I've been watching Steven Universe with my fiancee (a children's cartoon on Cartoon Network by Rebecca Sugar), and it wasn't until I got to Season 3 that I realized there's been a cryonics metaphor running in the background since the very first episode. If you want to introduce your kids to the idea of cryonics, this series seems like a spectacularly good way to do it.

If you don't want any spoilers, just go watch it, then come back.

Otherwise, here's the metaphor I'm seeing, and why it's great:

• In the very first episode, we find out that the main characters are a group called the Crystal Gems, who fight 'gem monsters'. When they defeat a monster, a gem is left behind, which they lock in a bubble-forcefield and store in their headquarters.

• One of the Crystal Gems is injured in a training accident, and we find out that their bodies are just projections; each Crystal Gem has a gem located somewhere on their body, which contains their minds. So long as their gem isn't damaged, they can project a new body after some time to recover. So we already have the insight that minds and bodies are separate.

• This is driven home by a second episode where one of the Crystal Gems has their crystal cracked; this is actually dangerous to their mind, not just body, and is treated as a dire emergency instead of merely an inconvenience.

• Then we eventually find out that the gem monsters are actually corrupted members of the same species as the Crystal Gems. They are 'bubbled' and stored in the temple in hopes of eventually restoring them to sanity and their previous forms.

• An attempt is made to cure one of the monsters, which doesn't fully succeed, but at least restores them to sanity. This allows them to remain unbubbled and to be reunited with their old comrades (who are also corrupted). This was the episode where I finally made the connection to cryonics.

• The Crystal Gems are also revealed to be over 5000 years old, and effectively immortal. They don't make a big deal out of this; for them, this is totally normal.

• This also implies that they've made no progress in curing the gem monsters in 5000 years, but that doesn't stop them from preserving them anyway.

• Finally, a secret weapon is revealed which is capable of directly shattering gems (thus killing the target permanently), but the use of it is rejected as unethical.

So, all in all, you have a series where when someone is hurt or sick in a way that you can't help, you preserve their mind in a safe way until you can figure out a way to help them. Even your worst enemy deserves no less.

 

Also, Steven Universe has an entire episode devoted to mindfulness meditation.  

Most planning around AI risk seems to start from the premise that superintelligence will come from de novo AGI before whole brain emulation becomes possible. I haven't seen any analysis that assumes both uploads-first and the AI FOOM thesis (Edit: apparently I fail at literature searching), a deficiency that I'll try to get a start on correcting in this post.

It is likely possible to use evolutionary algorithms to efficiently modify uploaded brains. If so, uploads would likely be able to set off an intelligence explosion by running evolutionary algorithms on themselves, selecting for something like higher general intelligence.

Since brains are poorly understood, it would likely be very difficult to select for higher intelligence without causing significant value drift. Thus, setting off an intelligence explosion in that way would probably produce unfriendly AI if done carelessly. On the other hand, at some point, the modified upload would reach a point where it is capable of figuring out how to improve itself without causing a significant amount of further value drift, and it may be possible to reach that point before too much value drift had already taken place. The expected amount of value drift can be decreased by having long generations between iterations of the evolutionary algorithm, to give the improved brains more time to figure out how to modify the evolutionary algorithm to minimize further value drift.

Another possibility is that such an evolutionary algorithm could be used to create brains that are smarter than humans but not by very much, and hopefully with values not too divergent from ours, who would then stop using the evolutionary algorithm and start using their intellects to research de novo Friendly AI, if that ends up looking easier than continuing to run the evolutionary algorithm without too much further value drift.

The strategies of using slow iterations of the evolutionary algorithm, or stopping it after not too long, require coordination among everyone capable of making such modifications to uploads. Thus, it seems safer for whole brain emulation technology to be either heavily regulated or owned by a monopoly, rather than being widely available and unregulated. This closely parallels the AI openness debate, and I'd expect people more concerned with bad actors relative to accidents to disagree.

With de novo artificial superintelligence, the overwhelmingly most likely outcomes are the optimal achievable outcome (if we manage to align its goals with ours) and extinction (if we don't). But uploads start out with human values, and when creating a superintelligence by modifying uploads, the goal would be to not corrupt them too much in the process. Since its values could get partially corrupted, an intelligence explosion that starts with an upload seems much more likely to result in outcomes that are both significantly worse than optimal and significantly better than extinction. Since human brains also already have a capacity for malice, this process also seems slightly more likely to result in outcomes worse than extinction.

