Review of Phil Torres’ “Morality, Foresight & Human Flourishing
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Phil Torres has just published an important new book: Morality, Foresight, and Human Flourishing: An Introduction to Existential Risks[image error]. Torres is the founding Director of the Project for Future Human Flourishing which aims to understand, and devise the means to mitigate, existential threats to humanity. Here is a brief description:
This book offers the most comprehensive scholarly survey of existential risks to date, from asteroid impacts and climate change to molecular nanotechnology and machine superintelligence. It argues that avoiding an existential catastrophe should be among our highest priorities and explores a number of high-level strategies for reducing the probability of a worst-case outcome. The dangers facing humanity this century are real and unprecedented, but the future course of civilization is not beyond our control.
Torres’ book is encyclopedic in scope. He traces the history of the field of existential risks back “its origins at the end of World War II when the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock,” up to the today, when scholars increasingly study such risks, and try to devise coping strategies. (17) But are we especially likely to go extinct today, as opposed to some time in the past? Some, like Steven Pinker of Harvard, argue that we live in the most peaceful time in human history. But Torres replies that “we might also live in the most dangerous period of human history ever. The fact is that our species is haunted by a growing swarm of risks that could either trip us into the eternal grave of extinction or irreversibly catapult us back into the Stone Age.” (21)
And while we have lived in the shadow of nuclear annihilation for more than 70 years, the number of existential risk scenarios are increasing. How great a threat do we face? A study of experts by the Future of Humanity Institute reveals that we have about a 20% chance of extinction by the end of this century. Rees is more pessimistic, arguing that we have only a 50% of surviving this century. And the doomsday clock reflects such warnings; it currently rests at two-and-a-half minutes to midnight. Compare all this to your chance of dying in an airplane crash or being killed by terrorists—the chance of either is exceedingly small.
Torres uses the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom’s definition of existential risk:
An existential risk is one that threatens the premature extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life or the permanent and drastic destruction of its potential for desirable future development. (27)
What is important to realize about these risks is that they are singular events which happen only once. Thus, our strategies to deal with them must be anticipatory not reactionary, making individual and governmental action to deal with such risks unlikely. Furthermore, the reduction of risks is a global public good, precisely the kind the market doesn’t often provide. This means that future generations would pay astronomical sums to us to increase their chance of living happily in the future, but we wouldn’t benefit much from our efforts to save them. Our incentive to help them isn’t strong.
Bostrom also differentiates between total annihilation, and existential risks that prevent us from achieving post-humanity. The latter category would include: permanent technological stagnation; flawed technological realization; and technological maturity and subsequent ruination. He also distinguishes risks in terms of scope—from personal to trans-generational—and intensity—from imperceptible to terminal. Existential risks are trans-generational and terminal.
But why should we care about existential risks? Torres answers that while a pandemic killing 100 million would be a great tragedy, as would the death of any subsequent 100 million people, the death of the last 100 million people on earth would be exponentially worse. Civilization is only a few thousand years old, and we may have an unimaginably long and bright future ahead of us, perhaps as post-humans. If so, extinction would truly be tragic, ending a civilization destined to conquer both the stars and themselves. So the expected value of the future is astronomically high, a concept that Torres calls “the astronomical value thesis.” Such considerations clarify the imperative to minimize existential risks. Torres conveys this point with a striking image.
the present moment …. is a narrow foundation upon which an extremely tall skyscraper rests. The entire future of humanity resides in this skyscraper, towering above us, stretching far beyond the clouds. If this foundation were to fail, the whole building would come crashing to the ground. Since this would be astronomically bad according to the above thesis, it behooves us to do everything possible to ensure that the foundation remains intact. The future depends crucially on the decisions we make today … and this is a moral burden that everyone should feel pressing down on their shoulders. (42)
As to why we should value future persons at all, Torres argues that considerations of time have as little to do with moral worth as considerations of space. Moral worth doesn’t depend on what country you live in. Furthermore, discounting future lives is counter-intuitive from a moral point of view. Is a life now really worth the lives of a billion or a trillion future ones? Clearly present persons have no special claim to moral worth. Thus the living should do what they can to reduce the possibility of catastrophe.
