Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
It's funny, I think your explanation is fantastic and I don't think it suggests out-of-ass talking on his part.

Perhaps it's because I view the "we COULD be increasing the number of doomsday pieces..." statement as being more credible than perhaps you do. Lately I've been of the mind that "consensus" gets lots of stuff wrong, even when backed empirically with higher-than-standard rigor.
I probably shouldn't have said 'talking out of his ass' as if he never thought about it much and just spun out a paper one day cause he was bored. I'm sure he has thought about it and he may be making more sense than I realise.

OTOH, I still stand by my arguments a) and b) above. I think his argument is a bit of the old 'we're creating our own disaster because experts don't understand maths' argument that he used for economics. I think he may have gotten a big head about that and his hubris may have outran his knowledge a bit.

What this kind of reminds me of is about a dozen years ago when Francis Crick (of Watson and Crick, the structure of DNA Nobel prize winners) decided he was going to be a neuroscientist, and not only that but solve pretty much the biggest question in neuroscience which was how the brain creates consciousness. That did not end well for him.