Global catastrophic risk - Wikipedia. A global catastrophic risk is a hypothetical future event that has the potential to damage human well- being on a global scale. Any event that could cause human extinction is also known as an existential risk. Those that are at least . While a global catastrophic risk may kill the vast majority of life on earth, humanity could still potentially recover. An existential risk, on the other hand, is one that either destroys humanity (and, presumably, all but the most rudimentary species of non- human lifeforms and/or plant life) entirely or prevents any chance of civilization recovering. Bostrom considers existential risks to be far more significant. Posner singles out 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. He thinks the most likely sources of bangs are malicious use of nanotechnology, nuclear war, and the possibility that the universe is a simulation that will end. The most likely causes of this, he believes, are exhaustion of natural resources, a stable global government that prevents technological progress, or dysgenic pressures that lower average intelligence. For example, if a single mind enhances its powers by merging with a computer, it could dominate human civilization. Bostrom believes that this scenario is most likely, followed by flawed superintelligence and a repressive totalitarian regime. He thinks the most likely cause would be evolution changing moral preference, followed by extraterrestrial invasion. In 2. 00. 8, a small but illustrious group of experts on different global catastrophic risks at the Global Catastrophic Risk Conference at the University of Oxford suggested a 1. However, the conference report cautions that the method used to average responses to the informal survey is suspect due to the treatment of non- responses. Most attention has been given to risks to human civilization over the next 1. The types of threats posed by nature may prove relatively constant, though new risks could be discovered. Anthropogenic threats, however, are likely to change dramatically with the development of new technology; while volcanoes have been a threat throughout history, nuclear weapons have only been an issue since the 2. Historically, the ability of experts to predict the future over these timescales has proved very limited. Man- made threats such as nuclear war or nanotechnology are harder to predict than natural threats, due to the inherent methodological difficulties in the social sciences. Search inside of Supercourse and lectures in HTML and PPT format. Donate to Supercourse Lectures from number 'lec42011' to 'lec43001'. An event-related potential (ERP) is the measured brain response that is the direct result of a specific sensory, cognitive, or motor event. More formally, it is any. Process Hazards Analysis Copyright . All rights reserved 2003. Chapter 1 PROCESS HAZARDS ANALYSIS BASICS INTRODUCTION. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Objectives This contract research report describes the development by the authors, with funding from HSE, of a methodology for the assignment of. In general, it is hard to estimate the magnitude of the risk from this or other dangers, especially as both international relations and technology can change rapidly. Existential risks pose unique challenges to prediction, even more than other long- term events, because of observation selection effects. Unlike with most events, the failure of a complete extinction event to occur in the past is not evidence against their likelihood in the future, because every world that has experienced such an extinction event has no observers, so regardless of their frequency, no civilization observes existential risks in its history. Academia.edu is a platform for academics to share research papers. Systems Simulation: The Shortest Route to Applications. This site features information about discrete event system modeling and simulation. It includes discussions on. This is known as the Fermi paradox. One of the many proposed reasons, although not widely accepted, that humans have not yet encountered intelligent life from other planets (aside from the possibility that it does not exist), could be due to the probability of existential catastrophes. Namely, other potentially intelligent civilizations have been wiped out before humans could find them or they could find Earth. Derek Parfit argues that extinction would be a great loss because our descendants could potentially survive for a billion years before the expansion of the Sun makes the Earth uninhabitable. If future humans colonize space, they may be able to support a very large number of people on other planets, potentially lasting for trillions of years. Exponential discounting might make these future benefits much less significant. Gaverick Matheny has argued that such discounting is inappropriate when assessing the value of existential risk reduction. Martin Weitzman argues that most of the expected economic damage from climate change may come from the small chance that warming greatly exceeds the mid- range expectations, resulting in catastrophic damage. For example, when people are motivated to donate money to altruistic causes, the quantity they are willing to give does not increase linearly with the magnitude of the issue: people are roughly as concerned about 2. It is a global good, so even if a large nation decreases it, that nation