The early ways to upload brains will probably be destructive, and may be very risky. Thus the first uploads may be selected for high risk-tolerance. Running an evolutionary algorithm on an uploaded brain would probably involve creating a large number of psychologically broken copies, since the average change to a brain will be negative. Thus the uploads that run evolutionary algorithms on themselves will be selected for not being horrified by this. Both of these selection effects seem like they would select against people who would take caution and goal stability seriously (uploads that run evolutionary algorithms on themselves would also be selected for being okay with creating and deleting spur copies, but this doesn't obviously correlate in either direction with caution). This could be partially mitigated by a monopoly on brain emulation technology. A possible (but probably smaller) source of positive selection is that currently, people who are enthusiastic about uploading their brains correlate strongly with people who are concerned about AI safety, and this correlation may continue once whole brain emulation technology is actually available.

Assuming that hardware speed is not close to being a limiting factor for whole brain emulation, emulations will be able to run at much faster than human speed. This should make emulations better able to monitor the behavior of AIs. Unless we develop ways of evaluating the capabilities of human brains that are much faster than giving them time to attempt difficult tasks, running evolutionary algorithms on brain emulations could only be done very slowly in subjective time (even though it may be quite fast in objective time), which would give emulations a significant advantage in monitoring such a process.

Although there are effects going in both directions, it seems like the uploads-first scenario is probably safer than de novo AI. If this is the case, then it might make sense to accelerate technologies that are needed for whole brain emulation if there are tractable ways of doing so. On the other hand, it is possible that technologies that are useful for whole brain emulation would also be useful for neuromorphic AI, which is probably very unsafe, since it is not amenable to formal verification or being given explicit goals (and unlike emulations, they don't start off already having human goals). Thus, it is probably important to be careful about not accelerating non-WBE neuromorphic AI while attempting to accelerate whole brain emulation. For instance, it seems plausible to me that getting better models of neurons would be useful for creating neuromorphic AIs while better brain scanning would not, and both technologies are necessary for brain uploading, so if that is true, it may make sense to work on improving brain scanning but not on improving neural models.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/

This is an interesting article-- it's got an overview of what's currently seen as the problems with replicability and fraud, and some material I haven't seen before about handing the same question to a bunch of scientists, and looking at how they come up with their divergent answers.

However, while I think it's fair to say that science is really hard, the article gets into claiming that scientists aren't especially awful people (probably true), but doesnn't address the hard question of "Given that there's a lot of inaccurate science, how much should we trust specific scientific claims?"

Hi everyone :). I like Anki, find it quite useful and use it daily. There is one thing that constantly annoyed me about it, though - the state of shared decks and of infrastructure around them.

There is a lot of topics that are of common interest for a large number of people, and there is usually some shared decks available for these topics. The problem with them is that as they are usually decks created by individuals for their own purposes and uploaded to ankiweb. So they are often incomplete/of mediocre quality/etc and they are rarely supported or updated.

And there is no way to collaborate on the creation or improvement of such decks, as there is no infrastructure for it and the format of the decks won't allow you to use common collaboration infrastructure (e.g. Github). So I've been recently working on a plugin for Anki that will allow you to make a full-feature Import/Export to/from JSON. What I mean by full-feature is that it exports not just cards converted to JSON, but Notes, Decks, Models, Media etc. So you can do export, modify result, or merge changes from someone else and on Import, those changes would be reflected on your existing cards/decks and no information/metadata/etc would be lost.

The point is to provide a format that will enable collaboration using mentioned common collaboration infrastructure. So using it you can easily work with multiple people to create a deck, collaborating for example, via Github, and then deck could be updated and improved by contributions from other people.

I'm looking for early adopters and for feedback :).

The ankiweb page for plugin (that's where you can get the plugin): https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1788670778

Github: https://github.com/Stvad/CrowdAnki

Some of my decks, on a Github (btw by using plugin, you can get decks directly from Github):

Git deck: https://github.com/Stvad/Software_Engineering__git

Regular expressions deck: https://github.com/Stvad/Software_Engineering__Regular_Expressions

Deck based on article Twenty rules of formulating knowledge by Piotr Wozniak:

https://github.com/Stvad/Learning__How-to-Formulate-Knowledge

You're welcome to use this decks and contribute back the improvements.

There is a question which is especially disturbing during sleepless August nights, and which could cut your train of thought with existential worry at any unpredictable moment.

