For instance, it is neither feasible nor ethical to study these risks experimentally. Research into the nature and mitigation of global catastrophic risks and existential risks is subject to a unique set of challenges and, as a result, is not easily subjected to the usual standards of scientific rigour. Įxamples of non-anthropogenic risks are an asteroid impact event, a supervolcanic eruption, a lethal gamma-ray burst, a geomagnetic storm destroying electronic equipment, natural long-term climate change, hostile extraterrestrial life, or the predictable Sun transforming into a red giant star engulfing the Earth. Global catastrophic risks in the domain of earth system governance include global warming, environmental degradation, including extinction of species, famine as a result of non-equitable resource distribution, human overpopulation, crop failures and non- sustainable agriculture. Insufficient or malign global governance creates risks in the social and political domain, such as a global war, including nuclear holocaust, bioterrorism using genetically modified organisms, cyberterrorism destroying critical infrastructure like the electrical grid or the failure to manage a natural pandemic. Technological risks include the creation of destructive artificial intelligence, biotechnology or nanotechnology. Potential global catastrophic risks include anthropogenic risks, caused by humans (technology, governance, climate change), and non-anthropogenic or natural risks. Main article: Global catastrophe scenarios ) A dystopian scenario shares the key features of extinction and unrecoverable collapse of civilisation-before the catastrophe, humanity faced a vast range of bright futures to choose from after the catastrophe, humanity is locked forever in a terrible state. ( George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four suggests an example.
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Bryan Caplan writes that "perhaps an eternity of totalitarianism would be worse than extinction".
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Similarly, if humanity fell under a totalitarian regime, and there were no chance of recovery then such a dystopia would also be an existential catastrophe. A disaster severe enough to cause the permanent, irreversible collapse of human civilisation would constitute an existential catastrophe, even if it fell short of extinction. While extinction is the most obvious way in which humanity's long-term potential could be destroyed, there are others, including unrecoverable collapse and unrecoverable dystopia. Existential risks are a sub-class of global catastrophic risks, where the damage is not only global but also terminal and permanent, preventing recovery and thereby affecting both current and all future generations. Defining existential risks Įxistential risks are defined as "risks that threaten the destruction of humanity's long-term potential." The instantiation of an existential risk (an existential catastrophe ) would either cause outright human extinction or irreversibly lock in a drastically inferior state of affairs. Posner highlights such events as worthy of special attention on cost–benefit grounds because they could directly or indirectly jeopardize the survival of the human race as a whole. Similarly, in Catastrophe: Risk and Response, Richard Posner singles out and groups together events that bring about "utter overthrow or ruin" on a global, rather than a "local or regional", scale. Most global catastrophic risks would not be so intense as to kill the majority of life on earth, but even if one did, the ecosystem and humanity would eventually recover (in contrast to existential risks).
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the 1918 influenza pandemic killed an estimated 3-6% of the world's population. Some were global, but were not as severe-e.g.
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the Black Death may have resulted in the deaths of a third of Europe's population, 10% of the global population at the time. Some of these have caused serious damage but were only local in scope-e.g. Humanity has suffered large catastrophes before. The term global catastrophic risk "lacks a sharp definition", and generally refers (loosely) to a risk that could inflict "serious damage to human well-being on a global scale". Scope/intensity grid from Bostrom's paper "Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority" Defining global catastrophic risks