Results for 'extinction risk'

970 found
Order:
  1. Extinction Risks from AI: Invisible to Science?Vojtech Kovarik, Christiaan van Merwijk & Ida Mattsson - manuscript
    In an effort to inform the discussion surrounding existential risks from AI, we formulate Extinction-level Goodhart’s Law as “Virtually any goal specification, pursued to the extreme, will result in the extinction of humanity”, and we aim to understand which formal models are suitable for investigating this hypothesis. Note that we remain agnostic as to whether Extinction-level Goodhart’s Law holds or not. As our key contribution, we identify a set of conditions that are necessary for a model that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  2. Risk, Non-Identity, and Extinction.Kacper Kowalczyk & Nikhil Venkatesh - 2024 - The Monist 107 (2):146–156.
    This paper examines a recent argument in favour of strong precautionary action—possibly including working to hasten human extinction—on the basis of a decision-theoretic view that accommodates the risk-attitudes of all affected while giving more weight to the more risk-averse attitudes. First, we dispute the need to take into account other people’s attitudes towards risk at all. Second we argue that a version of the non-identity problem undermines the case for doing so in the context of future (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  3. Diving to extinction: Water birds at risk.Minh-Hoang Nguyen - 2023 - Sm3D Portal.
    Our Earth’s climate is changing. Any species living in the Earth’s ecosystem need to thrive to adapt to the new living conditions. Otherwise, extinction will be their outcome. In the race for adaptation, waterbirds (Aequorlitornithes), such as penguins, cormorants, and alcids, seem disadvantageous.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  4. Should longtermists recommend hastening extinction rather than delaying it?Richard Pettigrew - 2024 - The Monist 107 (2):130-145.
    Longtermism is the view that the most urgent global priorities, and those to which we should devote the largest portion of our resources, are those that focus on (i) ensuring a long future for humanity, and perhaps sentient or intelligent life more generally, and (ii) improving the quality of the lives that inhabit that long future. While it is by no means the only one, the argument most commonly given for this conclusion is that these interventions have greater expected goodness (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  5. Human Extinction from a Thomist Perspective.Stefan Riedener - 2021 - In Stefan Riedener, Dominic Roser & Markus Huppenbauer (eds.), Effective Altruism and Religion: Synergies, Tensions, Dialogue. Baden-Baden, Germany: Nomos. pp. 187-210.
    “Existential risks” are risks that threaten the destruction of humanity’s long-term potential: risks of nuclear wars, pandemics, supervolcano eruptions, and so on. On standard utilitarianism, it seems, the reduction of such risks should be a key global priority today. Many effective altruists agree with this verdict. But how should the importance of these risks be assessed on a Christian moral theory? In this paper, I begin to answer this question – taking Thomas Aquinas as a reference, and the risks of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  6. The ethics of species extinctions.Anna Wienhues, Patrik Baard, Alfonso Donoso & Markku Oksanen - 2023 - Cambridge Prisms: Extinction 1 (e23):1–15.
    This review provides an overview of the ethics of extinctions with a focus on the Western analytical environmental ethics literature. It thereby gives special attention to the possible philosophical grounds for Michael Soulé’s assertion that the untimely ‘extinction of populations and species is bad’. Illustrating such debates in environmental ethics, the guiding question for this review concerns why – or when – anthropogenic extinctions are bad or wrong, which also includes the question of when that might not be the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  7. Existential Risks: Exploring a Robust Risk Reduction Strategy.Karim Jebari - 2015 - Science and Engineering Ethics 21 (3):541-554.
    A small but growing number of studies have aimed to understand, assess and reduce existential risks, or risks that threaten the continued existence of mankind. However, most attention has been focused on known and tangible risks. This paper proposes a heuristic for reducing the risk of black swan extinction events. These events are, as the name suggests, stochastic and unforeseen when they happen. Decision theory based on a fixed model of possible outcomes cannot properly deal with this kind (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  8. When Extinction Is Warranted: Invasive Species, Suppression-Drives and the Worst-Case Scenario.Ann C. Thresher - 2022 - Ethics, Policy and Environment 25 (2):132-152.
