Global Catastrophic Risk

Sources

Seth D. Baum and Itsuki C. Handoh:

"The GCR paradigm follows from the traditional definition of risk as the product of probability and magnitude. Seminal contributions have come from philosophically oriented scholars looking at big-picture issues for risk analysis and for humanity at large. It is a remarkably interdisciplinary bunch, with contributions from economics (Ng, 1991, Weitzman, 2009), futures studies (Tonn, 1999, Tonn, 2002), law (Posner, 2004), philosophy (Bostrom, 2002, Bostrom, 2003, Leslie, 1996), physics (Rees, 2003), and risk analysis (Matheny, 2007). This diverse scholarship is unified by the theme of the high stakes associated with global catastrophes and the desire to leverage risk analytic techniques, broadly construed, to understand and address GCR. The GCR perspective highlights the importance of catastrophes causing permanent declines in global human civilization (Bostrom, 2013, Maher and Baum, 2013). The GCR epistemology is typically more reductionist, with relatively few studies analyzing risks in systemic terms (Baum et al., 2013), but it does offer careful treatment of impacts to humanity."

(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800914002262)