02505cam a2200265 i 4500 on1140727036 OCoLC ta 200217t20202020enka b 001 0 eng c 9781913029845 1913029840 (OCoLC)1140727036 YDX eng rda YDX BDX OCLCQ STF OCLCO QH78 .M69 2020 Moynihan, Thomas, 1992- X-risk : how humanity discovered its own extinction / Thomas Moynihan Falmouthม U.K. : Urbanomic, 2020. 472 p. : ill. Includes bibliographical references (pages 427-458) and indexes Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright -- X-Risk: A Timeline -- 0. Introduction: Why a History of the Future? -- 1. A Very Rational End of the World -- 2. Cosmic Silences: Astrobiology -- 3. Earth Systems: Geoscience -- 4. Future Trajectories: Forecasting -- 5. Internal Contradictions: Omnicide -- 6. Physical Salvation: Vocation -- Acknowledgements -- Bibliography How humanity came to contemplate its possible extinction. From forecasts of disastrous climate change to prophecies of evil AI superintelligences and the impending perils of genome editing, our species is increasingly concerned with the prospects of its own extinction. With humanity's future on this planet seeming more insecure by the day, in the twenty-first century, existential risk has become the object of a growing field of serious scientific inquiry. But, as Thomas Moynihan shows in X-Risk, this preoccupation is not exclusive to the post-atomic age of global warming and synthetic biology. Our growing concern with human extinction itself has a history. Tracing this untold story, Moynihan revisits the pioneers who first contemplated the possibility of human extinction and stages the historical drama of this momentous discovery. He shows how, far from being a secular reprise of religious prophecies of apocalypse, existential risk is a thoroughly modern idea, made possible by the burgeoning sciences and philosophical tumult of the Enlightenment era. In recollecting how we first came to care for our extinction, Moynihan reveals how today's attempts to measure and mitigate existential threats are the continuation of a project initiated over two centuries ago, which concerns the very vocation of the human as a rational, responsible, and future-oriented being. Extinction (Biology) Human beings. lcc BK 0 0 0 0 PNLIB PNLIB GEN 2021-06-17 QH78 .M69 2020 PNLIB21060117 2021-06-17 2021-06-17 BK 303 303