The question is, “Why does anything exist at all?” It seems more logical that nothing will ever exist.

A more specific form of the question is “How has our universe appeared from nothing?” The last question has some hidden assumptions (about time, universe, nothing and causality), but it is also is more concrete.

Let’s try to put these thoughts into some form of “logical equation”:

 

1.”Nothingness + deterministic causality = non existence”

2. But “I = exist”. 

 

So something is wrong in this set of conjectures. If the first conjecture is false, then either nothingness is able to create existence, or causality is able to create it, or existence is not existence. 

There is also a chance that our binary logic is wrong.

Listing these possibilities we can create a map of solutions of the “nothingness problem”.

There are two (main) ways in which we could try to answer this question: we could go UP from a logical-philosophical level, or we could go DOWN using our best physical theories to the moment of the universe’s appearance and the nature of causality. 

Our theories of general relativity, QM and inflation are good for describing the (almost) beginning of the universe. As Krauss showed, the only thing we need is a random generator of simple physical laws in the beginning. But the origin of this thing is still not clear.

There is a gap between these two levels of the explanation, and a really good theory should be able to fill it, that is to show the way between first existing thing and smallest working set of physical laws (and Woldram’s idea about cellular automata is one of such possible bridges).

But we don’t need the bridge yet. We need explanation how anything exists at all. 

 

How we going to solve the problem? Where we can get information?

 

Possible sources of evidence:

1. Correlation between physical and philosophical theories. There is an interesting way to do so using the fact that the nature of nothingness, causality and existence are somehow presented within the character of physical laws. That is, we could use the type of physical laws we observe as evidence of the nature of causality. 

While neither physical nor philosophical ways of studying the origin of the universe are sufficient, together they could provide enough information. This evidence comes from QM, where it supports the idea of fluctuations, which is basically ability of nature to create something out of nothing. GR theory also presents idea of cosmological singularity.

The evidence also comes from the mathematical simplicity of physical laws.

 

2. Building the bridge. If we show all steps from nothingness to the basic set of physical laws for at least one plausible way, it will be strong evidence of the correctness of our understanding.

3. Zero logical contradictions. The best answer is the one that is most logical.

4. Using the Copernican mediocrity principle, I am in a typical universe and situation. So what could I conclude about the distribution of various universes? And from this distribution what should I learn about the way it manifested? For example, a mathematical multiverse favors more complex universes; it contradicts the simplicity of observed physical laws and also of my experiences.

5. Introspection. Cogito ergo sum is the simplest introspection and act of self-awareness. But Husserlian phenomenology may also be used.

 

Most probable explanations

 

Most current scientists (who dare to think about it) belong to one of two schools of thoughts:

1. The universe appeared from nothingness, which is not emptiness, but somehow able to create. The main figure here is Krauss. The problem here is that nothingness is presented as some kind of magic substance.

2. The mathematical universe hypothesis (MUH). The main author here is Tegmark. The theory seems logical and economical from the perspective of Occam’s razor, but is not supported by evidence and also implies the existence of some strange things. The main problem is that our universe seems to have developed from one simple point based on our best physical theories. But in the mathematical universe more complex things are equally as probable as simple things, so a typical observer could be extremely complex in an extremely complex world. There are also some problems with the Godel theorem. It also ignores observation and qualia. 

So the most promising way to create a final theory is to get rid of all mystical answers and words, like “existence” and “nothingness”, and update MUH in such a way that it will naturally favor simple laws and simple observers (with subjective experiences based on qualia).

One such patch was suggested by Tegmark in respond to criticism of MUH, a computational universe (CUH), which restricts math objects to computable functions only. It is similar to S.Wolfram’s cellular automata theory.

Another approach is the “logical universe”, where logic works instead of causality. It is almost the same as mathematical universe, with one difference: In the math world everything exists simultaneously, like all possible numbers, but in the logical world each number N is a consequence of  N-1. As a result, a complex thing exists only if a (finite?) path to it exists through simpler things. 

And this is exactly what we see in the observable universe. It also means that extremely complex AIs exist, but in the future (or in a multi-level simulation). It also solves the meritocracy problem – I am a typical observer from the class of observer who is still thinking about the origins of the universe. It also prevents mathematical Boltzmann brains, as any of them must have possible pre-history.

Logic still exists in nothingness (or elephants could appear from nothingness). So a logical universe also incorporates theories in which the universe appeared from nothing.

