Here’s Greta Thunberg, who says that humanity is going extinct (the precise date is unclear), protecting her slender young body from attack by SARS-CoV-2:
Why worry about COVID-19 if these are the end times for humanity? When we burn up in the atmosphere will we be complaining about our Long COVID and Long Monkeypox symptoms?
I observed the same phenomenon at a two-day MIT CSAIL anniversary event. It opened with a declaration of climate alarmism (“existential threat”) and then featured talks about (1) using advanced computerized techniques, such as AI, to attack rare medical conditions (thus reducing the death rate by 1 percent?), (2) “data-driven AI Healthcare”, (3) “Can Financial Engineering and Data Science Help Cure Cancer?” (from Andrew Lo, who didn’t mention that diabetes is always ready to kill elderly cancer-free humans), (4) AI matching of humans to medical specialists for superior treatment just before the planet melts, (5) “AI for Genome Medicine”, (6) AI for equitable health care (by Marzyeh Ghassemi, whose web site explains more), (7) machine learning for clinical AI and drug discovery, (8) drug improvement via AI, and (9) “AI guidance for the future of health care”.
Staying perfectly healthy right up to the moment that Earth becomes hotter than Venus was, in fact, the most common topic.
Wouldn’t it make more sense, though, to shut down most computers due to their use of planet-warming energy? Even if a server is powered by wind or nuclear, it would make more sense to use that electricity to power a carbon capture system. Suppose that we can allow ourselves the luxury of a few hyper-efficient computers. Wouldn’t it make the most sense to use them to maximize human happiness during these twilight years (or months?)? Have software suggest parties and other in-person gatherings that people can attend, for example.
I also observed this recently in the San Francisco Bay Area. The same folks who said that they thought humanity was doomed due to climate change were also diligently wearing their N95 masks. And they’re worried about HIV because humans need a great immune system when climate doom arrives to kill us all? Rockridge BART station:
Thunberg is going to be some billionaire’s trophy wife by 30, baking the pavement in a blacked out SUV. Maybe we should go back to 8 bit micros to conserve energy. Lions could write optimized graphics libraries for the 6502 for the rest of their lives.
She’s not much of a trophy. She’s not particularly attractive or charming, as least as far as my tastes go.
She reminds me of those ladies that used to take axes to barrels of beer in the early 1900’s. I can’t pretend to understand what a billionaire might look for in a partner, but I would be surprised if it was that.
If I ever have the choice between an angry high school dropout with selective mutism and a ballerina, you know which one I’m going for.
If Greta ever marries, it will be to another fanatic*; hopefully someone complimentary.
*Maybe some rich old guy with an ideological axe to grind like Ted Turner will marry her as a way to completely screw over his dissolute heirs
Cutting edge research from MIT geniuses, or at least their Pravda: “Training a single AI model can emit as much carbon as five cars in their lifetimes”
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/06/06/239031/training-a-single-ai-model-can-emit-as-much-carbon-as-five-cars-in-their-lifetimes/
Meanwhile, statistician Bjorn Lomborg and his team Nobel laureates have crunched the numbers. Their numbers say even if the IPCC’s most dire predictions come true (actual measurements show only about 25% of that predicted warming), by the year 2100 it will cost about 4% of GDP to remediate using known technologies. And by then, everyone will be 450% richer, so they’ll hardly even notice the cost. Hooray, climate crisis averted!
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162520304157
Given that resource consumption is blamed for climate change, how about a new series of billboard ads?
Reduce the risk of climate change with a daily birth control pill!
Reduce the risk of climate change by stopping immigration, which leads to vastly increased first world resource consumption!
Wow, AI/maching learning hype is everywhere. It’s really getting out of hand in my field as well. And the worse culprits talking about it the most are those that understand it the least! Then they come and ask for machine learning with datasets that have more features than samples. In most cases, the problem is that there is not enough well curated data to do any proper analysis.
In my next overlapping field AI is hot too. It used to deal with exponential volume of new government regulations that no human (and no department of millennials) can process, probably due to legal marijuana, on both issuing and compliant sides. Interesting that AI success rate is just above 50%, maximum 60%, so it needs to be rechecked by hand anyway. Almost perfect random guess.
Because they are science puritans.
Remove Christianity from Puritanism and replace it with an 8th grade understanding of science and this is what you get.
(Except indulgences are still available)
There are dietary restrictions, proselytizing, rituals (recycling), holidays, and so on. We may even get a holy war.