Biggest Existential Threats. Every day our leaders warn us, scare us, and threaten
us about existential threats. These hint
at caution: “Do something now or we will cease to exist.” What are they? For politicians: anything that
will scare you into voting for them. For
scientists: anything they believe may be risky. For religions: anything disabusing
the scriptures. For the people: anything they believe to be dangerous in at the
moment. There is much theory involved,
projections into many decades ahead, life-style changes, political expediency, and
more. Politicians love these things as they generate huge campaign war chests. Here’s the shortlist: Climate change,
Pandemics, Artificial Intelligence, Drones, War, and Black Swans.
Climate change – includes global warming,
changing animal habitats, enlarged deserts, increased carbon dioxide, eventual
degradation of livable area, an increase of disease, rising temperatures, arctic
melting, etc.
Pandemics – usually highly contagious diseases
spread by crowding and/or enhanced by decreased resistance, devastation by an incurable
disease (e.g. Ebola), escape of organisms from biological laboratories, viral
and bacterial mutations, consequences of starvation.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) – includes algorithms
that can find remarkable patterns, predictions of voting patterns,
hyper-targeting for advertising, analysis of data oceans of information about
all, tracking of individual movements, ordering of citizens on compliance
criteria, use of imaging to determine location, work-space monitoring, stock
market control. Elon Musk (yes, Mr. Tesla) thinks AI is the big one.
Drones – delivery of ordinance, disease, and
xxx, tracking or spying on people, enhancing police state control, air space
control dangers
War – the oldest events of sweeping historical importance,
including contests between superpowers, minor powers possessing devastating weapons,
wars in regions containing vital resources (e.g. oil), wars with potential of
sweeping across vast regions - all of which imply massive death, massive
diasporas, massive starvation, massive pollutants, massive waste of resources.
Black Swans – the unknown unknowns, that simply
happen, such as a volcanic eruption, a tsunami, an unexpected revolution, an
errant state’s use of nuclear devices, an alien invasion, a totally new
disease, and the old standby: an asteroid barreling toward earth. (Developed by
Nassim
Nicholas Taleb in his 2001 book Fooled By Randomness, interesting if you can handle his ego)
Recipe: take something newish, extrapolate it
to maximum devastation, promote its possibility and voila, an existential threat.
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