Hello! I’m working on a couple of papers that may be published soon. Before this happens, I’d be extremely curious to know what people think about them—in particular, what people think about my critique of Bostrom’s definition of “existential risks.” A very short write-up of the ideas can be found at the link below. (If posting links is in any way discouraged here, I’ll take it down right away. Still trying to figure out what the norms of conversation are in this forum!)
A few key ideas are: Bostrom’s definition is problematic for two reasons: first, it’s account of who an existential risk affects is too promiscuous. It opens up the door for counterexamples in which humanity is violently destroyed yet no existential risk occurs. And second, Bostrom’s typology is incoherent. It fails to recognize that a consequence’s scope has both spatial and temporal components, where different degrees of each can be combined with the other in different ways. At the end of the paper, I propose my own definition—one that attempts to solve both of these problems. Figure C may be particularly helpful.
This is a nice paper, and is probably the sort of thing philosphers can really sink their teeth into. One thing I really wanted was some addressing of the basic “something that would cause much of what we value about the universe to be lost” definition of ‘catastrophic’, which you could probably even find Bostrom endorsing somewhere.
Hello! I’m working on a couple of papers that may be published soon. Before this happens, I’d be extremely curious to know what people think about them—in particular, what people think about my critique of Bostrom’s definition of “existential risks.” A very short write-up of the ideas can be found at the link below. (If posting links is in any way discouraged here, I’ll take it down right away. Still trying to figure out what the norms of conversation are in this forum!)
A few key ideas are: Bostrom’s definition is problematic for two reasons: first, it’s account of who an existential risk affects is too promiscuous. It opens up the door for counterexamples in which humanity is violently destroyed yet no existential risk occurs. And second, Bostrom’s typology is incoherent. It fails to recognize that a consequence’s scope has both spatial and temporal components, where different degrees of each can be combined with the other in different ways. At the end of the paper, I propose my own definition—one that attempts to solve both of these problems. Figure C may be particularly helpful.
Thoughts? I am more than open to feedback!
http://philosophytorres.org/XRiskologytheConceptofanExistentialRisk.pdf
This is a nice paper, and is probably the sort of thing philosphers can really sink their teeth into. One thing I really wanted was some addressing of the basic “something that would cause much of what we value about the universe to be lost” definition of ‘catastrophic’, which you could probably even find Bostrom endorsing somewhere.