Existential risks

Futurist humour

An existential risk or existential threat is a potential development that could drastically (or even totally) reduce the capabilities of humankind.

Should I worry?

According to the Global Challenges Foundation a typical person could be five times more likely to die in a mass extinction event compared to a car crash. The Global Priorities Project later issued a retraction of the statement.

Dystopia and Risk map

Map created by Deku-shrub from the data below.

Key risks and scenarios

The following list of risk encompasses long-term dystopian scenarios in addition to traditionally defined existential risks.

Exotic

• Alien intervention
  • Examples: Contact, Independence Day, Knowing
  • Causing: Direct destruction of humanity, natural/cosmic disasters or anything a super intelligence can do
• Simulation termination
  • Examples: The Matrix
  • Causing: Direct destruction of humanity
• Exotic physics
  • Examples: Creation of false vacuums
  • Causing: Direct destruction, simulation termination or environmental collapse

Conflict

• Nuclear war
  • Examples: Anything from a single accidental detonation or rogue state up to collapse of MAD and muti-national warfare
  • Causing: Accelerating warfare or environmental collapse
• Biological warfare or another catastrophic natural super virus
  • Examples: National state attacks through to a 28 days later style ultra-transmissable and deadly plague
  • Causing: destroying humanity, accelerating warfare, natural disasters or environmental collapse
• Cyberwarfare, terrorism, rogue states
  • Examples: Contemporary nation-state hacking, WannaCry type events, terrorist use of social media, terrorist attacks, contained biological or nuclear attacks
  • Causes: Accelerating warfare due to national existential risks, social collapse or reactionary governments

Environmental

• Accelerating climate change
  • Examples: This happened now :(
  • Causing: Further natural disasters, depletion of the world's resources or driving dangerous bio or geo engineering projects
• Errant geo-engineering or GMOs
  • Examples: Solar radiation management, carbon dioxide removal projects
  • Causing: Depletion of resources, further environmental disasters, nano-pollution or environmental collapse
• Natural disasters or Cosmic disasters
  • Examples: Asteroid strike, deadly cosmic radiation, ice shelf collapse, bee extinction, crop plagues, ice age. Could even include the Sun's supernova, proton decay and final heat death of the universe.
  • Causing: Resource depletion, social or environmental collapse
• Resource depletion
  • Examples: Fossil fuels, clean water, serious air quality impact, rare earths, localised overpopulation
  • Causing - Social or environmental collapse
• Nanotechnology
  • Examples: Gray goo
  • Causes: Destruction of humanity, natural disasters or environmental collapse

Future computing and intelligence

• Errant AI, posthuman take over or computing overcomplexity
  • Examples: Unfriendly artificial general intelligence, unfriendly elite transhumans (e.g. Khan from Star Trek) or unstable interconnected computing (e.g the events of Dune: The Butlerian Jihad)
  • Causing: Accelerating warfare, societal collapse, totalitarianism

Social

• Mega-autocractic / Neo-fascist or other totalitarian dystopias
  • Examples: 1984, Gattaca, Star Trek etc
  • Causing: Social and technological stagnation or 21st century soma
• 21st century soma
  • Examples: Brave New World, Idiocracy
  • Causing: technological stagnation or social collapse
• Social collapse
  • Examples: Max Max, 28 Days Later etc
  • Causing: Accelerating warfare, cyberwarfare/terrorism, technological stagnation, autocracy

Attitudes

Stances that can be adopted towards existential risks include:

• Inevitabilism - the view that, for example, "the victory of transhumanism is inevitable"
• Precautionary - emphasising the downsides of action in areas of relative ignorance
• Proactionary - emphasising the dangers of inaction in areas of relative ignorance
• Techno-optimism - the view that technological development is likely to find good solutions to all existential risks
• Techno-progressive - the view that existential risks must be actively studied and managedШаблон:Disputed

Things that are not existential risks

• Declining sperm count in men whilst problematic for fertility, will not spell the end of humanity
• Increased sexual liberal attitudes will not lead to a Sodom and Gomorrah scenario
• The coming of a religious apocalypse or end times are unlikely
• Sex robots, no matter what Futurama says
• Overpopulation caused by life extension will not lead to Soylent Green type scenarios, rather potentially cause localised instabilities and resource depletion

See also

• Dystopian transhumanism
• Existential opportunities
• Future of Humanity Institute
• Lifeboat Foundation
• Suffering risk

External links

• Global catastrophic risk on Wikipedia
• Typology of human extinction risks by Alexey Turchin on the Immortality Roadmap
• Nick Bostrom's 2002 existential risk paper
• http://www.existential-risk.org/
• /r/ExistentialRisk on Reddit