Doomsday rings twice
Andreas Mogensen (Global Priorities Institute, Oxford University)
GPI Working Paper No. 1-2019
This paper considers the argument according to which, because we should regard it as a priori very unlikely that we are among the most important people who will ever exist, we should increase our confidence that the human species will not persist beyond the current historical era, which seems to represent a crucial juncture in human history and perhaps even the history of life on earth. The argument is a descendant of the Carter-Leslie Doomsday Argument, but I show that it does not inherit the crucial flaw in its immediate ancestor. Nonetheless, we are not forced to follow the argument where it leads if we instead significantly decrease our confidence that we can affect the long run future of humanity.
Other working papers
What power-seeking theorems do not show – David Thorstad (Vanderbilt University)
Recent years have seen increasing concern that artificial intelligence may soon pose an existential risk to humanity. One leading ground for concern is that artificial agents may be power-seeking, aiming to acquire power and in the process disempowering humanity. A range of power-seeking theorems seek to give formal articulation to the idea that artificial agents are likely to be power-seeking. I argue that leading theorems face five challenges, then draw lessons from this result.
Intergenerational experimentation and catastrophic risk – Fikri Pitsuwan (Center of Economic Research, ETH Zurich)
I study an intergenerational game in which each generation experiments on a risky technology that provides private benefits, but may also cause a temporary catastrophe. I find a folk-theorem-type result on which there is a continuum of equilibria. Compared to the socially optimal level, some equilibria exhibit too much, while others too little, experimentation. The reason is that the payoff externality causes preemptive experimentation, while the informational externality leads to more caution…
Philosophical considerations relevant to valuing continued human survival: Conceptual Analysis, Population Axiology, and Decision Theory – Andreas Mogensen (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
Many think that human extinction would be a catastrophic tragedy, and that we ought to do more to reduce extinction risk. There is less agreement on exactly why. If some catastrophe were to kill everyone, that would obviously be horrific. Still, many think the deaths of billions of people don’t exhaust what would be so terrible about extinction. After all, we can be confident that billions of people are going to die – many horribly and before their time – if humanity does not go extinct. …