Existential Threats

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 – 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. Recall, in the 70s, it was all about global cooling.

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. This is just a small part of universal surveillance, where we are all monitored by cameras. Even now, our cell phones track our every move.

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.)