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1 – 10 of over 3000Konrad Szocik and Rakhat Abylkasymova
Current covid-19 pandemic challenges health-care ethics. Ones of the most important challenges are medical resources allocation and a duty to treat, often addressed to medical…
Abstract
Purpose
Current covid-19 pandemic challenges health-care ethics. Ones of the most important challenges are medical resources allocation and a duty to treat, often addressed to medical personnel. This paper suggests that there are good reasons to rethink our health-care ethics for future global catastrophic risks. Current pandemic shows how challenging can be an issue of resources allocation even in a relatively small kind of catastrophic event such as covid-19 pandemic. In this paper, the authors show that any future existential bigger catastrophe may require new guidelines for the allocation of medical resources. The idea of assisted dying is considered as a hypothetical scenario.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual work based on conceptual analysis at the intersection of risk studies, health-care ethics and future studies. This study builds the argument on the assumption that the covid-19 pandemic should be treated as a sort of global catastrophic risk. Findings show that there are no such attempts in currently published peer-reviewed academic literature. This is crucial concept for the meta-analysis. This study shows why and how current pandemic can be interpreted in terms of global catastrophic risk even if, literally, covid-19 does not meet all criteria required in the risk studies to be called a global catastrophe.
Findings
We can expect an emergence of discriminatory selection policy which will require some actions taken by future patients like, for example, genetic engineering. But even then it is inevitable that there will still be a large number of survivors who require medical assistance, which they have no chance of receiving. This is why this study has considered the concept of assisted dying understood as an official protocol for health-care ethics and resources allocation policy in the case of emergency situations. Possibly more controversial idea discussed in this paper is an idea of assisted dying for those who cannot receive required medical help. Such procedure could be applied in a mass-scale during a global catastrophic event.
Research limitations/implications
Philosophers and ethicists should identify and study all possible pros and cons of this discrimination rule. As this study’s findings suggested above, a reliable point of reference is the concept of substantial human enhancement. Human enhancement as such, widely debated, should be studied in that specific context of discrimination of patients in an access to limited medical resources. Last but not least, scientific community should study the concept of assisted dying which could be applied for those survivors who have no chance of obtaining medical care. Such criteria and concepts as cost-benefit analysis, the ethics of quality of life, autonomy of patients and duty of medical personnel should be considered.
Practical implications
Politicians and policymakers should prepare protocols for global catastrophes where these discrimination criteria would have to be applied. The same applies to the development of medical robotics aimed at replacing human health-care personnel. We assume that this is important implication for practical policy in healthcare. Our prediction, however plausible, is not a good scenario for humanity. But given this realistic development trajectory, we should do everything possible to prevent the need for the discriminatory rules in medical care described above.
Originality/value
This study offers the idea of assisted dying as a health-care policy in emergency situations. The authors expect that next future global catastrophes – looking at the current pandemic only as a mild prelude – will force a radical change in moral values and medical standards. New criteria of selection and discrimination will be perceived as much more exclusivist and unfair than criteria applied today.
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To describe anticipatory risk as a fundamental pillar for a framework of international law in relation to global terrorism.
Abstract
Purpose
To describe anticipatory risk as a fundamental pillar for a framework of international law in relation to global terrorism.
Design/methodology/approach
Economic terrorism and global terrorist transactions are used as a case study to demonstrate asymmetric financial crime and vulnerabilities of financial districts, economies and populations.
Findings
The act of anticipation of risk is quantifiable and imposes a duty to manage foreseeable catastrophic consequences. Such a duty in turn creates a proportionate reaction that can be recognised in law.
Practical implications
Recommendations are made for international discussions by jurists, global agreements through the United Nations and the G8 and for national laws, corporate governance standards and regulatory measures to become a seamless extension of the international framework.
Originality/value
Commercial law, criminal law and the international laws and conventions of war require a framework that defines foreseeability, catastrophic risk, uncertainty, adequacy and proportionality.
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This paper aims to consider few cognitive and conceptual obstacles to engagement with global catastrophic risks (GCRs).
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to consider few cognitive and conceptual obstacles to engagement with global catastrophic risks (GCRs).
