What kind of person prefers human extinction over continued existence? There are a few obvious suspects. One is the “philosophical pessimist” who argues that the world is full of so much human suffering that the nonexistence of our species is better than continued existence. Another is a certain stripe of radical environmentalist who claims that humanity is so destructive to the biosphere, that only our extinction can save what remains of the natural world.
Then there is a third group of people who aren’t bothered by the possibility of human extinction, and indeed some hope to actively bring it about in the coming decades. They represent a more dangerous and extreme form of pro-extinctionist ideology that is fairly widespread within Silicon Valley. In fact, some of the most powerful people in the tech world are members of this group, such as the co-founder of Google, Larry Page." https://www.truthdig.com/articles/team-human-vs-team-posthuman-which-side-are-you-on/
Human Extinction
A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation
This volume traces the origins and evolution of the idea of human extinction, from the ancient Presocratics through contemporary work on "existential risks."
When the plastic-based carbon-breathing supercomputer species tells their stories they better TF include us like the cyanobacteria in their evolutionary tree
Its the division cased by active #divideandconquer which allows the #badguys to sit back and buy time holding off their homeland folks from doing a #coup and watch #usa STAGNANT
Actually a butterfly doesn’t know it will die but humans know we will die #
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BUT like the butterfly and us, we both don't know WHEN IT WILL HAPPEN, so it's like we can pretend we don't die, this is why we don't do ANYTHING ABOUT IT #humanextinction
>Intellectual historian Émile P. Torres @xriskology explains how Silicon Valley’s favorite ideas for changing the world for the better actually threaten to make it much, much worse.
#LongTermism#HumanExtinction#History: "Given all the suffering, pain and destruction produced by humanity, Émile Torres, who is a non-binary philosopher specialising in existential threats, thinks that it would not be a bad thing if humanity ceased to exist.
“The pro-extinctionist view,” they say, “immediately conjures up for a lot of people the image of a homicidal, ghoulish, sadistic maniac, but actually most pro-extinctionists would say that most ways of going extinct would be absolutely unacceptable. But what if everybody decided not to have children? I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
Torres has just written a book called Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation. It runs to more than 500 pages and is an impressive study of a neglected subject. Their basic thesis is that while human extinction is an ancient concern, the rise of Christianity removed it from public discourse. Despite its preoccupation with end times, Armageddon and apocalypse, Christianity emphasised the inevitable salvation and survival of humanity.
Up until now, Torres has been best known through their trenchant pieces for magazines such as Salon, aeon and Foreign Policy as a thorn in the side of the longtermist movement. The new book is a more academic rendering of the arguments they have rehearsed in these publications."
China has demolished its all-time record high temperature by more than 3° Fahrenheit at 126°F (52.2°C). The previous record was 123° (50.5°C). This is the highest temperature ever recorded anywhere in China.
On Twitter, environmental activist Bill McKibben wrote: “The temperature in China hit 126° F on Sunday That beats the old record by an almost inconceivable 3° F. The world is on fire.”
More news about these dangerous global heat storms...
Earth will become an "inferno" if the heat waves don't spur on governments to tackle global warming, a climate scientist has warned.
Humanity should expect "more frequent and intense" extreme weather events if global temperatures continue to rise at their current rate, said Dr Akshay Deoras, from the University of Reading's meteorology department.
"Rising temperatures fueled by greenhouse gas emissions are turning up the heat on Europe and the rest of our planet," said Dr Deoras.
"We knew early on that exceeding a 1.5°C warming would have catastrophic consequences for extreme weather events, including the scorching heat waves we are now seeing in Spain and Italy."
"High-impact weather the planet is experiencing is likely to become more frequent and intense in years to come," Dr Deoras said. "It's still not too late to take bold action before our planet becomes an inferno."
#History#Ethics#HumanExtinction: "The main text of my new book, Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation, is 457 pages long, or around 200,000 words. That’s a lot to read. So, I thought it might be useful to outline some of the key ideas of Part I and Part II. In brief:
Part I is an intellectual history of thinking about human extinction (mostly) within the Western tradition. When did our forebears first imagine humanity ceasing to exist? Have people always believed that human extinction is a real possibility, or were some convinced that this could never happen? How has our thinking about extinction evolved over time? Why do so many notable figures today believe that the probability of extinction this century is higher than ever before in our 300,000-year history on Earth? Exploring these questions takes us from the ancient Greeks, Persians, and Egyptians, through the 18th-century Enlightenment, past scientific breakthroughs of the 19th century like thermodynamics and evolutionary theory, up to the Atomic Age, the rise of modern environmentalism in the 1970s, and contemporary fears about climate change, global pandemics, and artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Part II is a history of Western thinking about the ethical and evaluative implications of human extinction. Would causing or allowing our extinction be morally right or wrong? Would our extinction be good or bad, better or worse compared to continuing to exist? For what reasons? Under which conditions? Do we have a moral obligation to create future people? Would past “progress” be rendered meaningless if humanity were to die out? Does the fact that we might be unique in the universe — the only “rational” and “moral” creatures — give us extra reason to ensure our survival? I place these questions under the umbrella of Existential Ethics" https://xriskology.medium.com/human-extinction-a-brief-guided-tour-of-the-book-5cfb6a5a726”"