(We could also update the math world by adding qualia in it as axioms, which would be a “class of different but simple objects”. But I will not go deeper here, as the idea needs more thinking and many pages)

So a logical universe seems to me now a good candidate theory for further patching and integration. 

 

Usefulness of the question

The answer will be useful, as it will help us to find the real nature of reality, including the role of consciousness in it and the fundamental theory of everything, helping us to survive the end of the universe, solve the identity problem, and solve “quantum immortality”. 

It will help to prevent the halting of future AI if it has to answer the question of whether it really exists or not. Or we will create a philosophical landmine to stop it like the following one:

“If you really exist print 1, but if you are only possible AI, print 0”.

 

The structure of the map

The map has 10 main blocks which correspond to the main ways of reasoning about how the universe appeared. Each has several subtypes.

The map has three colors, which show the plausibility of each theory. Red stands for implausible or disproved theories, green is most consistent and promising explanations, and yellow is everything between. This classification is subjective and presents my current view. 

I tried to disprove any suggested idea to add falsifiability in the third column of the map. I hope it result in truly Bayesian approach there we have field of evidence, field of all possible hypothesis and 

This map is paired with “How to survive the end of the Universe” map.

The pdf is here: http://immortality-roadmap.com/universeorigin7.pdf 

 

Meta:

Time used: 27 years of background thinking, 15 days of reading, editing and drawing.

 

Best reading:

 

Parfit – discuss different possibilities, no concrete answer
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n02/derek-parfit/why-anything-why-this

Good text from a famous blogger
http://waitbutwhy.com/table/why-is-there-something-instead-of-nothing

“Because "nothing" is inherently unstable”
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141106-why-does-anything-exist-at-all

Here are some interesting answers 
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-universe-exist-Why-is-there-something-rather-than-nothing

Krauss “A universe from nothing”
https://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/1451624468

Tegmark’s main article, 2007, all MUH and CUH ideas discussed, extensive literature, critics responded
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0704.0646.pdf

Juergen Schmidhuber. Algorithmic Theories of Everything
discusses the measure between various theories of everything; the article is complex, but interesting
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0011122

ToE must explain how the universe appeared

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything 

A discussion about the logical contradictions of any final theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything_(philosophy
“The Price of an Ultimate Theory” Nicholas Rescher 
Philosophia Naturalis 37 (1):1-20 (2000)

Explanation about the mass of the universe and negative gravitational energy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-energy_universe

 

Stephen Hawking famously said that aliens are one of the main risks to human existence. In this map I will try to show all rational ways how aliens could result in human extinction. Paradoxically, even if aliens don’t exist, we may be even in bigger danger.

 

1.No aliens exist in our past light cone

1a. Great Filter is behind us. So Rare Earth is true. There are natural forces in our universe which are against life on Earth, but we don’t know if they are still active. We strongly underestimate such forces because of anthropic shadow. Such still active forces could be: gamma-ray bursts (and other types of cosmic explosions like magnitars), the instability of Earth’s atmosphere,  the frequency of large scale volcanism and asteroid impacts. We may also underestimate the fragility of our environment in its sensitivity to small human influences, like global warming becoming runaway global warming.

1b. Great filter is ahead of us (and it is not UFAI). Katja Grace shows that this is a much more probable solution to the Fermi paradox because of one particular version of the Doomsday argument, SIA. All technological civilizations go extinct before they become interstellar supercivilizations, that is in something like the next century on the scale of Earth’s timeline. This is in accordance with our observation that new technologies create stronger and stronger means of destruction which are available to smaller groups of people, and this process is exponential. So all civilizations terminate themselves before they can create AI, or their AI is unstable and self terminates too (I have explained elsewhere why this could happen ). 

