As for the nightime ventilation cooling, I speak from personal experience. 40+ years ago I lived in Princeton NJ. I put a big attic fan into the attic and would open the house windows and turn that fan on to cool the house in the summer.
It worked quite well
But! Everything hot damp. Water would condense on the basement floor and I ended up with books on the bookshelves on the second floor molding. I have mold allergies and I could not go into the room, let alone pick up a book and read.
I put in central air with an electrostatic air filter and the humidity and allergy problems went away. I have been using central air ever since - it can be expensive but I stay healthier.
Yea I was going to note that there is a company making computer controlled whole house fan systems that do exactly what David suggests. The trouble is that they only work in fairly dry climates, and in more humid ones can actively cause problems with mold and water condensation.
We lived in Austin & Houston for 11 years. We tried leaving the windows open at night in Austin, but the allergies (& resulting sinus surgery) became unlivable. In Houston we used the A/C & rarely opened the windows. Since 1987 we have lived in California, open our windows at night, & use the A/C on only the hottest days. Humidity makes a large difference.
“National governments adopt policies costing billions of dollars in the attempt to slow climate change, do nothing substantial to slow AI or make its consequences less threatening.”
Be careful what you wish for! I don’t think that politicians of either camp will let this “crisis” go to waste.
To automate windows opening or closing you need electrical and mechanical components routed to each window, possibly special windows that can accept motorization, plus the sensor system. That would be a pricey add-on feature if you planned it into a new house; to retrofit it to an existing house, especially an older one, would be outrageously expensive, much more so than conventional AC and especially more than walking around to open and close windows with your hands.
There are houses that are built with passive heating and cooling; they take advantage of light and shade, the stack effect, thermal mass, and so on, to remain comfortable year round without moving parts. (Often, an inexpensive mini-split is also installed in a strategic location for emergencies and to meet code and/or insurance requirements.) Passive design doesn't work in all climates, but it is certainly under-utilized in areas where it would work well.
A cost you haven't mentioned (so far, as of chapter 8) is parasites and diseases. I don't know of any significant diseases carried by cold-loving organisms, and quite a few carried by tropical and subtropical organisms (e.g. ticks, mosquitoes, and their respective microbiomes), whose habitats appear to be expanding away from the equator measurably from year to year. (Yes, I know there are already mosquitoes in Canada and Alaska, but they don't carry malaria etc.) Of course, that cost may be neutralized, after a certain delay, by medical and pest-control advances, but it should be considered.
Your tables 7-1 and 7-2 don't mention Africa; I presume this is because Gasparini et al don't?
Overall, I find it quite plausible that a steady state 2 degrees C warmer, with however-much-more CO2, would be "better" on net for humanity than a steady state at the baseline. I'm mostly worried about the rate of change, regardless of whether climate gets warmer or colder, wetter or drier.
Anyway, I'm sure I'll have more thoughts as I read farther.
Where do you get 0.2 degree/century? https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature reports 1.35 degC since the 1850-1900 baseline (i.e. about 1 degC/century) and twice that, about 0.2 degC per DECADE, since 1982. This is in a US government web site published in 2025, during the second Trump administration, so I think it’s unlikely to be biased in the direction of exaggerating climate change. (Indeed, I’m surprised it was allowed to be published at all.)
Sorry, I don’t have any good sources on the cost or spread rate of tropical diseases.
Your idea of an automatic system in the home to open windows to let in the cooler air - presumably at night - and to close the windows when it's hotter sounds desirable at first glance.
To try to answer your question, I've imagined why I might be reluctant to adopt and install such a system.
The first thing that occurs to me: Homes have several purposes, that sometimes involve tensions between different goals. And the concern I'd have would be crime... strangers entering my home when I'm asleep, or not there, or otherwise unaware.
While having greater comfort, in terms of temperature, would be a plus, I think safety would be a bigger issue for me, outweighing comfort.
Also related to that is the loss of control - over my house and over when and where I choose to open (some of) my windows. Everyone wants to be in control, at least of some aspects of our lives (even though there's so much more that's out of our control. Which only reinforces our desire to maintain control, or at least the illusion of control.
Now, to critique myself and my own potential bias, I've noticed that as I've gotten older (and I will be turning 74 on Sept. 7), I've gotten progressively more risk averse. So that might be a big factor in my thought experiment.
