Global Catastrophic Risks

Citation

(2009), "Global Catastrophic Risks", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 18 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2009.07318cae.003

Global Catastrophic Risks

Global Catastrophic Risks

Article Type: Book reviews From: Disaster Prevention and Management, Volume 18, Issue 3

Edited by Nick Bostrom and Milan Cirkovic,Oxford University Press,Oxford,www.oup.com2008,554 pp.,ISBN 978-0-19-857050-9,$50 (hard cover)

In the hazards field, you get used to thinking about the unthinkable, but maybe not to the same extent of the authors represented in this volume. Very large, very unlikely hazards – asteroids smashing into the planet, hostile artificial intelligence run amok, catastrophic climate change, invasion by space aliens, catastrophic nuclear terrorism - get in-depth analysis in this book that examines a vast scope of remotely possible global hazards that could annihilate human existence.

Despite the fact most chapters touch on the extinction of human life, the volume is remarkably entertaining and readable. For instance, “Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks”, by Eliezer Yudkowsky, a research fellow at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, offers a clear overview of why people tend to underestimate their risks and what biases influence those perceptions. The disconcerting conclusion is biases are difficult – and perhaps impossible – to overcome. This is somehow strangely reassuring. We are all rowing the same boat.

The book gives a long overview on how we think about global risks and surveys the likelihood of various natural and man-made catastrophes. It is risk assessment meets science fiction. One chapter, for instance, addresses a War of the Worlds scenario in which we face the possibility of global conflict with hostile extraterrestrial intelligent beings.

The reality of the risk depends on:

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  the feasibility of conflict over huge interstellar distances;

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  the magnitude of threat such a conflict would present; and

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  motivation and willingness of intelligent communities to engage in this form of conflict.

The convergence of these factors inspiring hostile intergalactic takeovers seems remote, the chapter concludes. That is a relief.