Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: existential risks – Page 20

Extinction is a regular part of nature. An estimated 99% of all species that have existed on Earth have gone the way of the dodo, sometimes because a fitter competitor came along or their environment changed (often because of humans) and they couldn’t adapt.

While life can go on relatively unchanged after the extinction of some species, the loss of a keystone species — one that plays a significant role in its environment — can upend an ecosystem.

Now, researchers exploring the idea of “de-extinction” believe that science might be able to intervene and restore the balance.

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When it was first discovered in 2004, Apophis was identified as one of the most dangerous asteroids in that there was a risk that it could impact Earth. But that impact assessment changed over the years after astronomers tracked Apophis, also known as asteroid 99,942, and its orbit became better determined, and it became clear that it was on course to miss our planet.

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Getting into space is difficult, but it may be that other worlds have even harder times at it than we do, imprisoned by orbital debris, high gravity, or even being quarantined by alien civilizations.

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Listen or Download the audio of this episode from Soundcloud: Episode’s Audio-only version: / the-fermi-paradox-imprisoned-planets.
Episode’s Narration-only version: / the-fermi-paradox-imprisoned-planets-narra…

Credits:
The Fermi Paradox: Imprisoned Planets.
Science \& Futurism with Isaac Arthur.
Episode 329a, February 13, 2022
Written, Produced \& Narrated by Isaac Arthur.

Cover Art:
Jakub Grygier https://www.artstation.com/jakub_grygier.

Graphics:

Continue reading “The Fermi Paradox: Imprisoned Planets” | >

The great mystery of where all the aliens are in our vast Universe contemplates ancient interstellar civilizations building enormous megastructures that rival worlds or even stars in the immensity… and asks why we can’t see these giant alien artifacts.

David Brin on Event Horizon with John Michael Godier: • A.I. Wars, The Fermi Paradox and Grea…
This Week in Space with Rod Pyle: • Alien Megastructures — Isaac Arthur a…

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Listen or Download the audio of this episode from Soundcloud: Episode’s Audio-only version: / the-fermi-paradox-absent-megastructures.
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Credits:
The Fermi Paradox: Absent Megastructures.
Science \& Futurism with Isaac Arthur.
Episode 352, July 21, 2022
Written, Produced \& Narrated by Isaac Arthur.

Editors:

Continue reading “The Fermi Paradox: Absent Megastructures” | >

Radical Plan to Stop ‘Doomsday Glacier’ Melting to Cost $50 Billion.

Working on these next-gen intelligent AIs must be a freaky experience. As Anthropic announces the smartest model ever tested across a range of benchmarks, researchers recall a chilling moment when Claude 3 realized that it was being evaluated.

Anthropic, you may recall, was founded in 2021 by a group of senior OpenAI team members, who broke away because they didn’t agree with OpenAI’s decision to work closely with Microsoft. The company’s Claude and Claude 2 AIs have been competitive with GPT models, but neither Anthropic nor Claude have really broken through into public awareness.

That could well change with Claude 3, since Anthropic now claims to have surpassed GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini 1.0 model on a range of multimodal tests, setting new industry benchmarks “across a wide range of cognitive tasks.”

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Star Trek is the most popular and longest running Sci-Fi franchise in American history. Created by Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek follows the various crew of Starfleet in their missions across the galaxy.

This presentation showcases the inspiration behind Star Trek, how the Federation came to be, examines the post-scarcity economy featured in their future Earth society, and explores the philosophies of all of the major alien cultures shown throughout the Star Trek series.

00:00 — Intro.
09:38 — The Augments.
14:06 — World War 3
15:13 — Post Atomic Horror.
15:45 — First Contact.
17:47 — The Vulcans.
23:30 — Post-Scarcity Economy.
33:24 — The Federation.
45:22 — The Maquis.
48:26 — The Romulans | The Cardassians | The Klingons.
52:00 — The Ferengi.
1:00:00 — The Dominion.
1:06:08 — The Borg.
1:13:34 — Conclusion.
1:16:01 — Outro

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