What are the implications of how we talk about apocalypse? A new philosophical field has emerged. “Existential risk” studies any real or hypothetical hum...
Beyond Catastrophe: A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View (Published 2022)
There's plenty of bad news. But thanks to real progress, we're headed toward a less apocalyptic future.
Humanity’s Endgame
A new history of societal collapse by an expert in existential risk argues that our globalized society is edging toward the precipice.
Extinctiopolitics: Existential Risk Studies, the Extinctiopolitical Unconscious, and the Billionaires’ Exodus from Earth
One of the most prominent intellectual attempts to grapple with human extinction in recent decades is existential risk studies.
Pluralistic: An end to the climate emergency is in our grasp (12 Jun 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
The problem with good news in the real world is that it's messy. Neat happy endings are for novels, not the real world, and that goes double for the climate emergency. But even though good climate news is complicated and nuanced, that doesn't mean it shouldn't buoy our spirits and fill our hearts with hope.
the information apocalypse · discrete blogarithm
My friend Aviv was recently the subject of a popular Buzzfeed article about the possibility of an impending “information apocalypse”. tl;dr: Aviv extrapolates from the fake news crisis that started in 2016 to a world in which anyone can create AI-assisted misinformation campaigns indistinguishable from reality to the average observer. From there, a series of possible dystopian scenarios arise, including:
Sex, AI, and the Apocalypse - Ian Duncan
How a community devoted to thinking clearly incubated salvation stories, abusive experiments, race science, and an affection for autocracy, and why that history matters now that its alumni are asking for public trust on AI.
Peter Thiel warns the Antichrist and apocalypse are linked to the ‘end of modernity’ currently happening—and cites Greta Thunberg as a driving example | Fortune
The Gen Z Swedish climate activist is a legionnaire of the Antichrist, Thiel claims, a “Luddite” who wants to halt technological progress in its tracks.
Political Scenarios for Climate Disaster - Dissent Magazine
In the Global North we often act as if our future will be a warmer version of today: liberal capitalism, plus flood insurance, minus coral reefs. That future is a fantasy.
From risk to flourishing: Seeds for responding to a complex world
Flourishing is the actualization of all beings toward their good -- not only individually but collectively, answering the question of `how do we live well with and for each other?'. In science as in society, the tendency to reduce, segregate, specialize, and settle has precluded embracing the concept of flourishing as a guiding principle. We aim to identify an approach to risk science research that promotes the flourishing of socio-ecological-technological systems (SETS). We discuss the normative role of an orientation toward flourishing for the field of risk science. We explore the possibility that (risk) science could be done in a way that is capable of pointing society toward a different future, one more resilient and more capable of flourishing. Our exploration mirrors the conversational nature of flourishing itself: examine ideologies traditionally believed to be rigidly in opposition and consider what emerges in the space(s) and conversation between them. We call this a dialectical approach. Within this paradigm grounded in conversation, pluralism, and pragmatism, we revisit three longstanding tensions in risk science: physical$|$social, determinism$|$uncertainty, contextuality$|$generality. Although these tensions are not new, revisiting them together through the lens of complexity science, and with explicit attention to the normative commitments that shape risk research, reveals underexplored possibilities for the field. Examining them in conversation with the other allows us to explore the provisional seeds for what might be termed complex risk science: interdependence, responsivity, participation, pluralism, openness, and ongoingness. Enacting the dialectical paradigm towards a risk science for a flourishing world will depend on creating collectives toward complex risk science, supporting them with skillfully governed commons, and centering care in our research.
'End Times Fascism' and the billionaires gambling with humanity's future
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor expose how fascism, religious extremism and billionaire tech elites are pushing humanity towards catastrophe in their chilling new book, 'End Times Fascism'.
Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI
From an award-winning University of Oxford professor comes a brilliant, urgent new look at prophecies--the predictions that determine our lives, from our personal finances and the quality of our healthcare to the news and social media we consume and the produces foisted upon us
'We're doomed': Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention
The 86-year-old social scientist says accepting the impending end of most life on Earth might be the very thing needed to help us prolong it
What’s your apocalypse skill? Finding a future-proof hobby can bring fulfilment today
Take inspiration from Doomsday preppers with the idea of learning practical skills.