Also, if I were living in a condo or high-rise or multi-story apartment rather than a single-story ranch home, I might not be as concerned about my windows opening up automatically - if I was at least three stories up or more.
(Then again, I love pets and own a dog. I'd hate to lose a puppy because they got excited chasing after a ball and lunged out the open window, to fall to their deaths. Did I mention that I'm increasingly risk-averse?)
“Why is climate change treated as an urgent problem and AI not?”
You continue to resist the Occam’s Razor simplest explanation: climate change is treated as it is primarily for the purposes of the left attaining and then wielding political power, much of it anti-capitalist.
It is not a coincidence that the socialists/communists moved to the environmental movement after the fall of the Soviet Union and the (temporary) triumph of capitalism in the 1990s.
And “climate change” and potential catastrophe has proven to be a perfect political issue for leftists, providing the veneer of being a neutral scientific issue.
If and when AI can cleanly be used as a tool for the left to attain and wield political power, it might equal or surpass climate change.
Most of the people you describe may once have been liberals and for liberalism, but theses leftists now are highly illiberal by any reasonable meaning of the term.
Russian okolofutbol, Polish ustawki, Brazilian torcidas organizadas, Italian ultras… all football (soccer)
Balkan ultras and Greek Gate 13/Gate 7 are primarily football, but include Basketball fandom.
Palio di Siena is the one ‘institutionalized’ example of violence not involving soccer; but it seems like the origin of this bareback horse race and the related fights was an attempt to institutionalize and therefore limit pre-existing factional violence. Bare knuckle fights among fans are expected and policed to ensure no weapons are introduced, etc.
I was interrupted before finishing my thoughts… this is a fascinating social science question. It really does seem that football is uniquely connected to institutionalized violence.
Hypotheses:
1. Soccer is the world’s most popular and widespread sport, so this is partially/simply a base rate illusion. If every widespread-throughout-the-country sport has an equal 1/10 or 1/5 probability of developing institutionalized fandom violence, soccer would still dominate the leaderboards.
2. The sport has a low barrier to entry. You need a ball and a field, any field, so the potential variety of groups who can play is large. Groups prone to violence are less likely to be good at solving ‘club goods’ problems (as evinced by the violence) but can still field a soccer game. Fielding a polo game requires many more institutional pre-requisites than a soccer game. (Soccer is not entirely unique in this).
2.5. Maybe fandom is stronger among those who played at some level? How many soccer hooligans played in high school or at some club level? Maybe a fandom-violence culture requires both strong and widespread fandom that soccer’s low barrier to entry enables.
3. There are many many more soccer teams that people really care about than any other sport. Territorial adjacency is stronger. You can reasonably follow an over hundred teams in England. The scale of the organizations also matters. American sports are very top-heavy, and so must offer a product that appeals to a larger group of people. You can have a ‘right wing’ or ‘working class’ soccer team but an American sports franchise that differentiated itself like that would struggle.
Soccer fan violence exist at the highest levels of the sport, so for this to be a contributing factor it would have to be the case that violence among big-team fans mirrors violence at a lower level.
4. Imitation. Soccer, for whatever reason (or for some of the above) became associated with institutionalized fandom violence which made it easier to replicate in new places.
5. Fable suggests viewing arrangements, which for soccer has historically been ‘come and stand around the pitch’; violence declines with assigned seating which came relatively earlier in the evolution of other sports. Afternoon baseball with families in stands vs a bunch of young dudes all clustered.
Re Climate change hysteria: CO2 is a minor factor, but its the only factor that could be assigned to human collective guilt. FEAR of armageddon because we are all guilty is the most powerful delusional force in human history. Eve eating that apple, sacrificing virgins, burning witches, wearing a crucifix: all remind us of our terrible guilt.
In hot countries, the temperature outside, even if lower than temperature inside, can be still too high for comfort. People living in big houses are not the one lacking money to spend on essential comforts, So it is al ACs for them, the more the better.
I seem to recall there having been a war in South America between fans of opposing soccer teams. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_War) Wikipedia clarifies that there were existing political tensions, the teams were national teams, and the soccer game tipped the tensions over the edge.