Next Torres notes how cognitive biases distort thinking about the future—most people only think about a few years in advance. Moreover, throughout history humans have thought their generation was the last one. Even today more that 40% of US Christians think that Jesus will probably or definitely return in their lifetimes, and many more Muslims believe the Mahdi will do so too.
Since these apocalyptic scenarios have not yet occurred, one might be skeptical of scientific worries about global catastrophic risks. The difference is that scientific concerns are based on reason, evidence and logic as opposed to religious faith. We should listen to rational assessment of risk, just as we should disregard what religious faith and superstition tell us about the future. However, Torres is aware that we live in an anti-intellectual age, especially in America, so reasonable concerns often go unheeded.
Torres also hopes that understanding the etiology of existential risk will help us eliminate their catastrophic effects. To better understand causal risks Torres distinguishes:
natural risks—super volcanoes, pandemics, asteroids, etc.
anthropogenic risks—nuclear weapons, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, etc., unintended risks—climate change, environmental damage, physics experiments, etc.
other risks—geoengineering, bad governance, unforeseen risks, and
context risks—for example, a nuclear armed world is likelier to destroy itself given increasing climate change and biodiversity loss.
Next Torres proposes strategies for dealing with catastrophic threats. He divides these strategies for mitigating risk as follows: 1) agent oriented; 2) tool-oriented; and 3) other options. Agent-oriented strategies refer mostly to cognitive and moral enhancement of individuals, but also deal with lessening environmental triggers, creating friendly AI, and improving social conditions. Tool-oriented strategies focus on reducing the destructive power of our existing tools, or altogether relinquishing future technologies that pose existential risks, or developing defensive technologies to deal with potential risks. Other strategies include: space colonization, tracking near-earth objects, stratospheric geonengineering, and creating subterranean aquatic or extraterrestrial bunkers.
His discussion of cognitive and moral enhancements is particularly illuminating. Cognitive enhancements, especially radical ones like nootropics, machine-brain interfaces, genetic engineering and embryo selection, seem particularly promising. Smart beings would be less likely to do stupid things like destroy themselves, and the cognitively enhanced might discover threats from phenomena that unenhanced beings could never discern. the caveat is that smarter individuals are better at carry out their nefarious plans, and cognitive enhancements would also expedite the development of new technologies, perhaps making our situation more perilous.
Similar concerns surround the issue of biological moral enhancements. Why not augment our moral dispositions of empathy, caring, and justice through genetic engineering, neural implants or mostropics? One problem is that the unenhanced may prove to be an even greater threat to the morally enhanced, so the system may only be safe if everyone is enhanced. Another problem is that the enhanced traits of sympathy and care may only be directed toward one’s in-group. In fact concerns about justice often motivate immoral acts. So we can’t be sure that moral bioenhancements are the answer either.
Torres concludes by considering multiple a priori arguments which purportedly demonstrates that we considerably underestimate the possibility of our annihilation. Still Torres doesn’t want to give in to pessimism. Instead he recommends an active optimism which recognizes risks and tries to eliminate them. So while we may be intellectually pessimistic about the future, we can still work to save the world. As Torres concludes: “The invisible hand of time inexorably pushes us forward, but the direction in which we move is not entirely outside of our control.” (223)
Reflections
This is a work of extraordinary depth and breadth, and it is carefully and conscientiously crafted. Its arguments are philosophically sophisticated, and often emotionally moving as well. Torres’ concern with preserving a future for our descendants is transparent and sincere, and readers come away from the work convinced that the problems of existential risk are of utmost importance. After all, existence is the prerequisite for … everything.
Yet reading the work fills me with sadness and despair too. For a possible, unimaginably glorious future often depends on the most reckless, narcissistic, uniformed, and vile among us. It is in the care of those ignorant of the shaky foundations of civilization, and the fragility of an ecosystem and biosphere that shield us from an unimaginably cold, dark, and inhospitable universe. Here Torres’ words resound. We must not give in to pessimism, and our optimism must not be passive. Hope must incite action.
For in the end, what keeps us going is the hope that the future might be better than the past. That, if anything, is what gives our lives meaning. If we are not as links in a chain leading onward and upward toward higher states of being and consciousness, then what is the point of our little time on earth? But to be successful in this quest we must first survive … and then flourish. That is what Torres is calling us to do. Let us hope we listen.
