Jan 12, 2018 08:44 AM
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/c...ankenstein
EXCERPT: . . . For Bostrom and a number of other scientists and philosophers, such scenarios are more than science fiction. They're studying which technological advances pose "existential risks" that could wipe out humanity or at least end civilization as we know it—and what could be done to stop them. "Think of what we're trying to do as providing a scientific red team for the things that could threaten our species," says philosopher Huw Price, who heads the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) here at the University of Cambridge.
The idea of science eliminating the human race can be traced all the way back to Frankenstein. [...] The study of existential risks is still a tiny field, with at most a few dozen people at three centers. Not everyone is convinced it's a serious academic discipline. Most civilization-ending scenarios—which include humanmade pathogens, armies of nanobots, or even the idea that our world is a simulation that might be switched off—are wildly unlikely, says Joyce Tait, who studies regulatory issues in the life sciences at the Innogen Institute in Edinburgh. The only true existential threat, she says, is a familiar one: a global nuclear war. Otherwise, "There is nothing on the horizon."
Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker calls existential risks a "useless category" and warns that "Frankensteinian fantasies" could distract from real, solvable threats such as climate change and nuclear war. "Sowing fear about hypothetical disasters, far from safeguarding the future of humanity, can endanger it," he writes in his upcoming book *Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress*.
But advocates predict the field will only get more important as scientific and technological progress accelerates. As Bostrom pointed out in one paper, much more research has been done on dung beetles or Star Trek than on the risks of human extinction. "There is a very good case for saying that science has basically ignored" the issue, Price says....
MORE: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/c...ankenstein
EXCERPT: . . . For Bostrom and a number of other scientists and philosophers, such scenarios are more than science fiction. They're studying which technological advances pose "existential risks" that could wipe out humanity or at least end civilization as we know it—and what could be done to stop them. "Think of what we're trying to do as providing a scientific red team for the things that could threaten our species," says philosopher Huw Price, who heads the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) here at the University of Cambridge.
The idea of science eliminating the human race can be traced all the way back to Frankenstein. [...] The study of existential risks is still a tiny field, with at most a few dozen people at three centers. Not everyone is convinced it's a serious academic discipline. Most civilization-ending scenarios—which include humanmade pathogens, armies of nanobots, or even the idea that our world is a simulation that might be switched off—are wildly unlikely, says Joyce Tait, who studies regulatory issues in the life sciences at the Innogen Institute in Edinburgh. The only true existential threat, she says, is a familiar one: a global nuclear war. Otherwise, "There is nothing on the horizon."
Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker calls existential risks a "useless category" and warns that "Frankensteinian fantasies" could distract from real, solvable threats such as climate change and nuclear war. "Sowing fear about hypothetical disasters, far from safeguarding the future of humanity, can endanger it," he writes in his upcoming book *Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress*.
But advocates predict the field will only get more important as scientific and technological progress accelerates. As Bostrom pointed out in one paper, much more research has been done on dung beetles or Star Trek than on the risks of human extinction. "There is a very good case for saying that science has basically ignored" the issue, Price says....
MORE: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/c...ankenstein