Design/methodology/approach
The paper starts by considering cognitive biases that affect general thinking about GCRs, before questioning whether existential risks really are dramatically more pressing than other GCRs. It then sets out a novel typology of GCRs – sexy vs unsexy risks – before considering a particularly unsexy risk, overpopulation.
Findings
It is proposed that many risks commonly regarded as existential are “sexy” risks, while certain other GCRs are comparatively “unsexy.” In addition, it is suggested that a combination of complexity, cognitive biases and a hubris-laden failure of imagination leads us to neglect the most unsexy and pervasive of all GCRs: human overpopulation. The paper concludes with a tentative conceptualisation of overpopulation as a pattern of risking.
Originality/value
The paper proposes and conceptualises two new concepts, sexy and unsexy catastrophic risks, as well as a new conceptualisation of overpopulation as a pattern of risking.
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Alexey Turchin and Brian Patrick Green
Islands have long been discussed as refuges from global catastrophes; this paper will evaluate them systematically, discussing both the positives and negatives of islands as…
Abstract
Purpose
Islands have long been discussed as refuges from global catastrophes; this paper will evaluate them systematically, discussing both the positives and negatives of islands as refuges. There are examples of isolated human communities surviving for thousands of years on places like Easter Island. Islands could provide protection against many low-level risks, notably including bio-risks. However, they are vulnerable to tsunamis, bird-transmitted diseases and other risks. This paper aims to explore how to use the advantages of islands for survival during global catastrophes.
Design/methodology/approach
Preliminary horizon scanning based on the application of the research principles established in the previous global catastrophic literature.
Findings
The large number of islands on Earth, and their diverse conditions, increase the chance that one of them will provide protection from a catastrophe. Additionally, this protection could be increased if an island was used as a base for a nuclear submarine refuge combined with underground bunkers and/or extremely long-term data storage. The requirements for survival on islands, their vulnerabilities and ways to mitigate and adapt to risks are explored. Several existing islands, suitable for the survival of different types of risk, timing and budgets, are examined. Islands suitable for different types of refuges and other island-like options that could also provide protection are also discussed.
Originality/value
The possible use of islands as refuges from social collapse and existential risks has not been previously examined systematically. This paper contributes to the expanding research on survival scenarios.
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This paper provides a detailed survey of the greatest dangers facing humanity this century. It argues that there are three broad classes of risks – the “Great Challenges” – that…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper provides a detailed survey of the greatest dangers facing humanity this century. It argues that there are three broad classes of risks – the “Great Challenges” – that deserve our immediate attention, namely, environmental degradation, which includes climate change and global biodiversity loss; the distribution of unprecedented destructive capabilities across society by dual-use emerging technologies; and value-misaligned algorithms that exceed human-level intelligence in every cognitive domain. After examining each of these challenges, the paper then outlines a handful of additional issues that are relevant to understanding our existential predicament and could complicate attempts to overcome the Great Challenges. The central aim of this paper is to constitute an authoritative resource, insofar as this is possible in a scholarly journal, for scholars who are working on or interested in existential risks. In the author’s view, this is precisely the sort of big-picture analysis that humanity needs more of, if we wish to navigate the obstacle course of existential dangers before us.
Design/methodology/approach
Comprehensive literature survey that culminates in a novel theoretical framework for thinking about global-scale risks.
Findings
If humanity wishes to survive and prosper in the coming centuries, then we must overcome three Great Challenges, each of which is sufficient to cause a significant loss of expected value in the future.
Originality/value
The Great Challenges framework offers a novel scheme that highlights the most pressing global-scale risks to human survival and prosperity. The author argues that the “big-picture” approach of this paper exemplifies the sort of scholarship that humanity needs more of to properly understand the various existential hazards that are unique to the twenty-first century.
