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  1. How Much Should Governments Pay to Prevent Catastrophes? Longtermism's Limited Role.Carl Shulman & Elliott Thornley - forthcoming - In Jacob Barrett, Hilary Greaves & David Thorstad (eds.), Essays on Longtermism. Oxford University Press.
    Longtermists have argued that humanity should significantly increase its efforts to prevent catastrophes like nuclear wars, pandemics, and AI disasters. But one prominent longtermist argument overshoots this conclusion: the argument also implies that humanity should reduce the risk of existential catastrophe even at extreme cost to the present generation. This overshoot means that democratic governments cannot use the longtermist argument to guide their catastrophe policy. In this paper, we show that the case for preventing catastrophe does not depend on longtermism. (...)
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  • The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity.Toby Ord - 2020 - London: Bloomsbury.
    Humanity stands at a precipice. -/- Our species could survive for millions of generations — enough time to end disease, poverty, and injustice; to reach new heights of flourishing. But this vast future is at risk. With the advent of nuclear weapons, humanity entered a new age, gaining the power to destroy ourselves, without the wisdom to ensure we won’t. Since then, these dangers have only multiplied, from climate change to engineered pandemics and unaligned artificial intelligence. If we do not (...)
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  • Global Catastrophic Risks.Nick Bostrom & Milan M. Cirkovic (eds.) - 2008 - Oxford University Press.
    A Global Catastrophic Risk is one that has the potential to inflict serious damage to human well-being on a global scale. This book focuses on such risks arising from natural catastrophes, nuclear war, terrorism, biological weapons, totalitarianism, advanced nanotechnology, artificial intelligence and social collapse.
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  • Our Moral Obligation to Support Space Exploration.James S. J. Schwartz - 2011 - Environmental Ethics 33 (1):67-88.
    The moral obligation to support space exploration follows from our obligations to protect the environment and to survive as a species. It can be justified through three related arguments: one supporting space exploration as necessary for acquiring resources, and two illustrating the need for space technology in order to combat extraterrestrial threats such as meteorite impacts. Three sorts of objections have been raised against this obligation. The first are objections alleging that supporting space exploration is impractical. The second is the (...)
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  • Space Colonization and Existential Risk.Joseph Gottlieb - 2019 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 5 (3):306-320.
    Ian Stoner has recently argued that we ought not to colonize Mars because doing so would flout our pro tanto obligation not to violate the principle of scientific conservation, and there is no countervailing considerations that render our violation of the principle permissible. While I remain agnostic on, my primary goal in this article is to challenge : there are countervailing considerations that render our violation of the principle permissible. As such, Stoner has failed to establish that we ought not (...)
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  • Longtermist Institutional Reform.Tyler John & William MacAskill - 2021 - In Natalie Cargill & Tyler M. John (eds.), The Long View: Essays on Policy, Philanthropy, and the Long-term Future. London, UK: FIRST.
    In all probability, future generations will outnumber us by thousands or millions to one. In the aggregate, their interests therefore matter enormously, and anything we can do to steer the future of civilization onto a better trajectory is of tremendous moral importance. This is the guiding thought that defines the philosophy of longtermism. Political science tells us that the practices of most governments are at stark odds with longtermism. But the problems of political short-termism are neither necessary nor inevitable. In (...)
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  • Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority.Nick Bostrom - 2013 - Global Policy 4 (1):15–31.
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  • Doomsday rings twice.Andreas Mogensen - manuscript
    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 (...)
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  • Space colonization remains the only long-term option for humanity: A reply to Torres.Milan M. Cirkovic - 2019 - Futures 105:166-173.
    Recent discussion of the alleged adverse consequences of space colonization by Phil Torres in this journal is critically assessed. While the concern for suffering risks should be part of any strategic discussion of the cosmic future of humanity, the Hobbesian picture painted by Torres is largely flawed and unpersuasive. Instead, there is a very real risk that the skeptical arguments will be taken too seriously and future human flourishing in space delayed or prevented.
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  • Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space.Carl Sagan - 1997 - Utopian Studies 8 (2):177-178.
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