Archive for the ‘existential risks’ category: Page 102
Feb 25, 2016
WW3 Could Be Thermonuclear, With ‘Human-machine’ Teams
Posted by Karen Hurst in category: existential risks
Feb 21, 2016
100-foot asteroid to zoom past Earth in two weeks; no chance of collision, scientists say
Posted by Karen Hurst in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks
An article for the “Dooms Day” fans.
An asteroid roughly 100 feet long and moving at more than 34,000 mph is scheduled to make a close pass by Earth in two weeks.
But don’t worry, scientists say. It has no chance of hitting us, and may instead help draw public attention to growing efforts at tracking the thousands of asteroids zooming around space that could one day wipe out a city — or worse — if they ever hit our planet.
Feb 5, 2016
Strategies for Growing the Transhumanism Movement
Posted by Zoltan Istvan in categories: existential risks, geopolitics, life extension, Ray Kurzweil, transhumanism
https://youtube.com/watch?v=MGbGVGgoSPo
An article on transhumanism in the Huff Post:
Future Transhumanist City — Image by Sam Howzit
Transhumanism–the international movement that aims to use science and technology to improve the human being–has been growing quickly in the last few years. Everywhere one looks, there seems to be more and more people embracing radical technology that is already dramatically changing lives. Ideas that seemed science fiction just a decade ago are now here.
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Jan 21, 2016
Martin Rees: Can we prevent the end of the world?
Posted by Michael Paton in category: existential risks
Very well thought out, quite intelligent points.
A post-apocalyptic Earth, emptied of humans, seems like the stuff of science fiction TV and movies. But in this short, surprising talk, Lord Martin Rees asks us to think about our real existential risks — natural and human-made threats that could wipe out humanity. As a concerned member of the human race, he asks: What’s the worst thing that could possibly happen?
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Jan 21, 2016
Scientist dismisses Stephen Hawking’s doomsday predictions
Posted by Karen Hurst in categories: existential risks, robotics/AI
Yuste v. Hawkins — battle of the brains.
Renowned neuroscientist Rafael Yuste on Wednesday dismissed the latest doomsday predictions of Stephen Hawking, saying the British astrophysicist “doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
In a recent lecture in London, Hawking indicated that advances in science and technology will lead to “new ways things can go wrong,” especially in the field of artificial intelligence.
Yuste, a Columbia University neuroscience professor, was less pessimistic. “We don’t have enough knowledge to be able to say such things,” he told Radio Cooperativa in Santiago, Chile.
Jan 19, 2016
A Brief History of Stephen Hawking Being a Bummer
Posted by Sean Brazell in categories: engineering, existential risks, genetics, sustainability
Yeah, he’s turned into quite the man-of-panic as of late.
Stephen Hawking is at it again, saying it’s a “near certainty” that a self-inflicted disaster will befall humanity within the next thousand years or so. It’s not the first time the world’s most famous physicist has raised the alarm on the apocalypse, and he’s starting to become a real downer. Here are some of the other times Hawking has said the end is nigh—and why he needs to start changing his message.
Speaking to the Radio Times recently ahead of his BBC Reith Lecture, Hawking said that ongoing developments in science and technology are poised to create “new ways things can go wrong.” The scientist pointed to nuclear war, global warming, and genetically-engineering viruses as some of the most serious culprits.
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Jan 13, 2016
7 Mind-Blowing Digital Health Tools That Could Disrupt Health Care in 2016
Posted by Karen Hurst in categories: biotech/medical, computing, cyborgs, electronics, existential risks, health, wearables
Wow!!! Chewing gum wearable technology, Cyborg Chips, Ingestible sensors to let doctors know if you’re taking your meds, etc. 2016 is going to be interesting
The phrase “Brave New World” has become one of the most often used clichés in medical technology in recent years. Google the title of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian, and anticipatory, novel with the word medicine and 2,940,000 results appear.
But could there be better shorthand to describe some of the recent developments in medical, health and bio-tech? Consider these possibilities coming to fruition, or close to, in 2016:
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Jan 9, 2016
NASA establishes office to guard against extinction-level asteroids
Posted by Sean Brazell in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks
NASA’s new Planetary Defense Coordination Office is charged with supervising efforts to plan for potential asteroid threats to Earth.
Dec 28, 2015
Can We Evolve Ourselves To Expand Beyond Human Potential?
Posted by Dan Faggella in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, evolution, existential risks, genetics, human trajectories
At one time or another, we’ve all been encouraged to “maximize our potential.” In a recent interview, Academic and Entrepreneur Juan Enriquez said that mankind is making progress toward expanding beyond its potential. And the changes, he believes, could be profound.
To illustrate the process, Enriquez theorized what might happen if we were to bring Charles Darwin back to life and drop him in the middle of Trafalgar Square. As Darwin takes out his notebook and starts observing, Enriquez suggested he would likely see what might appear to be a different species. Since Darwin’s time, humans have grown taller, and with 1.5 billion obese people, larger. Darwin might also notice some other features too that many of us take for granted — there are more senior citizens, more people with all their teeth, a lot fewer wrinkles, and even some 70-year-olds running in marathons.
“There’s a whole series of morphologies that are just different about our bodies, but we don’t notice it. We don’t notice we’ve doubled the lifespan of humans in the last century,” Enriquez said. “We don’t notice how many more informations (sic) come into a brain in a single day versus what used to come in in a lifetime. So, across almost every part of humanity, there have been huge changes.”
Part of the difference that Darwin would see, Enriquez noted, is that natural selection no longer applies as strongly to life and death as it once did. Further, random gene mutations that led to some advantages kept getting passed down to generations and became part of the species. The largest difference, however, is our ongoing move toward intelligent design, he said.
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