I once saw a Bollywood movie about a cricket team, and I kinda remember there being violence surrounding the climactic match, but I don't know to what extent that reflected Indians' real experiences with violence in cricket.
My twin brother went to Ohio State and I used to visit him there in Columbus (this was early 2000s). After the Buckeyes played, especially when they played Michigan, there were often riotous things going on like people setting couches on fire in their lawns. I had the muffler kicked off my car.
I chalk this up mostly to alcohol, though Columbus has become a lot more tame after football games, so maybe there was also a generational component.
I can think of policies the United States might adopt to make American AI less threatening, or slow its development. (There is already evidence that the PR of China is backing them.)
I cannot think of policies the United States might adopt to make Chinese AI less threatening, or slow its development. Can you?
Right off the bat, I want to rule out reciprocity, because there is zero reason to believe China believes in it or observes it in any other area.
(I live in a state, California, with fairly strict "climate" policies explicitly intended--so says, among others, our Governor Newsom--to lead China, India, and Japan, by reciprocity, to similar policies; but our policymakers evince zero curiosity as to whether this does in fact lead China, India, and Japan into similar policies, which of course it does not.)
Permit me, Prof. Friedman, to direct your attention to the Football War of 1969. I don't usually link to Wikipedia for international affairs, but I have a Wikipedia link here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_War
Automated windows and shades are quite common in Europe. (I suspect in some places they're mandated on larger buildings.)
US sports violence seems to happen almost exclusively after the home team _wins_ a major tournament. I suspect fans mentally associate with the team, and if the team seems invincible, they also feel invincible and able to get away with (for example) torching cars.
As for the nightime ventilation cooling, I speak from personal experience. 40+ years ago I lived in Princeton NJ. I put a big attic fan into the attic and would open the house windows and turn that fan on to cool the house in the summer.
It worked quite well
But! Everything hot damp. Water would condense on the basement floor and I ended up with books on the bookshelves on the second floor molding. I have mold allergies and I could not go into the room, let alone pick up a book and read.
I put in central air with an electrostatic air filter and the humidity and allergy problems went away. I have been using central air ever since - it can be expensive but I stay healthier.
Yea I was going to note that there is a company making computer controlled whole house fan systems that do exactly what David suggests. The trouble is that they only work in fairly dry climates, and in more humid ones can actively cause problems with mold and water condensation.
We lived in Austin & Houston for 11 years. We tried leaving the windows open at night in Austin, but the allergies (& resulting sinus surgery) became unlivable. In Houston we used the A/C & rarely opened the windows. Since 1987 we have lived in California, open our windows at night, & use the A/C on only the hottest days. Humidity makes a large difference.
“National governments adopt policies costing billions of dollars in the attempt to slow climate change, do nothing substantial to slow AI or make its consequences less threatening.”
Be careful what you wish for! I don’t think that politicians of either camp will let this “crisis” go to waste.
I am not wishing I'm wondering why they are missing the opportunity.
Well I am sure it is coming. Wasn’t there a letter signed by prominent academics?—The "We Must Act Now" Statement (July 2026).
To automate windows opening or closing you need electrical and mechanical components routed to each window, possibly special windows that can accept motorization, plus the sensor system. That would be a pricey add-on feature if you planned it into a new house; to retrofit it to an existing house, especially an older one, would be outrageously expensive, much more so than conventional AC and especially more than walking around to open and close windows with your hands.
There are houses that are built with passive heating and cooling; they take advantage of light and shade, the stack effect, thermal mass, and so on, to remain comfortable year round without moving parts. (Often, an inexpensive mini-split is also installed in a strategic location for emergencies and to meet code and/or insurance requirements.) Passive design doesn't work in all climates, but it is certainly under-utilized in areas where it would work well.
Thanks! I'm reading it with great interest.
A cost you haven't mentioned (so far, as of chapter 8) is parasites and diseases. I don't know of any significant diseases carried by cold-loving organisms, and quite a few carried by tropical and subtropical organisms (e.g. ticks, mosquitoes, and their respective microbiomes), whose habitats appear to be expanding away from the equator measurably from year to year. (Yes, I know there are already mosquitoes in Canada and Alaska, but they don't carry malaria etc.) Of course, that cost may be neutralized, after a certain delay, by medical and pest-control advances, but it should be considered.
