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Archive for the ‘existential risks’ category: Page 102

Jan 13, 2016

7 Mind-Blowing Digital Health Tools That Could Disrupt Health Care in 2016

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, cyborgs, electronics, existential risks, health, wearables

Wow!!! Chewing gum wearable technology, Cyborg Chips, Ingestible sensors to let doctors know if you’re taking your meds, etc. 2016 is going to be interesting


The phrase “Brave New World” has become one of the most often used clichés in medical technology in recent years. Google the title of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian, and anticipatory, novel with the word medicine and 2,940,000 results appear.

But could there be better shorthand to describe some of the recent developments in medical, health and bio-tech? Consider these possibilities coming to fruition, or close to, in 2016:

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Jan 9, 2016

NASA establishes office to guard against extinction-level asteroids

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks

NASA’s new Planetary Defense Coordination Office is charged with supervising efforts to plan for potential asteroid threats to Earth.

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Dec 28, 2015

Can We Evolve Ourselves To Expand Beyond Human Potential?

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, evolution, existential risks, genetics, human trajectories

At one time or another, we’ve all been encouraged to “maximize our potential.” In a recent interview, Academic and Entrepreneur Juan Enriquez said that mankind is making progress toward expanding beyond its potential. And the changes, he believes, could be profound.

To illustrate the process, Enriquez theorized what might happen if we were to bring Charles Darwin back to life and drop him in the middle of Trafalgar Square. As Darwin takes out his notebook and starts observing, Enriquez suggested he would likely see what might appear to be a different species. Since Darwin’s time, humans have grown taller, and with 1.5 billion obese people, larger. Darwin might also notice some other features too that many of us take for granted — there are more senior citizens, more people with all their teeth, a lot fewer wrinkles, and even some 70-year-olds running in marathons.

“There’s a whole series of morphologies that are just different about our bodies, but we don’t notice it. We don’t notice we’ve doubled the lifespan of humans in the last century,” Enriquez said. “We don’t notice how many more informations (sic) come into a brain in a single day versus what used to come in in a lifetime. So, across almost every part of humanity, there have been huge changes.”

Part of the difference that Darwin would see, Enriquez noted, is that natural selection no longer applies as strongly to life and death as it once did. Further, random gene mutations that led to some advantages kept getting passed down to generations and became part of the species. The largest difference, however, is our ongoing move toward intelligent design, he said.

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Dec 28, 2015

Terminus: Movie Trailer

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, entertainment, existential risks

Blinded by the light of a falling meteor, David has a devastating car accident, leading to a profound discovery: an extra-terrestrial organism that may contain the secret of life itself. When David goes missing for two days, Annabelle searches for her father only to discover him wandering the forest, without so much as a scratch. David’s mysterious reappearance draws the attention of federal authorities and gives Annabelle reason to doubt his sanity. But David has a new sense of purpose, fueled by nightmarish visions. Driven by what he believes is an otherworldly purpose, David must convince Annabelle to believe him and complete his task before government agents can stop him, and before the world destroys itself.

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Dec 19, 2015

This Simple Video Explain Where All The Aliens Are And Why We Haven’t Found Them Yet

Posted by in categories: existential risks, physics

The “Fermi Paradox” and “The Great Filter.”


Our universe is huge and some parts are very old and if we somehow happen to live on a planet that’s fairly young, aliens must also exist somewhere. But where the hell are they? Kurz Gesagt tries to find an answer in this beautiful animation explainer that traces on The Fermi Paradox and different kinds of potential civilizations.

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Dec 18, 2015

Meteor Fireball Terrorizes Georgia Residents: NASA Confirms Asteroid Chunk Flying Near Atlanta, Other Sightings

Posted by in categories: alien life, existential risks

Don’t panic.

Unless the dolphins start leaving the planet.

At that point, by all mean panic.

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Dec 7, 2015

Can The Existential Risk Of Artificial Intelligence Be Mitigated?

Posted by in categories: ethics, existential risks, futurism, government, human trajectories, robotics/AI

It seems like every day we’re warned about a new, AI-related threat that could ultimately bring about the end of humanity. According to Author and Oxford Professor Nick Bostrom, those existential risks aren’t so black and white, and an individual’s ability to influence those risks might surprise you.

Image Credit: TED

Image Credit: TED

Bostrom defines an existential risk as one distinction of earth originating life or the permanent and drastic destruction of our future development, but he also notes that there is no single methodology that is applicable to all the different existential risks (as more technically elaborated upon in this Future of Humanity Institute study). Rather, he considers it an interdisciplinary endeavor.

“If you’re wondering about asteroids, we have telescopes, we can study them with, we can look at past crater impacts and derive hard statistical data on that,” he said. “We find that the risk of asteroids is extremely small and likewise for a few of the other risks that arrive from nature. But other really big existential risks are not in any direct way susceptible to this kind of rigorous quantification.”

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Nov 23, 2015

Will Our Descendants Survive the Destruction of the Universe?

Posted by in categories: existential risks, futurism

Now there’s a lifeboat. However my life may be extended, if anyone lives that long or some future generation has to deal with it, at some point this universe will be far less friendly to life than it already is. So, a way out?


Billions of years from now, the universe as we know it will cease to exist. The good news is, that gives us a lot of time to prepare, and maybe even figure out a way to cheat cosmic death. Here are some possible ways our descendants might survive a cosmological apocalypse.

The Universe, like the organisms that reside within it, is a mortal entity. Born in the Big Bang, it will eventually meet its fate through an equally cataclysmic process, whether it be in the form of a Big Rip, a Big Crunch, or an eternal deep freeze. Regardless, all life as we know it will be extinguished.

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Oct 26, 2015

Mass extinctions linked to comet and asteroid showers

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks

Equal parts interesting and disturbing.


Mass extinctions occurring over the past 260 million years were likely caused by comet and asteroid showers, a new study concludes. An artist’s illustration of a major asteroid impact on Earth. (credit: NASA/Don Davis)

Mass extinctions occurring over the past 260 million years were likely caused by comet and asteroid showers, scientists conclude in a new study published in an open-access paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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Oct 15, 2015

Evacuate Earth Death by a Neutron Star in 1080p

Posted by in category: existential risks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBrPPnyXc58

This is one of the most fascinating and riveting documentaries I’ve ever seen…

Watch it.

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