 

2.      Aliens still exist in our light cone.

a)      They exist in the form of a UFAI explosion wave, which is travelling through space at the speed of light. EY thinks that this will be a natural outcome of evolution of AI. We can’t see the wave by definition, and we can find ourselves only in the regions of the Universe, which it hasn’t yet reached. If we create our own wave of AI, which is capable of conquering a big part of the Galaxy, we may be safe from alien wave of AI. Such a wave could be started very far away but sooner or later it would reach us. Anthropic shadow distorts our calculations about its probability.

b)      SETI-attack. Aliens exist very far away from us, so they can’t reach us physically (yet) but are able to send information. Here the risk of a SETI-attack exists, i.e. aliens will send us a description of a computer and a program, which is AI, and this will convert the Earth into another sending outpost. Such messages should dominate between all SETI messages. As we get stronger and stronger radio telescopes and other instruments, we have more and more chances of finding messages from them.

c)      Aliens are near (several hundred light years), and know about the Earth, so they have already sent physical space ships (or other weapons) to us, as they have found signs of our technological development and don’t want to have enemies in their neighborhood. They could send near–speed-of-light projectiles or beams of particles on an exact collision course with Earth, but this seems improbable, because if they are so near, why haven’t they didn’t reached Earth yet?

d)      Aliens are here. Alien nanobots could be in my room now, and there is no way I could detect them. But sooner or later developing human technologies will be able to find them, which will result in some form of confrontation. If there are aliens here, they could be in “Berserker” mode, i.e. they wait until humanity reaches some unknown threshold and then attack. Aliens may be actively participating in Earth’s progress, like “progressors”, but the main problem is that their understanding of a positive outcome may be not aligned with our own values (like the problem of FAI).

e)      Deadly remains and alien zombies. Aliens have suffered some kind of existential catastrophe, and its consequences will affect us. If they created vacuum phase transition during accelerator experiments, it could reach us at the speed of light without warning. If they created self-replicating non sentient nanobots (grey goo), it could travel as interstellar stardust and convert all solid matter in nanobots, so we could encounter such a grey goo wave in space. If they created at least one von Neumann probe, with narrow AI, it still could conquer the Universe and be dangerous to Earthlings. If their AI crashed it could have semi-intelligent remnants with a random and crazy goal system, which roams the Universe. (But they will probably evolve in the colonization wave of von Neumann probes anyway.) If we find their planet or artifacts they still could carry dangerous tech like dormant AI programs, nanobots or bacteria. (Vernor Vinge had this idea as the starting point of the plot in his novel “Fire Upon the Deep”)

f)       We could attract the attention of aliens by METI. Sending signals to stars in order to initiate communication we could tell potentially hostile aliens our position in space. Some people advocate for it like Zaitsev, others are strongly opposed. The risks of METI are smaller than SETI in my opinion, as our radiosignals can only reach the nearest hundreds of light years before we create our own strong AI. So we will be able repulse the most plausible ways of space aggression, but using SETI we able to receive signals from much further distances, perhaps as much as one billion light years, if aliens convert their entire home galaxy to a large screen, where they draw a static picture, using individual stars as pixels. They will use vN probes and complex algorithms to draw such picture, and I estimate that it could present messages as large as 1 Gb and will visible by half of the Universe. So SETI is exposed to a much larger part of the Universe (perhaps as much as 10 to the power of 10 more times the number of stars), and also the danger of SETI is immediate, not in a hundred years from now.

g)      Space war. During future space exploration humanity may encounter aliens in the Galaxy which are at the same level of development and it may result in classical star wars.

h)      They will not help us. They are here or nearby, but have decided not to help us in x-risks prevention, or not to broadcast (if they are far) information about most the important x-risks via SETI and about proven ways of preventing them. So they are not altruistic enough to save us from x-risks.

 

3. If we are in a simulation, then the owners of the simulations are aliens for us and they could switch the simulation off. Slow switch-off is possible and in some conditions it will be the main observable way of switch-off. 

 

4. False beliefs in aliens may result in incorrect decisions. Ronald Reagan saw something which he thought was a UFO (it was not) and he also had early onset Alzheimer’s, which may be one of the reasons he invested a lot into the creation of SDI, which also provoked a stronger confrontation with the USSR. (BTW, it is only my conjecture, but I use it as illustration how false believes may result in wrong decisions.)

 

5. Prevention of the x-risks using aliens:

1.      Strange strategy. If all rational straightforward strategies to prevent extinction have failed, as implied by one interpretation of the Fermi paradox, we should try a random strategy.

2.      Resurrection by aliens. We could preserve some information about humanity hoping that aliens will resurrect us, or they could return us to life using our remains on Earth. Voyagers already have such information, and they and other satellites may have occasional samples of human DNA. Radio signals from Earth also carry a lot of information.

3.      Request for help. We could send radio messages with a request for help. (Very skeptical about this, it is only a gesture of despair, if they are not already hiding in the solar system)

4.      Get advice via SETI. We could find advice on how to prevent x-risks in alien messages received via SETI.

5.      They are ready to save us. Perhaps they are here and will act to save us, if the situation develops into something really bad.

