Apr 22 2024
213R_Defence in depth against human extinction: prevention, response, resilience, and why they all matter (research summary)
Are you interested in existential risks?
Summary of the article titled Defence in depth against human extinction: prevention, response, resilience, and why they all matter from 2020 by Owen Cotton-Barratt, Max Daniel, and Anders Sandberg, published in the Global Policy journal.
This is a great preparation to our next interview with Anders Sandberg in episode 214 talking about the humanity’s existential risks, among others.
Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see what can jeopardise humanity’s, and thus cities’ future. This article investigates the classification of existential risks to help prepare for those.
As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:
To effectively manage extinction risks, it's essential to invest in three defence layers: prevention, response, and resilience, ensuring comprehensive risk management across different stages of potential catastrophic events.Identifying and categorizing the origins and scaling mechanisms of risks, including natural disasters, technological advancements, and human actions, are crucial for developing targeted interventions and policy recommendations.Strengthening global governance and cooperation among nations, alongside focusing on underlying risk factors such as global interdependencies, is vital for enhancing humanity's overall defences against existential threats.
Check out the article through this link.
Abstract: We look at classifying extinction risks in three different ways, which affect how we can intervene to reduce risk. First, how does it start causing damage? Second, how does it reach the scale of a global catastrophe? Third, how does it reach everyone? In all of these three phases there is a defence layer that blocks most risks: First, we can prevent catastrophes from occurring. Second, we can respond to catastrophes before they reach a global scale. Third, humanity is resilient against extinction even in the face of global catastrophes. The largest probability of extinction is posed when all of these defences are weak, that is, by risks we are unlikely to prevent, unlikely to successfully respond to, and unlikely to be resilient against. We find that it’s usually best to invest significantly into strengthening all three defence layers. We also suggest ways to do so tailored to the classes of risk we identify. Lastly, we discuss the importance of underlying risk factors – events or structural conditions that may weaken the defence layers even without posing a risk of immediate extinction themselves.
Connecting episodes you might be interested in:
No.088R - The costs and benefits of environmental sustainability;No.101R - What we owe the future?;
You can find the transcript through this link.
What wast the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Let me know on Twitter @WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the shownotes are also available.
I hope this was an interesting episode for you and thanks for tuning in.
Music by Lesfm from Pixabay