    Most current techniques to deal with invasive species are ineffective or have highly damaging side effects. To this end suppression-drives based on clustered regularly inter-spaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR/Cas9) have been touted as a potential silver bullet for the problem, allowing for a highly focused, humane and cost-effective means of removing a target species from an environment. Suppression-drives come with serious risks, however, such that the precautionary principle seems to warrant us not deploying this technology. The focus of this paper (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  9. Existential risk pessimism and the time of perils.David Thorstad - manuscript
    When our choice affects some other person and the outcome is unknown, it has been argued that we should defer to their risk attitude, if known, or else default to use of a risk avoidant risk function. This, in turn, has been claimed to require the use of a risk avoidant risk function when making decisions that primarily affect future people, and to decrease the desirability of efforts to prevent human extinction, owing to the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  10. Book Review "Thomas Moynihan: X-Risk: How Humanity Discovered its Own Extinction". [REVIEW]Kritika Maheshwari - 2023 - Intergenerational Justice Review 8 (2):61-62.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  11. Global Catastrophic Risks Connected with Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.Alexey Turchin - manuscript
    In this article, a classification of the global catastrophic risks connected with the possible existence (or non-existence) of extraterrestrial intelligence is presented. If there are no extra-terrestrial intelligences (ETIs) in our light cone, it either means that the Great Filter is behind us, and thus some kind of periodic sterilizing natural catastrophe, like a gamma-ray burst, should be given a higher probability estimate, or that the Great Filter is ahead of us, and thus a future global catastrophe is high probability. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  12. Existence Value, Preference Satisfaction, and the Ethics of Species Extinction.Espen Dyrnes Stabell - 2019 - Environmental Ethics 41 (2):165-180.
    Existence value refers to the value humans ascribe to the existence of something, regard­less of whether it is or will be of any particular use to them. This existence value based on preference satisfaction should be taken into account in evaluating activities that come with a risk of species extinction. There are two main objections. The first is that on the preference satisfaction interpretation, the concept lacks moral importance because satisfying people’s preferences may involve no good or well-being (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  13. Superintelligence as a Cause or Cure for Risks of Astronomical Suffering.Kaj Sotala & Lukas Gloor - 2017 - Informatica: An International Journal of Computing and Informatics 41 (4):389-400.
    Discussions about the possible consequences of creating superintelligence have included the possibility of existential risk, often understood mainly as the risk of human extinction. We argue that suffering risks (s-risks) , where an adverse outcome would bring about severe suffering on an astronomical scale, are risks of a comparable severity and probability as risks of extinction. Preventing them is the common interest of many different value systems. Furthermore, we argue that in the same way as superintelligent (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  14. Artificial Multipandemic as the Most Plausible and Dangerous Global Catastrophic Risk Connected with Bioweapons and Synthetic Biology.Alexey Turchin, Brian Patrick Green & David Denkenberger - manuscript
    Pandemics have been suggested as global risks many times, but it has been shown that the probability of human extinction due to one pandemic is small, as it will not be able to affect and kill all people, but likely only half, even in the worst cases. Assuming that the probability of the worst pandemic to kill a person is 0.5, and assuming linear interaction between different pandemics, 30 strong pandemics running simultaneously will kill everyone. Such situations cannot happen (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  15. Let me tell you ‘bout the birds and the bee-mimicking flies and Bambiraptor.Joyce C. Havstad - 2019 - Biology and Philosophy 34 (2):25.
    Scientists have been arguing for more than 25 years about whether it is a good idea to collect voucher specimens from particularly vulnerable biological populations. Some think that, obviously, scientists should not be harvesting organisms from, for instance, critically endangered species. Others think that, obviously, it is the special job of scientists to collect precisely such information before any chance of retrieving it is forever lost. The character, extent, longevity, and span of the ongoing disagreement indicates that this is likely (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  16. Unfinished Business.Jonathan Knutzen - 2023 - Philosophers' Imprint 23 (1): 4, 1-15.
    According to an intriguing though somewhat enigmatic line of thought first proposed by Jonathan Bennett, if humanity went extinct any time soon this would be unfortunate because important business would be left unfinished. This line of thought remains largely unexplored. I offer an interpretation of the idea that captures its intuitive appeal, is consistent with plausible constraints, and makes it non-redundant to other views in the literature. The resulting view contrasts with a welfare-promotion perspective, according to which extinction would (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  17. The Worst Case: Planetary Defense against a Doomsday Impactor.Joel Marks - 2022 - Space Policy 61.
    Current planetary defense policy prioritizes a probability assessment of risk of Earth impact by an asteroid or a comet in the planning of detection and mitigation strategies and in setting the levels of urgency and budgeting to operationalize them. The result has been a focus on asteroids of Tunguska size, which could destroy a city or a region, since this is the most likely sort of object we would need to defend against. However a complete risk assessment would (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  18. The Moral Case for Long-Term Thinking.Hilary Greaves, William MacAskill & Elliott Thornley - 2021 - In Natalie Cargill & Tyler M. John (eds.), The Long View: Essays on Policy, Philanthropy, and the Long-term Future. London: FIRST. pp. 19-28.
