turchin comments on Agential Risks: A Topic that Almost No One is Talking About - Less Wrong

6 Post author: philosophytorres 15 October 2016 06:41PM

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Comment author: turchin 15 October 2016 09:04:22PM 1 point [-]

What do you think about how the number of potentially dangerous agents change in time?

Comment author: philosophytorres 16 October 2016 12:20:14AM 0 points [-]

Great question. I think there are strong reasons for anticipating the total number of apocalyptic terrorists and ecoterrorists to nontrivially increase in the future. I've written two papers on the former, linked below. There's weaker evidence to suggest that environmental instability will exacerbate conflicts in general, and consequently produce more malicious agents with idiosyncratic motives. As for the others -- not sure! I suspect we'll have at least one superintelligence around by the end of the century.

Comment author: turchin 16 October 2016 10:01:50AM 1 point [-]

I think that number of agents will also grow as technologies will be more accessible for smaller organisations and even individuals. If a teenager could create dangerous biovirus as simply as he now able to write computer virus to amuse his friends, we are certainly doomed.