Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Really, I should be posting this video once a year.

After yesterday's post, I might have trouble convincing you this lives up to its name, "The most terrifying video you'll ever see"... but it's also an important video to see and think about, explained really clearly and simply.

Yeah, I posted it at Roboseyo before... back when nobody read me.

In other "save the world" news, I've gotten involved with the KIVA loan thingy, and it's awesome. You can sponsor micro-loans that help people improve their lives in clear, tangible ways, for as little as $25.00USD.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

An incredible video and it is pretty hard to refute the logic of a man who is not actually 'telling' you anything, just presenting the possibilities. This man should be a politician....oh wait.

I have a new hero

Roboseyo said...

you should see the entire series: he basically combed the thousands of comments his original video produced, and methodically answered every. single. objection. Seven hours of Youtube video, total, and a book deal later, he's literally taken all comers.

Unknown said...

Might have to have a look at it, maybe watch it a little bit at a time.

great post

Kevin Kim said...

Someone has doubtless already mentioned that the "most terrifying" video is a form of Pascal's Wager. Interesting. Pascal's original wager is vulnerable to a pretty cogent refutation; I wonder if an environmentalist's equivalent exists for this guy's argument.


Kevin

Roboseyo said...

That's actually one of the first objections he handles in the series of videos that follow this one; his excuse for using it is that it's hard to put a more complex system into an online video that has to be under 10 minutes to be accepted by YouTube, and would be less likely to go viral. I'll find the clip where he responds to the pascal thing (which was the first thing I thought, too), when I'm at a computer with sound.

Nice to know you still stop by here, Kevin.

Kevin Kim said...

My own beef with much of environmentalism has more to do with the kooks who over-romanticize nature and turn the movement into a campaign to "save the planet" or some such nonsense.

Aside from that complaint, however, I'm all for things like clean alternative energy. It's axiomatic that no one wants to live inside their own toilet; that selfish line of reasoning is, to my mind, sufficient justification for humanity to clean up its act.

The guy's arguments were essentially along those lines-- "you risk being dead along with almost everyone else... how lucky do you feel?"-- which was fine by me. He didn't invoke the Gaia hypothesis or anything equally silly.

If I had the time or energy, I'd review the objections and his responses... but I trust that, as the global population increases, the logic of his argument will only become more relevant and pressing.

Roboseyo said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg here's his main response to pascal's wager - that when you look at the probabilities and the degree of scientific assent regarding the premises.