    This chapter makes the case for strong longtermism: the claim that, in many situations, impact on the long-run future is the most important feature of our actions. Our case begins with the observation that an astronomical number of people could exist in the aeons to come. Even on conservative estimates, the expected future population is enormous. We then add a moral claim: all the consequences of our actions matter. In particular, the moral importance of what happens does not depend on (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  19. Aquatic refuges for surviving a global catastrophe.Alexey Turchin & Brian Green - 2017 - Futures 89:26-37.
    Recently many methods for reducing the risk of human extinction have been suggested, including building refuges underground and in space. Here we will discuss the perspective of using military nuclear submarines or their derivatives to ensure the survival of a small portion of humanity who will be able to rebuild human civilization after a large catastrophe. We will show that it is a very cost-effective way to build refuges, and viable solutions exist for various budgets and timeframes. Nuclear (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  20. A Meta-Doomsday Argument: Uncertainty About the Validity of the Probabilistic Prediction of the End of the World.Alexey Turchin - manuscript
    Abstract: Four main forms of Doomsday Argument (DA) exist—Gott’s DA, Carter’s DA, Grace’s DA and Universal DA. All four forms use different probabilistic logic to predict that the end of the human civilization will happen unexpectedly soon based on our early location in human history. There are hundreds of publications about the validity of the Doomsday argument. Most of the attempts to disprove the Doomsday Argument have some weak points. As a result, we are uncertain about the validity of DA (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  21. On theory X and what matters most.Simon Beard & Patrick Kaczmarek - 2022 - In Jeff McMahan, Timothy Campbell, Ketan Ramakrishnan & Jimmy Goodrich (eds.), Ethics and Existence: The Legacy of Derek Parfit. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 358-386.
    One of Derek Parfit’s greatest legacies was the search for Theory X, a theory of population ethics that avoided all the implausible conclusions and paradoxes that have dogged the field since its inception: the Absurd Conclusion, the Repugnant Conclusion, the Non-Identity Problem, and the Mere Addition Paradox. In recent years, it has been argued that this search is doomed to failure and no satisfactory population axiology is possible. This chapter reviews Parfit’s life’s work in the field and argues that he (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  22. Presumptuous Philosopher Proves Panspermia.Alexey Turchin - manuscript
    Abstract. The presumptuous philosopher (PP) thought experiment lends more credence to the hypothesis which postulates the existence of a larger number of observers than other hypothesis. The PP was suggested as a purely speculative endeavor. However, there is a class of real world observer-selection effects where it could be applied, and one of them is the possibility of interstellar panspermia (IP). There are two types of anthropic reasoning: SIA and SSA. SIA implies that my existence is an argument that larger (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  23. A Non-Identity Dilemma for Person-Affecting Views.Elliott Thornley - manuscript
    Person-affecting views state that (in cases where all else is equal) we’re permitted but not required to create people who would enjoy good lives. In this paper, I present an argument against every possible variety of person-affecting view. The argument is a dilemma over trilemmas. Narrow person-affecting views imply a trilemma in a case that I call ‘Expanded Non-Identity.’ Wide person-affecting views imply a trilemma in a case that I call ‘Two-Shot Non-Identity.’ One plausible practical upshot of my argument is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  24. Too Easy, Too Good, Too Late?Alexander Dietz - 2023 - Philosophers' Imprint 23 (1).
    Plausibly, one important part of a good life is doing work that makes a contribution, or a positive difference to the world. In this paper, however, I explore contribution pessimism, the view that people will not always have adequate opportunities for making contributions. I distinguish between three interestingly different and at least initially plausible reasons why this view might be true: in slogan form, things might become too easy, they might become too good, or we might be too late. Now, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  25. (1 other version)The epistemic challenge to longtermism.Christian Tarsney - 2023 - Synthese 201 (6):1-37.
    Longtermists claim that what we ought to do is mainly determined by how our actions might affect the very long-run future. A natural objection to longtermism is that these effects may be nearly impossible to predict — perhaps so close to impossible that, despite the astronomical importance of the far future, the expected value of our present actions is mainly determined by near-term considerations. This paper aims to precisify and evaluate one version of this epistemic objection to longtermism. To that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  26.  50
    On the Edge of Cognitive Revolution: The Impact of Neuro-Robotics on Mind and Singularity.Fatih Burak Karagöz - 2023 - Isbcs Workshop Semposium.