6.      We are the risk.  We will spread through the universe and colonize other planets, preventing the existence of many alien civilizations, or change their potential and perspectives permanently. So we will be the existential risk for them.

 

6. We are the risks for future aleins.

In total, there is several significant probability things, mostly connected with Fermi paradox solutions. No matter where is Great filter, we are at risk. If we had passed it, we live in fragile universe, but most probable conclusion is that Great Filter is very soon.

Another important thing is risks of passive SETI, which is most plausible way we could encounter aliens in near–term future.

Also there are important risks that we are in simulation, but that it is created not by our possible ancestors, but by aliens, who may have much less compassion to us (or by UFAI). In the last case the simulation be modeling unpleasant future, including large scale catastrophes and human sufferings.

The pdf is here: 

 

 

(Happy to get feedback on this! It draws from and expounds ideas in this article: http://jetpress.org/v26.2/torres.htm)

Consider a seemingly simple question: if the means were available, who exactly would destroy the world? There is surprisingly little discussion of this question within the nascent field of existential risk studies. But it’s an absolutely crucial issue: what sort of agent would either intentionally or accidentally cause an existential catastrophe?

The first step forward is to distinguish between two senses of an existential risk. Nick Bostrom originally defined the term as: “One where an adverse outcome would either annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential.” It follows that there are two distinct scenarios, one endurable and the other terminal, that could realize an existential risk. We can call the former an extinction risk and the latter a stagnation risk. The importance of this distinction with respect to both advanced technologies and destructive agents has been previously underappreciated.

So, the question asked above is actually two questions in disguise. Let’s consider each in turn.

Terror: Extinction Risks

First, the categories of agents who might intentionally cause an extinction catastrophe are fewer and smaller than one might think. They include:

(1) Idiosyncratic actors. These are malicious agents who are motivated by idiosyncratic beliefs and/or desires. There are instances of deranged individuals who have simply wanted to kill as many people as possible and then die, such as some school shooters. Idiosyncratic actors are especially worrisome because this category could have a large number of members (token agents). Indeed, the psychologist Martha Stout estimates that about 4 percent of the human population suffers from sociopathy, resulting in about 296 million sociopaths. While not all sociopaths are violent, a disproportionate number of criminals and dictators have (or very likely have) had the condition.

(2) Future ecoterrorists. As the effects of climate change and biodiversity loss (resulting in the sixth mass extinction) become increasingly conspicuous, and as destructive technologies become more powerful, some terrorism scholars have speculated that ecoterrorists could become a major agential risk in the future. The fact is that the climate is changing and the biosphere is wilting, and human activity is almost entirely responsible. It follows that some radical environmentalists in the future could attempt to use technology to cause human extinction, thereby “solving” the environmental crisis. So, we have some reason to believe that this category could become populated with a growing number of token agents in the coming decades.

(3) Negative utilitarians. Those who hold this view believe that the ultimate aim of moral conduct is to minimize misery, or “disutility.” Although some negative utilitarians like David Pearce see existential risks as highly undesirable, others would welcome annihilation because it would entail the elimination of suffering. It follows that if a “strong” negative utilitarian had a button in front of her that, if pressed, would cause human extinction (say, without causing pain), she would very likely press it. Indeed, on her view, doing this would be the morally right action. Fortunately, this version of negative utilitarianism is not a position that many non-academics tend to hold, and even among academic philosophers it is not especially widespread.

(4) Extraterrestrials. Perhaps we are not alone in the universe. Even if the probability of life arising on an Earth-analog is low, the vast number of exoplanets suggests that the probability of life arising somewhere may be quite high. If an alien species were advanced enough to traverse the cosmos and reach Earth, it would very likely have the technological means to destroy humanity. As Stephen Hawking once remarked, “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.”

(5) Superintelligence. The reason Homo sapiens is the dominant species on our planet is due almost entirely to our intelligence. It follows that if something were to exceed our intelligence, our fate would become inextricably bound up with its will. This is worrisome because recent research shows that even slight misalignments between our values and those motivating a superintelligence could have existentially catastrophic consequences. But figuring out how to upload human values into a machine poses formidable problems — not to mention the issue of figuring out what our values are in the first place.

