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Cargando... The Precipice: ‘A book that seems made for the present moment’ New Yorker (edición 2020)por Toby Ord (Autor)
Información de la obraThe Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity por Toby Ord
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Fascinating and greatly important book. Gave me a much clearer idea on the arguments behind longtermism and was enjoyable to read otherwise. Although, I wish the footnotes were differentiated between "more information" and "citations", since I had to do a lot of flipping back and forth, and I only really cared about the "more information" footnotes. ( ) In a book encompassing nothing less than the entirety of human potential Toby Orb has written a thorough, statistic-laden, intelligent and slightly tepid response to all the things which could go wrong in the worst of all possible nightmares. Asteroids, climate change, nuclear war, volcanos, exploding stars, AI — everything (save one thing) which poses natural or anthropogenic annihilation of all human potential (as opposed to just those threats which could cause the extinction of the species) is gamed out, mathematically and logically. Herein lies the only real problem with the book. In another recent book, The Republican Brain: the Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality, Chris Mooney points out that such factual counterpointing rarely has the desired effect. Mooney says:
For the record, I am the one bringing the political divide into the discussion, not Orb, who despite being so thorough and insightful, has failed to recognize the one, previously alluded to, missing existential threat: stupidity, for which we are currently in boundless supply. It wasn’t because someone came along with the right facts and figures that the German people joined hands with madmen, men so efficient and stunningly pathological in killing that we needed to promote a word to proper status just to describe it. (Holocaust.) No. One of the madmen told them a story and apparently made it irresistible. Because of this, 17 million people were slaughtered. The Precipice is a book of popular nonfiction, and so the oversight is a double-strike against it: first because popular books need a compelling story and, second, because a message this important must be sharp in tooth and claw. Nothing that is here needs to be removed. Ord simply wrote half of a book, forgetting the Dionysian tragedy which should have accompanied the Apollonian luminescence penetrating his subject. His subject is our subject, after all. What could be more important than that? Let’s hope we have future storytellers with sufficient grit for the telling. The premise of this book is that humanity's future's (potentially) so bright [we] gotta wear shades. Therefore, we must plan for and avoid potential existential risks that could make this bright future impossible to achieve. I give this effort 4 stars because it's well written, researched and documented. Over 200 pages are devoted to detailed notes, appendices, bibliography and an index, which is a definite plus in a work of this type. Clearly this book is well researched and thought out. However, I find the premise that Humanity is an entity with agency and the capacity to be harmed by an existential crisis unconvincing, even if only metaphorical. I'm much more concerned with problems not considered as existential threats by this author: basically problems that cause actual suffering to actual living, sentient beings who no doubt number in the trillions. "The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject ... And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them ... Let us be satisfied with what we have found out, and let our descendants also contribute something to the truth ... Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced." -- Seneca the Younger, 65 CE The thesis of The Precipice is about how we're on the brink of destroying ourselves if we're not careful. However, I love the above quote because it sets aside the risk narrative for a moment to remind us of what we stand to gain. That the civilization we're building is a contribution from all of us even if few of us will ever appreciate the scale of our collective gift. Oxford ethics philosopher Ord judges that nothing is more important than safeguarding the existence of far-future human generations (and, I'd hope, transhuman ones) and finds that "the chance of an existential catastrophe striking humanity in the next hundred years is about one in six." He calculates that anthropogenic risks (such as nuclear war, climate change, and rogue AI) outweigh natural ones (such as asteroids and supervolcanoes) by a factor of 1000. It's a major, detailed work -- an important book that can serve either as an average-length semi-popularization, if one just reads the main text, or as somewhat of a scholarly tome, if one takes care to also read all the meaty endnotes (and the 7 appendices).
Ord implies that there is relatively little need to adjudicate traditional ethical debates right now, that this can instead be left for the Long Reflection. ... But I believe The Precipice in fact brings into focus a number of ethical and other philosophical debates the adjudication of which cannot wait. ... Ord's book is the best starting place for philosophers looking to participate in this vital interdisciplinary endeavor. I suspect that the greatest resistance to The Precipice will be to its use of the first-person plural. It isn’t a stylistic objection; it takes us, rather, to the heart of the project. Getting you to occupy this “we,” where Ord’s argument is clarified and its urgency most deeply felt, is the book’s most incredible work. I urge caution against setting our action threshold to the level of a global catastrophe, which could distort the way we prioritize our next decisions. But Ord’s map of the existential risk landscape is an engaging read for anyone who wants to learn more about this important and interdisciplinary research. In a book that seems made for the present moment, Ord, a moral philosopher, examines and seeks to quantify existential risk—the looming threats that might someday wipe out humanity. It’s not a gloomy book. Ord doesn’t take the easy route of bemoaning the human race as despoilers or vandals; he loves it and wants it to thrive. We have achieved so much — come to understand the universe, reduced poverty and illnesses — and he wants us to carry on doing so. The final section on our potential, should we survive the ‘precipice’ of the next century or two, is moving and poetic ...
From one of the world's leading moral voices, this urgent and eye-opening book makes the case that protecting humanity's future is the central challenge of our time. If all goes well, human history is just beginning. Our species could survive for billions of years enough time to end disease, poverty, and injustice, and to flourish in ways unimaginable today. But this vast future is at risk. With the advent of nuclear weapons, humanity entered a new age, where we face existential catastrophes those from which we could never come back. Since then, these dangers have only multiplied, from climate change to engineered pathogens and unaligned artificial intelligence. If we do not act fast to reach a place of safety, it will soon be too late. Drawing on over a decade of research, The Precipice explores the cutting-edge science behind the risks we face. It puts them in the context of the greater story of humanity, showing how ending these risks is among the most pressing moral issues of our time. And it points the way forward, to the actions and strategies that can safeguard humanity. An Oxford philosopher committed to putting ideas into action, Toby Ord has advised the US National Intelligence Council, the UK Prime Ministers Office, and the World Bank on the greatest challenges facing humanity. In The Precipice, he offers a startling reassessment of human history, the future we are failing to protect, and the steps we must take to ensure that our generation is not the last. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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