    The mind has always been a peculiar and elusive subject, sparking controversial theories throughout the history of philosophy. The initial theorization of the mind dates back to Orphism, which formulated a dualistic structure of soul and body (Johansen, 1999) [1], laying the foundation for Greek dualism, introspection, and the rise of metaphysical idealism. This ill-empirical stance, especially after Plato’s idea of forms, led to inaccessible theoretical concepts concerning the investigation of the relationship between body and mind. Although diverse theories provide (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  27. The Concept of Sustainable Retreat as an Answer to Anthropocene Challenges.Richard Sťahel - 2019 - In João Ribeiro Mendes & Bernhard Josef Sylla (eds.), EIBEA 2019. Encontro Iberoamericano de Estudos do Antropoceno. Atas. CEPS. pp. 195-2015.
    Critical examination of possible socio-political Anthropocene consequences leads to the conclusion that the sustainable development concept is not an adequate answer for current threats and risks. An effort to implement the sustainable development concept can even make climate changes and other forms of nature devastation worse, as it turns out on ongoing greenhouse gas concentrations growth in the atmosphere, despite obligations that result to all states of the world from Paris agreement. The climate change rate and range of plant and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  28. If now isn't the most influential time ever, when is? [REVIEW]Kritika Maheshwari - 2020 - The Philosopher 108:94-101.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  29. La fenomenología de Husserl como fundamento filosófico para la teología // The phenomenology of Husserl as a philosophical foundation for theology.Francisco-Javier Herrero-Hernández - 2019 - Aporía. International Journal for Philosophical Investigations 12:12-33.
    The main objective of this work is to achieve an understanding of Husserl's phenomenology as philosophical foundation for theology. It sustains, in the first place, that theology and philosophy do more than converge. It deepens, in second place, in the connection between phenomenology and theology, as well as in the Husserlian conception of God as entelechy and ἐνέργεια. This study concludes with a reflection, in third place, on the possibility of elaborating a theology from the phenomenological inspiration. The thesis that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  30. Deontology and Safe Artificial Intelligence.William D’Alessandro - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies:1-24.
    The field of AI safety aims to prevent increasingly capable artificially intelligent systems from causing humans harm. Research on moral alignment is widely thought to offer a promising safety strategy: if we can equip AI systems with appropriate ethical rules, according to this line of thought, they'll be unlikely to disempower, destroy or otherwise seriously harm us. Deontological morality looks like a particularly attractive candidate for an alignment target, given its popularity, relative technical tractability and commitment to harm-avoidance principles. I (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  31. Facing Janus: An Explanation of the Motivations and Dangers of AI Development.Aaron Graifman - manuscript
    This paper serves as an intuition building mechanism for understanding the basics of AI, misalignment, and the reasons for why strong AI is being pursued. The approach is to engage with both pro and anti AI development arguments to gain a deeper understanding of both views, and hopefully of the issue as a whole. We investigate the basics of misalignment, common misconceptions, and the arguments for why we would want to pursue strong AI anyway. The paper delves into various aspects (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  32. “Cheating Death in Damascus” Solution to the Fermi Paradox.Alexey Turchin & Roman Yampolskiy - manuscript
    One of the possible solutions of the Fermi paradox is that all civilizations go extinct because they hit some Late Great Filter. Such a universal Late Great Filter must be an unpredictable event that all civilizations unexpectedly encounter, even if they try to escape extinction. This is similar to the “Death in Damascus” paradox from decision theory. However, this unpredictable Late Great Filter could be escaped by choosing a random strategy for humanity’s future development. However, if all civilizations act (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  33. Human extinction and the value of our efforts.Brooke Alan Trisel - 2004 - Philosophical Forum 35 (3):371–391.
    Some people feel distressed reflecting on human extinction. Some people even claim that our efforts and lives would be empty and pointless if humanity becomes extinct, even if this will not occur for millions of years. In this essay, I will attempt to demonstrate that this claim is false. The desire for long-lastingness or quasi-immortality is often unwittingly adopted as a standard for judging whether our efforts are significant. If we accomplish our goals and then later in life conclude (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  34. Human Extinction, Narrative Ending, and Meaning of Life.Brooke Alan Trisel - 2016 - Journal of Philosophy of Life 6 (1):1-22.