will only enjoy a small fraction of the benefit of doing so. Furthermore, the vast majority of the benefits may be enjoyed by far future generations, and though these quadrillions of future people would be willing to pay massive sums for existential risk reduction, the obvious transaction difficulties prevent them from doing so. The most common concern in this category is global warming or environmental degradation. Some of these have caused mass extinctions in the past. Learn about new USPSTF latent TB infection recommendation. Like CDC TB’s new Facebook page. See newly released TB Treatment Guidelines. See the Take on Latent.On the other hand, some risks are man- made, such as engineered pandemics or nuclear war. According to the Future of Humanity Institute, human extinction is more likely to result from anthropogenic causes than natural causes. They noted that some robots have acquired various forms of semi- autonomy, including being able to find power sources on their own and being able to independently choose targets to attack with weapons. They also noted that some computer viruses can evade elimination and have achieved . He also argues that research into artificial intelligence is biased by anthropomorphism. Since people base their judgments of artificial intelligence on their own experience, he claims that they underestimate the potential power of AI. He distinguishes between risks due to technical failure of AI, which means that flawed algorithms prevent the AI from carrying out its intended goals, and philosophical failure, which means that the AI is programmed to realize a flawed ideology. Such a catastrophe may be brought about by usage in warfare, terrorist attacks or by accident. Global warming reflects abnormal variations to the expected climate within the Earth's atmosphere and subsequent effects on other parts of the Earth. Projections of future climate change suggest further global warming, sea level rise, and an increase in the frequency and severity of some extreme weather events and weather- related disasters. Effects of global warming include loss of biodiversity, stresses to existing food- producing systems, increased spread of known infectious diseases such as malaria, and rapid mutation of microorganisms. It has been suggested that runaway global warming (runaway climate change) might cause Earth to become searingly hot like Venus. In less extreme scenarios, it could cause the end of civilization as we know it. Most of these scenarios involve one or more of the following: Holocene extinction event, scarcity of water that could lead to approximately one half of the Earth's population being without safe drinking water, pollinator decline, overfishing, massive deforestation, desertification, climate change, or massive water pollution episodes. A very recent threat in this direction is colony collapse disorder. As the bee plays a vital role in pollination, its extinction would severely disrupt the food chain. Experimental technology accident. For example, scientists worried that the first nuclear test might ignite the atmosphere. These particular concerns have been refuted. This could help coordinate efforts for arms control. International institutions dedicated specifically to nanotechnology (perhaps analogously to the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA) or general arms control may also be designed. Nowadays, however, nanotech experts - including Drexler - discredit the scenario. According to Chris Phoenix a . Although the probability of a nuclear war per year is slim, Professor Martin Hellman, described it as inevitable in the long run; unless the probability approaches zero, inevitably there will come a day when civilization's luck runs out. Kennedy estimated the odds of nuclear war as being . Detonating such a large amount of nuclear weaponry would have a long- term effect on the climate, causing cold weather and reduced sunlight. The Green Revolution in agriculture helped food production to keep pace with worldwide population growth or actually enabled population growth. The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation. Economy the maximum U. S. To achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster, the United States must reduce its population by at least one- third, and world population will have to be reduced by two- thirds, says the study. Geologist Dale Allen Pfeiffer claims that coming decades could see spiraling food prices without relief and massive starvation on a global level such as never experienced before. Extant fungal infections such as Ug. Little or no treatment is possible and infection spreads on the wind. Should the world's large grain producing areas become infected then there would be a crisis in wheat availability leading to price spikes and shortages in other food products. The Chicxulub asteroid, for example, is theorized to have caused the extinction of the non- avian dinosaurs 6. Cretaceous. If such an object struck Earth it could have a serious impact on civilization. It is even possible that humanity would be completely destroyed. For this to occur, the asteroid would need to be at least 1 km (0. Small near- Earth asteroids are regularly observed. In 1. 4 million years, the star Gliese 7. Earth when it passes within 1. Sun, perturbing the Oort cloud. Dynamic models by Garc. It was removed in 1.
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