-malthus-2/. Several more recent tries including: https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2020/8/3/bad-science-and-bad-ethics-in-peter-gleicks-review-of-apocalypse-never-at-yale-climate-connections

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