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A particularly sensitive strand of this debate focuses on ‘existential’ risks. This concern was voiced in a terse but influential recent statement by Center for AI Safety (CAIS)…
Details
DOI: 10.1108/OXAN-DB280345
ISSN: 2633-304X
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Geographic
Topical
Seth D. Baum, Stuart Armstrong, Timoteus Ekenstedt, Olle Häggström, Robin Hanson, Karin Kuhlemann, Matthijs M. Maas, James D. Miller, Markus Salmela, Anders Sandberg, Kaj Sotala, Phil Torres, Alexey Turchin and Roman V. Yampolskiy
This paper aims to formalize long-term trajectories of human civilization as a scientific and ethical field of study. The long-term trajectory of human civilization can be defined…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to formalize long-term trajectories of human civilization as a scientific and ethical field of study. The long-term trajectory of human civilization can be defined as the path that human civilization takes during the entire future time period in which human civilization could continue to exist.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper focuses on four types of trajectories: status quo trajectories, in which human civilization persists in a state broadly similar to its current state into the distant future; catastrophe trajectories, in which one or more events cause significant harm to human civilization; technological transformation trajectories, in which radical technological breakthroughs put human civilization on a fundamentally different course; and astronomical trajectories, in which human civilization expands beyond its home planet and into the accessible portions of the cosmos.
Findings
Status quo trajectories appear unlikely to persist into the distant future, especially in light of long-term astronomical processes. Several catastrophe, technological transformation and astronomical trajectories appear possible.
Originality/value
Some current actions may be able to affect the long-term trajectory. Whether these actions should be pursued depends on a mix of empirical and ethical factors. For some ethical frameworks, these actions may be especially important to pursue.
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The purpose of this study is to create an ethical norm that will help guide the human race toward long-term survival.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to create an ethical norm that will help guide the human race toward long-term survival.
Design/methodology/approach
The project posits a new societal ethical norm designed around a fundamental principle: the long-term survival of the human race with individual dignity. This study examines the requirements of the new norm and what is needed to achieve that goal.
Findings
There are three types of organizations that have the organizational and economic capacity to be responsible for future outcomes: governments, religions and corporations. These three types of organizations must act as if they have a moral compass that will compel them to develop and uphold the requirements for the survival of humanity with individual dignity.
Research limitations/implications
The analysis shows that a new, broader ethical norm must be established, and this norm implies that large organizations must act with a future embracing ethical behavior.
Practical implications
This study generates specific pathways for example: governments should adopt the just war principles and prohibitions on governments or other institutions from teaching any form of class superiority. These and other pathways are designed to diffuse threats to the fundamental principle.
Social implications
The fundamental principle includes universal human dignity. This means that the notion of individual dignity must be defined or understood, and the requirements to attain this goal must be identified.
Originality/value
This project takes concepts from long-termism, forward-looking collective responsibility, corporate social responsibility and the global catastrophic risk institute to advocate for a new ethical norm.
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David Denkenberger, Joshua Pearce, Andrew Ray Taylor and Ryan Black
The purpose of this study is to estimate the price and life-saving potential of alternate foods. The sun could be blocked by asteroid impact, supervolcanic eruption or nuclear…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to estimate the price and life-saving potential of alternate foods. The sun could be blocked by asteroid impact, supervolcanic eruption or nuclear winter caused by burning of cities during a nuclear war. The primary problem in these scenarios is loss of food production. Previous work has shown that alternate foods not dependent on sunlight, such as bacteria grown on natural gas and cellulose turned into sugar enzymatically, could feed everyone in these catastrophes, and preparation for these foods would save lives in a manner that is highly cost-effective.
Design/methodology/approach
This study estimates the price of alternate foods during a catastrophe in line with global trade and information sharing, but factors such as migration, loans, aid or conflict are not taken into consideration.
Findings
Without alternate foods, for a five-year winter, only approximately 10 per cent of the population would survive. The price of dry food would rise to approximately $100/kg, and the expenditure on this food would be approximately $100tn. If alternate foods were $8/kg, the surviving global population increases to approximately 70 per cent, saving >4billion lives.
Research limitations/implications
A nongovernmental mechanism for coordinating the investments of rich people may be possible. Identifying companies whose interests align with alternate food preparations may save lives at a negative cost.
Practical implications
The probability of loss of civilization and its impact on future generations would be lower in this scenario, and the total expenditure on food would be halved.
Originality/value
Preparation for alternate foods is a good investment even for wealthy people who would survive without alternate foods.
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