    Some people think that the inevitability of human extinction renders life meaningless. Joshua Seachris has argued that naturalism can be conceptualized as a meta-narrative and that it narrates across important questions of human life, including what is the meaning of life and how life will end. How a narrative ends is important, Seachris argues. In the absence of God, and with knowledge that human extinction is a certainty, is there any way that humanity could be meaningful and have (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  35. Reparations after species extinctions: An account of reparative interspecies justice.Anna Wienhues & Alfonso Donoso - 2024 - Journal of Social Philosophy:1-21.
    While anthropogenic species extinctions can be considered morally problematic for a range of reasons, they can also be described as a problem of interspecies justice. That is the focus of this paper in which we argue that human-caused species extinctions can be integrated within a non-anthropocentric account of reparative justice that is significantly similar to how reparation is understood within political theory at large. An account such as this faces a series of difficulties, such as how to make right past (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  36. Genetic enhancement, human extinction, and the best interests of posthumanity.Jon Rueda - 2022 - Bioethics (6):529-538.
    The cumulative impact of enhancement technologies may alter the human species in the very long-term future. In this article, I will start showing how radical genetic enhancements may accelerate the conversion into a novel species. I will also clarify the concepts of ‘biological species’, ‘transhuman’ and ‘posthuman’. Then, I will summarize some ethical arguments for creating a transhuman or posthuman species with a substantially higher level of well-being than the human one. In particular, I will present what I shall call (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  37. Catastrophic risk.H. Orri Stefánsson - 2020 - Philosophy Compass 15 (11):1-11.
    Catastrophic risk raises questions that are not only of practical importance, but also of great philosophical interest, such as how to define catastrophe and what distinguishes catastrophic outcomes from non-catastrophic ones. Catastrophic risk also raises questions about how to rationally respond to such risks. How to rationally respond arguably partly depends on the severity of the uncertainty, for instance, whether quantitative probabilistic information is available, or whether only comparative likelihood information is available, or neither type of information. Finally, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  38. Why prevent human extinction?James Fanciullo - 2024 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 109 (2):650-662.
    Many of us think human extinction would be a very bad thing, and that we have moral reasons to prevent it. But there is disagreement over what would make extinction so bad, and thus over what grounds these moral reasons. Recently, several theorists have argued that our reasons to prevent extinction stem not just from the value of the welfare of future lives, but also from certain additional values relating to the existence of humanity itself (for example, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  39. Risk and value.John T. Sanders - 1996 - A.S.V.I. News 1996 (Spring):4-5.
    Which risks are bad? This is not an easy question to answer in any non-circular way. Not only are risks sought out for various reasons, but risks are plainly discounted in many situations. What may seem "risky" when examined all by itself, may not seem risky when encountered in a real lived situation. Thus risks that are imposed by others, in particular, might seem horrendous when considered in abstraction, but quite acceptable when encountered in life. What we need to do, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  40. On Risk and Rationality.Brad Armendt - 2014 - Erkenntnis 79 (S6):1-9.
    It is widely held that the influence of risk on rational decisions is not entirely explained by the shape of an agent’s utility curve. Buchak (Erkenntnis, 2013, Risk and rationality, Oxford University Press, Oxford, in press) presents an axiomatic decision theory, risk-weighted expected utility theory (REU), in which decision weights are the agent’s subjective probabilities modified by his risk-function r. REU is briefly described, and the global applicability of r is discussed. Rabin’s (Econometrica 68:1281–1292, 2000) calibration (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  41. Ecological Justice and the Extinction Crisis: Giving Living Beings their Due.Anna Wienhues - 2020 - Bristol, Vereinigtes Königreich: Bristol University Press.
    This book defends an account of justice to nonhuman beings – i.e., to animals, plants etc. – also known as ecological or interspecies justice, and which lies in the intersection of environmental political theory and environmental ethics. More specifically, against the background of the current extinction crisis this book defends a global non-ranking biocentric theory of distributive ecological/interspecies justice to wild nonhuman beings, because the extinction crisis does not only need practical solutions, but also an account of how (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  42. Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Mammoths? De-extinction and Animal Welfare.Heather Browning - 2018 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 31 (6):785-803.
    De-extinction is the process through which extinct species can be brought back into existence. Although these projects have the potential to cause great harm to animal welfare, discussion on issues surrounding de-extinction have focussed primarily on other issues. In this paper, I examine the potential types of welfare harm that can arise through de-extinction programs, including problems with cloning, captive rearing and re-introduction. I argue that welfare harm should be an important consideration when making decisions on de- (...) projects. Though most of the proposed benefits of these projects are insufficient to outweigh the current potential welfare harm, these problems may be overcome with further development of the technology and careful selection of appropriate species as de-extinction candidates. (shrink)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  43.  50
    The Risk GP Model: The standard model of prediction in medicine.Jonathan Fuller & Luis J. Flores - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 54:49-61.