Making matters worse, a superintelligence could process information at about 1 million times faster than our brains, meaning that a minute of time for us would equal approximately 2 years in time for the superintelligence. This would immediately give the superintelligence a profound strategic advantage over us. And if it were able to modify its own code, it could potentially bring about an exponential intelligence explosion, resulting in a mind that’s many orders of magnitude smarter than any human. Thus, we may have only one chance to get everything just right: there’s no turning back once an intelligence explosion is ignited.

A superintelligence could cause human extinction for a number of reasons. For example, we might simply be in its way. Few humans worry much if an ant genocide results from building a new house or road. Or the superintelligence could destroy humanity because we happen to be made out of something it could use for other purposes: atoms. Since a superintelligence need not resemble human intelligence in any way — thus, scholars tell us to resist the dual urges of anthropomorphizing and anthropopathizing — it could be motivated by goals that appear to us as utterly irrational, bizarre, or completely inexplicable.

Terror: Stagnation Risks

Now consider the agents who might intentionally try to bring about a scenario that would result in a stagnation catastrophe. This list subsumes most of the list above in that it includes idiosyncratic actors, future ecoterrorists, and superintelligence, but it probably excludes negative utilitarians, since stagnation (as understood above) would likely induce more suffering than the status quo today. The case of extraterrestrials is unclear, given that we can infer almost nothing about an interstellar civilization except that it would be technologically sophisticated.

For example, an idiosyncratic actor could harbor not a death wish for humanity, but a “destruction wish” for civilization. Thus, she or he could strive to destroy civilization without necessarily causing the annihilation of Homo sapiens. Similarly, a future ecoterrorist could hope for humanity to return to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. This is precisely what motivated Ted Kaczynski: he didn’t want everyone to die, but he did want our technological civilization to crumble. And finally, a superintelligence whose values are misaligned with ours could modify Earth in such a way that our lineage persists, but our prospects for future development are permanently compromised. Other stagnation scenarios could involve the following categories:

(6) Apocalyptic terrorists. History is overflowing with groups that not only believed the world was about to end, but saw themselves as active participants in an apocalyptic narrative that’s unfolding in realtime. Many of these groups have been driven by the conviction that “the world must be destroyed to be saved,” although some have turned their activism inward and advocated mass suicide.

Interestingly, no notable historical group has combined both the genocidal and suicidal urges. This is why apocalypticists pose a greater stagnation terror risk than extinction risk: indeed, many see their group’s survival beyond Armageddon as integral to the end-times, or eschatological, beliefs they accept. There are almost certainly less than about 2 million active apocalyptic believers in the world today, although emerging environmental, demographic, and societal conditions could cause this number to significantly increase in the future, as I’ve outlined in detail elsewhere (see Section 5 of this paper).

(7) States. Like terrorists motivated by political rather than transcendent goals, states tend to place a high value on their continued survival. It follows that states are unlikely to intentionally cause a human extinction event. But rogue states could induce a stagnation catastrophe. For example, if North Korea were to overcome the world’s superpowers through a sudden preemptive attack and implement a one-world government, the result could be an irreversible decline in our quality of life.

So, there are numerous categories of agents that could attempt to bring about an existential catastrophe. And there appear to be fewer agent types who would specifically try to cause human extinction than to merely dismantle civilization.

Error: Extinction and Stagnation Risks

There are some reasons, though, for thinking that error (rather than terror) could constitute the most significant threat in the future. First, almost every agent capable of causing intentional harm would also be capable of causing accidental harm, whether this results in extinction or stagnation. For example, an apocalyptic cult that wants to bring about Armageddon by releasing a deadly biological agent in a major city could, while preparing for this terrorist act, inadvertently contaminate its environment, leading to a global pandemic.

The same goes for idiosyncratic agents, ecoterrorists, negative utilitarians, states, and perhaps even extraterrestrials. (Indeed, the large disease burden of Europeans was a primary reason Native American populations were decimated. By analogy, perhaps an extraterrestrial destroys humanity by introducing a new type of pathogen that quickly wipes us out.) The case of superintelligence is unclear, since the relationship between intelligence and error-proneness has not been adequately studied.

Second, if powerful future technologies become widely accessible, then virtually everyone could become a potential cause of existential catastrophe, even those with absolutely no inclination toward violence. To illustrate the point, imagine a perfectly peaceful world in which not a single individual has malicious intentions. Further imagine that everyone has access to a doomsday button on her or his phone; if pushed, this button would cause an existential catastrophe. Even under ideal societal conditions (everyone is perfectly “moral”), how long could we expect to survive before someone’s finger slips and the doomsday button gets pressed?