Your tables 7-1 and 7-2 don't mention Africa; I presume this is because Gasparini et al don't?
Overall, I find it quite plausible that a steady state 2 degrees C warmer, with however-much-more CO2, would be "better" on net for humanity than a steady state at the baseline. I'm mostly worried about the rate of change, regardless of whether climate gets warmer or colder, wetter or drier.
Anyway, I'm sure I'll have more thoughts as I read farther.
Many thanks. I assume Gasparini didn't have the sort of detailed data he needed for any city in Africa.
I mention the rate of change issue, but two tenths of a degree a century is pretty slow.
I should mention the parasite and disease issue but I am not sure how I get an idea of how serious it is. Do you have any relevant sources?
Where do you get 0.2 degree/century? https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature reports 1.35 degC since the 1850-1900 baseline (i.e. about 1 degC/century) and twice that, about 0.2 degC per DECADE, since 1982. This is in a US government web site published in 2025, during the second Trump administration, so I think it’s unlikely to be biased in the direction of exaggerating climate change. (Indeed, I’m surprised it was allowed to be published at all.)
Sorry, I don’t have any good sources on the cost or spread rate of tropical diseases.
> For a book-length version of the argument see If Anyone Builds It We All Die.
The book is titled "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies."
I believe the name of the book is "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies", not "If Anyone Builds It, We All Die".
Your idea of an automatic system in the home to open windows to let in the cooler air - presumably at night - and to close the windows when it's hotter sounds desirable at first glance.
To try to answer your question, I've imagined why I might be reluctant to adopt and install such a system.
The first thing that occurs to me: Homes have several purposes, that sometimes involve tensions between different goals. And the concern I'd have would be crime... strangers entering my home when I'm asleep, or not there, or otherwise unaware.
While having greater comfort, in terms of temperature, would be a plus, I think safety would be a bigger issue for me, outweighing comfort.
Also related to that is the loss of control - over my house and over when and where I choose to open (some of) my windows. Everyone wants to be in control, at least of some aspects of our lives (even though there's so much more that's out of our control. Which only reinforces our desire to maintain control, or at least the illusion of control.
Now, to critique myself and my own potential bias, I've noticed that as I've gotten older (and I will be turning 74 on Sept. 7), I've gotten progressively more risk averse. So that might be a big factor in my thought experiment.
Also, if I were living in a condo or high-rise or multi-story apartment rather than a single-story ranch home, I might not be as concerned about my windows opening up automatically - if I was at least three stories up or more.
(Then again, I love pets and own a dog. I'd hate to lose a puppy because they got excited chasing after a ball and lunged out the open window, to fall to their deaths. Did I mention that I'm increasingly risk-averse?)
It doesn't have to be windows, or anything someone could fit through — vents and a fan could do it in new construction.
“Why is climate change treated as an urgent problem and AI not?”
You continue to resist the Occam’s Razor simplest explanation: climate change is treated as it is primarily for the purposes of the left attaining and then wielding political power, much of it anti-capitalist.
It is not a coincidence that the socialists/communists moved to the environmental movement after the fall of the Soviet Union and the (temporary) triumph of capitalism in the 1990s.
And “climate change” and potential catastrophe has proven to be a perfect political issue for leftists, providing the veneer of being a neutral scientific issue.
If and when AI can cleanly be used as a tool for the left to attain and wield political power, it might equal or surpass climate change.
West is liberal and liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide. Anything that abets that suicide, the liberals are for it.
Most of the people you describe may once have been liberals and for liberalism, but theses leftists now are highly illiberal by any reasonable meaning of the term.
My conversation with Fable revealed…
Russian okolofutbol, Polish ustawki, Brazilian torcidas organizadas, Italian ultras… all football (soccer)
Balkan ultras and Greek Gate 13/Gate 7 are primarily football, but include Basketball fandom.
Palio di Siena is the one ‘institutionalized’ example of violence not involving soccer; but it seems like the origin of this bareback horse race and the related fights was an attempt to institutionalize and therefore limit pre-existing factional violence. Bare knuckle fights among fans are expected and policed to ensure no weapons are introduced, etc.
I was interrupted before finishing my thoughts… this is a fascinating social science question. It really does seem that football is uniquely connected to institutionalized violence.
