The latest version was published as proper article in 2018:
The Global Catastrophic Risks Connected with Possibility of Finding Alien AI During SETI
Alexey Turchin. Journal of British Interpanetary Society 71 (2):71-79 (2018)
The latest version was published as proper article in 2018:
The Global Catastrophic Risks Connected with Possibility of Finding Alien AI During SETI
Alexey Turchin. Journal of British Interpanetary Society 71 (2):71-79 (2018)
Thanks for great piece! One thing which may increase the extinction risk is that after the collapse, the remaining economy will be based not on agriculture and manufacturing, but on scavenging remains of previous civilisation. The problem with such economy is that it constantly shrinking and also does not help to learn useful skills, but instead helps local warlords arise and fight over leftovers. (Example: the economy of the post Soviet Union countries declined partly because it was more profitable to sell a factory for metal than to use it for manufacturing of goods.)
This problem will be also fuelled by “dangerous leftovers”: in any moment, the access to weapons will be easy than to manufacturing capabilities. If most humans will extinct, enormous amounts of powerful weapons will still be available for decades, mostly firearms. Dangerous leftovers will include pieces of what has caused the catastrophe, for example, a biological agent or radioactive contamination. In such situation, the remaining population will die more often than rise successful children.
An example of dangerous leftovers are… dogs. If 99 per cent people went extinct, but all dogs remains, these feral dogs will eventually start hunting of survivors.
Smaller organisation also probably have to pay larger relative cost for failed grants’ attempts. Their main talents have to spend significant amount of time on writing grant proposals (or write shorter proposals of lower quality).
I once created a causal map of all global risks starting from the beginning of evolution and accumulation of biases – and up to the end. But it included too many high-knotted elements which make the reading of the map difficult. Smaller causal maps with less than 10 elements are better adapted for human understanding.
In fact, I tried also to explore this idea—which I find crucial—in my Russian book “Structure of global catastrophe”, but my attempts to translate into English didn’t work well, so I now slowly convert its content in the articles.
I would add an important link on the A Singular Chain of Events by Tonn and MacGregor, as well as work of Seth Baum on double catastrophes. The idea of “Peak everything” about simultaneous depletion of all natural resources also belong here, but should be combined with idea of Singularity as idea of acceleration of everything, which combined create very unstable situation.
I write it in English. 90 per cent my Russian friends could read English and also they probably know most of these news from different Russian media.
TAME study got needed funding from a private donor:
“After closing the final $40m of its required $75m budget with a donation from a private source, the first drug trial directly targeting aging is set to begin at the end of this year, lead researcher Dr Nir Barzilai has revealed.”
I also have an article which compare different ETI-related risk, now under review in JBIS.
Global Catastrophic Risks Connected with Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence
One more way to treat burnout is to completely change the profession or main type of activity. I did it a few times. I find that after around 10 years I have enough interest to return to abounded field.
Such decisions are costly and may not help to have great success in life, as some most successful people were able to concentrate on one-two projects for much longer than others. But also some people are successful exactly because they are working in different projects (e.g. Musk).
Easily available BCI may fuel a possible epidemic of wireheading, which may result in civilisational decline.
For me, the most important intervention is to sleep on hard surface. I put 4 layers of yoga mat on my sofa, and it helps much.
I think that for viruses it will be difficult to become completely radiation resistant, as it would require complete overhaul of their makeup: thicker walls, stronger self-repair.
What EY is doing now? Is he coding, writing fiction or new book, working on math foundations, providing general leadership?