We're Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction
A fascinating interview with Nick Bostrom, a professor at Oxford. Bostrom uses philosophy & math (probability theory) to explore ideas related to human extinction, such as the likelihood of catastrophic events and our chances of surviving them.
Despite the title, the interview doesn’t try to make the case that we humans are doomed. There isn’t as much talk about apocalyptic asteroids as you might expect. Instead, they discuss transhumanism, space colonization, and moral philosophy. And what’s especially intriguing is that Bolstrom’s conclusions are based on trusted statistical models.
A few of the most interesting ideas to me were:
- Dedicating resources to saving future generations (ex: space colonization) might be of a higher moral priority than alleviating present suffering (ex: malaria). To paraphrase Bolstrom, “it doesn’t matter whether someone exists at the current time or at some future time, just as many people think that it doesn’t matter where somebody is spatially.”
- Short term, probability states that developing technology (artificial intelligence, nanotech, surveillance, synthetic biology, etc) poses a greater risk than natural disaster (asteroids & super-volcanos).
- Bolstrom also considers “existential risks,” which involves “permanently destroy our potential for desirable human development,” such as a permanent global totalitarian dystopia. It’s not unthinkable that such a regime could exist if it were based on technological leapfrogs (which is even more probably given that the rate of technological advancement is itself accelerating).
- Humans underrate existential risks because of a particular kind of bias called observation selection effect (read Bolstrom’s explanation of selection effects & self-sampling assumptions).
- Experts estimate our total existential risk for this century to be somewhere around 10-20%.
It’s a long read, but definitely worth it. Save it to Instapaper or Readability and read it when you can really focus.
Great link for a Monday!