Hypotheses:
1. Soccer is the world’s most popular and widespread sport, so this is partially/simply a base rate illusion. If every widespread-throughout-the-country sport has an equal 1/10 or 1/5 probability of developing institutionalized fandom violence, soccer would still dominate the leaderboards.
2. The sport has a low barrier to entry. You need a ball and a field, any field, so the potential variety of groups who can play is large. Groups prone to violence are less likely to be good at solving ‘club goods’ problems (as evinced by the violence) but can still field a soccer game. Fielding a polo game requires many more institutional pre-requisites than a soccer game. (Soccer is not entirely unique in this).
2.5. Maybe fandom is stronger among those who played at some level? How many soccer hooligans played in high school or at some club level? Maybe a fandom-violence culture requires both strong and widespread fandom that soccer’s low barrier to entry enables.
3. There are many many more soccer teams that people really care about than any other sport. Territorial adjacency is stronger. You can reasonably follow an over hundred teams in England. The scale of the organizations also matters. American sports are very top-heavy, and so must offer a product that appeals to a larger group of people. You can have a ‘right wing’ or ‘working class’ soccer team but an American sports franchise that differentiated itself like that would struggle.
Soccer fan violence exist at the highest levels of the sport, so for this to be a contributing factor it would have to be the case that violence among big-team fans mirrors violence at a lower level.
4. Imitation. Soccer, for whatever reason (or for some of the above) became associated with institutionalized fandom violence which made it easier to replicate in new places.
5. Fable suggests viewing arrangements, which for soccer has historically been ‘come and stand around the pitch’; violence declines with assigned seating which came relatively earlier in the evolution of other sports. Afternoon baseball with families in stands vs a bunch of young dudes all clustered.
Re Climate change hysteria: CO2 is a minor factor, but its the only factor that could be assigned to human collective guilt. FEAR of armageddon because we are all guilty is the most powerful delusional force in human history. Eve eating that apple, sacrificing virgins, burning witches, wearing a crucifix: all remind us of our terrible guilt.
In hot countries, the temperature outside, even if lower than temperature inside, can be still too high for comfort. People living in big houses are not the one lacking money to spend on essential comforts, So it is al ACs for them, the more the better.
Re. sports violence:
I seem to recall there having been a war in South America between fans of opposing soccer teams. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_War) Wikipedia clarifies that there were existing political tensions, the teams were national teams, and the soccer game tipped the tensions over the edge.
There were riots after a hockey game in Vancouver in 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Vancouver_Stanley_Cup_riot
I once saw a Bollywood movie about a cricket team, and I kinda remember there being violence surrounding the climactic match, but I don't know to what extent that reflected Indians' real experiences with violence in cricket.
My twin brother went to Ohio State and I used to visit him there in Columbus (this was early 2000s). After the Buckeyes played, especially when they played Michigan, there were often riotous things going on like people setting couches on fire in their lawns. I had the muffler kicked off my car.
I chalk this up mostly to alcohol, though Columbus has become a lot more tame after football games, so maybe there was also a generational component.
I can think of policies the United States might adopt to make American AI less threatening, or slow its development. (There is already evidence that the PR of China is backing them.)
I cannot think of policies the United States might adopt to make Chinese AI less threatening, or slow its development. Can you?
Right off the bat, I want to rule out reciprocity, because there is zero reason to believe China believes in it or observes it in any other area.
(I live in a state, California, with fairly strict "climate" policies explicitly intended--so says, among others, our Governor Newsom--to lead China, India, and Japan, by reciprocity, to similar policies; but our policymakers evince zero curiosity as to whether this does in fact lead China, India, and Japan into similar policies, which of course it does not.)
Permit me, Prof. Friedman, to direct your attention to the Football War of 1969. I don't usually link to Wikipedia for international affairs, but I have a Wikipedia link here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_War
Automated windows and shades are quite common in Europe. (I suspect in some places they're mandated on larger buildings.)
US sports violence seems to happen almost exclusively after the home team _wins_ a major tournament. I suspect fans mentally associate with the team, and if the team seems invincible, they also feel invincible and able to get away with (for example) torching cars.
Low cost cooling .... Greenhouses do this, including private residential ones.