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.
philosophytorres
Karma: −11
Thanks so much for these incredibly thoughtful responses. Very, very helpful.
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
I’d love to know what the community here thinks of some critiques of Nick Bostrom’s conception of existential risks, and his more general typology of risks. I’m new to the community, so a bit unsure whether I should completely dive in with a new article, or approach the subject some other way. Thoughts?
Yes to both possibilities. But gbear605 is closer to what I was thinking.