Our western civilization lacks an effective long-term (order of 50 years plus) self-preservation system. Hence we should reasonably expect to either build one, or get wiped out.
This is a huge claim. You're claiming first of all that the odds of succumbing to a truly existential event are higher than not. You don't (IMO) provide evidence to support this - you provide some evidence that we may have had really catastrophic events in the past, but, again, only 100% is existential, and you do not finish off your examples - "Hitler could have won" and "Hitler could have won and created a repressive regime that lasted for the remainder of human history" are two very different claims, and the former is not existential. Second, you claim that if we take some steps, we can expect such events not to happen - it is because we lack an "effective long-term preservation system" that we can expect to be destroyed completely.
Thus, you have, to my understanding, made two claims: one about the likelihood of existential events, and one about the likelihood of us being able to mitigate them. Again, to my evaluation, you have provided compelling evidence for neither of these conclusions; indeed you've provided virtually no evidence for either of these conclusion (probability, not possibility). That is the root of my criticism of not providing solutions: you claim solutions are possible, desirable, and effective, and you do not provide any evidence to support this claim.
Thus, my criticism of your tone as "righteous" is because you seem to be making a strong, "deep" claim without providing adequate supporting evidence or argument. It is not a criticism of your word choice. I have absolutely no problem with people posting about problems that occur to them that they don't know how to solve. I do have a problem with people making strong claims with a definitive tone without providing adequate supporting evidence.
I admit this may all hinge on a disagreement in definition over "existential." I take existential to require true obliteration. Gray goo would reach this, as would the-simulation-loses-power or every-atom-splits or humanity-is-enslaved-by-something-forever. "Nuclear holocaust kills billions and it takes ten thousand years to recover" does not count in my mind, as it is not terminal. Similarly, "Hitler reigns for ten thousand years" is also non-existential (at least for humanity as a whole); If recovery occurs, even after a fairly large gap, it does not seem to count as existential. This view is consistent with Bostrom's definition in the linked paper. With a weaker definition of existential, it is quite possible that there is no disagreement here, in which I have the (smaller) criticism that you should have clarified this at the beginning.
This is a huge claim. You're claiming first of all that the odds of succumbing to a truly existential event are higher than not.
Given that most societies that ever existed were wiped out, often violently or otherwise catastrophically, and that we have a list of 6 near misses, and that almost all homeostatic complex systems that are loosely analogous to civilization such as ecosystems or long-lived organisms like coral reefs of even organisms in general have existed and then got wiped out again, I think that this is a reasonable claim.
The prospect of a dangerous collection of existential risks and risks of major civilizational-level catastrophes in the 21st century, combined with a distinct lack of agencies whose job it is to mitigate against such risks probably indicates that the world might be in something of an emergency at the moment. Firstly, what do we mean by risks? Well, Bostrom has a paper on existential risks, and he lists the following risks as being "most likely":
To which I would add various possibilities for major civilization-level disasters that aren't existential risks, such as milder versions of all of the above, or the following:
This collection is daunting, especially given that the human race doesn't have any official agency dedicated to mitigating risks to its own medium-long term survival. We face a long list of challenges, and we aren't even formally trying to mitigate many of them in advance, and in many past cases, mitigation of risks occurred on a last-minute, ad-hoc basis, such as individuals in the cold war making the decision not to initiate a nulcear exchange, particularly in the Cuban missile crisis.
So, a small group of people have realized that the likely outcome of a large and dangerous collection of risks combined with a haphazard, informal methodology for dealing with risks (driven by the efforts of individuals, charities and public opinion) is that one of these potential risks will actually be realized - killing many or all of us or radically reducing our quality of life. This coming disaster is ultimately not the result of any one particular risk, but the result of the lack of a powerful defence against risks.
One could argue that I [and Bostrom, Rees, etc] are blowing the issue out of proportion. We have survived so far, right? (Wrong, actually - anthropic considerations indicate that survival so far is not evidence that we will survive for a lot longer, and technological progress indicates that risks in the future are worse than risks in the past). Major civilizational disasters have already happened many, many times over.
Most ecosystems that ever existed were wiped out by natural means, almost all species that have ever existed have gone extinct, and without human intervention most existing ecosystems will probably be wiped out within a 100 million year timescale. Most civilizations that ever existed, collapsed. Some went really badly wrong, like communist Russia. Complex, homeostatic objects that don't have extremely effective self-preservation systems empirically tend to get wiped by the churning of the universe.
Our western civilization lacks an effective long-term (order of 50 years plus) self-preservation system. Hence we should reasonably expect to either build one, or get wiped out, because we observe that complex systems which seem similar to societies today - such as past societies - collapsed.
And even though our society does have short-term survival mechanisms such as governments and philanthropists, they often behave in superbly irrational, myopic or late-responding ways. It seems that the response to the global warming problem (late-responding, weak, still failing to overcome co-ordination problems) or the invasion of Iraq (plain irrational) are cases in point from recent history, and that there are numerous examples from the past, such as close calls in the cold war, and the spectacular chain of failures that led from world war I to world war II and the rise of Hitler.
This article could be summarized as follows:
The systems we have for preserving the values and existence of our western society, and the human race as a whole are weak, and the challenges of the 21st-22nd century seem likely to overwhelm them.
I originally wanted to write an article about ways to mitigate existential risks and major civilization-level catastrophes, but I decided to first establish that there are actually such things as serious existential risks and major civilization-level catastrophes, and that we haven't got them handled yet. My next post will be about ways to mitigate existential risks.