History of Existential Risk and the People Who Worked to Mitigate It
* Chapter/Article: A Brief History of Existential Risk and the People Who Worked to Mitigate It’ by SJ Beard and Rachel Bronson. In: The Era of Global Risk: An Introduction to Existential Risk Studies. Edited by SJ Beard, Martin Rees, Catherine Richards, and Clarissa Rios Rojas. CSER,
URL = https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0336.pdf
Summary
"Our first chapter, ‘A Brief History of Existential Risk and the People Who Worked to Mitigate It’ by SJ Beard and Rachel Bronson, provides a historical account of our growing understanding of global risks and how scientists and others have worked to mitigate them. Looking back over the past 75 years, the chapter shows us how humanity has had to grapple with threats from nuclear weapons, environmental breakdown, and novel technologies to the political and technological forces that created them. However, it also surveys the many active scientific and political movements that have worked to avert disaster, as curious, compassionate, and courageous people have sought to understand these terrifying forces, bring them to wider public attention, and work to prevent human extinction and the collapse of civilisation. Using the iconic Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists as a guide, it briefly tells the story of some of these people and organisations who sought to guide us safely through the 20th century and beyond. Understanding this history both helps us to understand the risks that continue to threaten humanity and offers opportunities to learn from the successes and failures of the past, rather than focusing only on whatever catastrophe is most immediate in our collective attention. In particular, the chapter highlights the importance of reinforcing key messages about risks, modelling extreme scenarios, managing the pace of scientific research, and placing its findings in the public domain— messages which are echoed in subsequent chapters."
(https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0336.pdf)
History
SJ Beard and Rachel Bronson:
"The very idea that humanity was vulnerable to going extinct in this way may be a relatively recent invention. It arose from the scientific discovery of prehistoric fossils and its implication of a ‘deep past’ during which evidence of extinctions was incontrovertible, our growing awareness that there is no great difference in kind between humans and other species, the spread of secular atheism, and the acceleration of social, scientific, and technological change.2 Perhaps the first group to fully express this change in thinking were authors of speculative fiction. For instance, Mary Shelley, one of the founders of science fiction, wrote The Last Man in 1826,3 which tells the story of Lionel, who witnesses the death of all other humans in the last few decades of the 21st century from a series of apocalyptic events, most notably a worldwide plague. The first mention of human extinction being caused by self-improving machines comes from Samuel Butler’s 1863 Darwin Among the Machines, later reprinted as part of his novel Erewhon.4, 5 Similarly, the first discussion of the existential risk posed by atomic weaponry is arguably found in H.G. Wells’s The World Set Free,6 while more recently, sci-fi authors have been among the first to explore how humanity may bring about its own demise through our harmful influence on planet Earth.7 Such writers not only captured the popular imagination but also directly influenced academic research. H.G. Wells’s 1901 book Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought,8 for instance, is a foundational text for the academic discipline of Futures Studies, a subject of vital importance to our understanding of existential risk.9 Wells also wrote at least two nonfiction, if not entirely serious, essays on the risk of human extinction, ‘On Extinction’ and ‘The Extinction of Man’,10 while the first book-length non-fiction work to classify and explore the entire range of possible existential catastrophes was Isaac Asimov’s A Choice of Catastrophes.11 Yet, while they have a vital role in raising awareness and exploring different futures, science-fiction authors are often the first to argue for the importance of the hard science on which they draw. Thus, the true foundation of the study of existential risk belongs to a group of pioneering scientists and philosophers working during and shortly after World War II, who became concerned about several overlapping trends and developments with the potential to significantly threaten humanity’s future.
Worries about the risk of a global catastrophe first gained major scientific attention after World War II, with widespread concern about nuclear weapons and their potential to wipe humanity off the face of the Earth. The speed and violence with which nuclear technology evolved was breathtaking, even to those closely involved in its development."
(https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0336.pdf)
More information
* Article/Chapter: Theories and Models: Understanding and Predicting Societal Collapse. by Sabin Roman. In: The Era of Global Risk: An Introduction to Existential Risk Studies. Edited by SJ Beard, Martin Rees, Catherine Richards, and Clarissa Rios Rojas. CSER,
URL = https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0336.pdf