Statistically speaking, a world populated by only 1 billion people would almost certainly self-destruct within a 10-year period if the probability of any individual accidentally pressing a doomsday button were a mere 0.00001 percent per decade. Or, alternatively: if only 500 people in the world were to gain access to a doomsday button, and if each of these individuals had a 1 percent chance of accidentally pushing the button per decade, humanity would have a meager 0.6 percent chance of surviving beyond 10 years. Thus, even if the likelihood of mistakes is infinitesimally small, planetary doom will be virtually guaranteed for sufficiently large populations.

The Two Worlds Thought Experiment

The good news is that a focus on agential risks, as I’ve called them, and not just the technological tools that agents might use to cause a catastrophe, suggests additional ways to mitigate existential risk. Consider the following thought-experiment: a possible world A contains thousands of advanced weapons that, if in the wrong hands, could cause the population of A to go extinct. In contrast, a possible world B contains only a single advanced “weapon of total destruction” (WTD). Which world is more dangerous? The answer is obviously world A.

But it would be foolishly premature to end the analysis here. Imagine further that A is populated by compassionate, peace-loving individuals, whereas B is overrun by war-mongering psychopaths. Now which world appears more likely to experience an existential catastrophe? The correct answer is, I would argue, world B.

In other words: agents matter as much as, or perhaps even more than, WTDs. One simply can’t evaluate the degree of risk in a situation without taking into account the various agents who could become coupled to potentially destructive artifacts. And this leads to the crucial point: as soon as agents enter the picture, we have another variable that could be manipulated through targeted interventions to reduce the overall probability of an existential catastrophe.

The options here are numerous and growing. One possibility would involve using “moral bioenhancement” techniques to reduce the threat of terror, given that acts of terror are immoral. But a morally enhanced individual might not be less likely to make a mistake. Thus, we could attempt to use cognitive enhancements to lower the probability of catastrophic errors, on the (tentative) assumption that greater intelligence correlates with fewer blunders.

Furthermore, implementing stricter regulations on CO2 emissions could decrease the probability of extreme ecoterrorism and/or apocalyptic terrorism, since environmental degradation is a “trigger” for both.

Another possibility, most relevant to idiosyncratic agents, is to reduce the prevalence of bullying (including cyberbullying). This is motivated by studies showing that many school shooters have been bullied, and that without this stimulus such individuals would have been less likely to carry out violent rampages. Advanced mind-reading or surveillance technologies could also enable law enforcement to identify perpetrators before mass casualty crimes are committed.

As for superintelligence, efforts to solve the “control problem” and create a friendly AI are of primary concern among many many researchers today. If successful, a friendly AI could itself constitute a powerful mitigation strategy for virtually all the categories listed above.

(Note: these strategies should be explicitly distinguished from proposals that target the relevant tools rather than agents. For example, Bostrom’s idea of “differential technological development” aims to neutralize the bad uses of technology by strategically ordering the development of different kinds of technology. Similarly, the idea of police “blue goo” to counter “grey goo” is a technology-based strategy. Space colonization is also a tool intervention because it would effectively reduce the power (or capacity) of technologies to affect the entire human or posthuman population.)

Agent-Tool Couplings

Devising novel interventions and understanding how to maximize the efficacy of known strategies requires a careful look at the unique properties of the agents mentioned above. Without an understanding of such properties, this important task will be otiose. We should also prioritize different agential risks based on the likely membership (token agents) of each category. For example, the number of idiosyncratic agents might exceed the number of ecoterrorists in the future, since ecoterrorism is focused on a single issue, whereas idiosyncratic agents could be motivated by a wide range of potential grievances.[1] We should also take seriously the formidable threat posed by error, which could be nontrivially greater than that posed by terror, as the back-of-the-envelope calculations above show.

Such considerations, in combination with technology-based risk mitigation strategies, could lead to a comprehensive, systematic framework for strategically intervening on both sides of the agent-tool coupling. But this will require the field of existential risk studies to become less technocentric than it currently is.

[1] Although, on the other hand, the stimulus of environmental degradation would be experienced by virtually everyone in society, whereas the stimuli that motivate idiosyncratic agents might be situationally unique. It’s precisely issues like these that deserve further scholarly research.