    With the ascent of modern epidemiology in the Twentieth Century came a new standard model of prediction in public health and clinical medicine. In this article, we describe the structure of the model. The standard model uses epidemiological measures-most commonly, risk measures-to predict outcomes (prognosis) and effect sizes (treatment) in a patient population that can then be transformed into probabilities for individual patients. In the first step, a risk measure in a study population is generalized or extrapolated to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  44. Understanding risk in forest ecosystem services: implications for effective risk management, communication and planning.Kristina Blennow, Johannes Persson, Annika Wallin, Niklas Vareman & Erik Persson - 2014 - Forestry 87:219-228.
    Uncertainty, insufficient information or information of poor quality, limited cognitive capacity and time, along with value conflicts and ethical considerations, are all aspects thatmake risk managementand riskcommunication difficult. This paper provides a review of different risk concepts and describes how these influence risk management, communication and planning in relation to forest ecosystem services. Based on the review and results of empirical studies, we suggest that personal assessment of risk is decisive in the management of forest ecosystem (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  45. The Extinction of Masculine Generics.Brian D. Earp - 2012 - Journal for Communication and Culture 2 (1):4-19.
    In English, as in many other languages, male-gendered pronouns are sometimes used to refer not only to men, but to individuals whose gender is unknown or unspecified, to human beings in general (as in ―mankind‖) and sometimes even to females (as when the casual ―Hey guys‖ is spoken to a group of women). These so-called he/man or masculine generics have come under fire in recent decades for being sexist, even archaic, and positively harmful to women and girls; and advocates of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  46. Risk aversion and the long run.Johanna Thoma - 2018 - Ethics 129 (2):230-253.
    This article argues that Lara Buchak’s risk-weighted expected utility (REU) theory fails to offer a true alternative to expected utility theory. Under commonly held assumptions about dynamic choice and the framing of decision problems, rational agents are guided by their attitudes to temporally extended courses of action. If so, REU theory makes approximately the same recommendations as expected utility theory. Being more permissive about dynamic choice or framing, however, undermines the theory’s claim to capturing a steady choice disposition in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  47. Existential Risk and Equal Political Liberty.J. Joseph Porter & Adam F. Gibbons - forthcoming - Asian Journal of Philosophy 3.
    Rawls famously argues that the parties in the original position would agree upon the two principles of justice. Among other things, these principles guarantee equal political liberty—that is, democracy—as a requirement of justice. We argue on the contrary that the parties have reason to reject this requirement. As we show, by Rawls’ own lights, the parties would be greatly concerned to mitigate existential risk. But it is doubtful whether democracy always minimizes such risk. Indeed, no one currently knows (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  48. Existential risk from AI and orthogonality: Can we have it both ways?Vincent C. Müller & Michael Cannon - 2021 - Ratio 35 (1):25-36.
    The standard argument to the conclusion that artificial intelligence (AI) constitutes an existential risk for the human species uses two premises: (1) AI may reach superintelligent levels, at which point we humans lose control (the ‘singularity claim’); (2) Any level of intelligence can go along with any goal (the ‘orthogonality thesis’). We find that the singularity claim requires a notion of ‘general intelligence’, while the orthogonality thesis requires a notion of ‘instrumental intelligence’. If this interpretation is correct, they cannot (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  49. ‘Humanity’: Constitution, Value, and Extinction.Elizabeth Finneron-Burns - 2024 - The Monist 107 (2):99-108.
    When discussing the extinction of humanity, there does not seem to be any clear agreement about what ‘humanity’ really means. One aim of this paper is to show that it is a more slippery concept than it might at first seem. A second aim is to show the relationship between what constitutes or defines humanity and what gives it value. Often, whether and how we ought to prevent human extinction depends on what we take humanity to mean, which (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  50. Taking Risks on Behalf of Another.Johanna Thoma - 2023 - Philosophy Compass 18 (3):e12898.
    A growing number of decision theorists have, in recent years, defended the view that rationality is permissive under risk: Different rational agents may be more or less risk-averse or risk-inclined. This can result in them making different choices under risk even if they value outcomes in exactly the same way. One pressing question that arises once we grant such permissiveness is what attitude to risk we should implement when choosing on behalf of other people. Are (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
1 — 50 / 970