Erik Klien, Chairman and Founder of Lifeboat Foundation thinks that the key to developing ideal, responsible AI is empathy, and creating empathetic robots. Such an emphasis on empathy is perhaps ironic, as the organization's emphasis on "existential risks" may be understood as disregarding the many local-terminal risks that have been and continue to be realized [...]
Responding to a line of Kyle Whyte thinking, which frames contemporary environmental collapse as an experience of déjà vu for many Indigenous peoples who have endured centuries of colonial violence, Dr. Leonardo Figueroa Helland asserted, “it’s already been the end of times.” 500 years of the end of times. Such a framing begins to convey [...]
In The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World, Joel Kovel contends that capitalism will inevitably result in ecological collapse, as the realization of the exchange value demands an ever increasing speed at which commodities circulate, eventually imposing a generalized compression of time, and with it, “a homogenization and [...]
Les U. Knight opened his introduction of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement’s mission by referring to “the best thing for the earth’s ecosphere.” While speaking so broadly perhaps casts a wide net for support, it also occludes some of the realities that impact earth’s ecosphere and may not easily be addressed through voluntary human extinction. [...]
The myth of Sisyphus is an example of philosophy of the absurd, representing the futility of life that is spent searching for meaning and clarity in a nonsensical world with no universal truths or values. In the Greek myth, Sisyphus is forced to spent his whole life and all of eternity performing the meaningless and [...]
It is perhaps tempting to think of death in universal terms, to present the experience of death as a singular experience shared by all living beings. Realities of deaths, however, and how deaths are experienced differently by various individuals and groups, indicate an intimacy and specificity that would seem to render the universal irrelevant. What [...]
In many instances, the bunker is the site that epitomizes security; it is protected by means of seclusion, spared the potential risk of any interaction with the outside world. The bunker is sterile, and meant to stay that way. It is alarming to think of what kind of present values and fears prompt such apocalyptic [...]
From Avondale: Q: Regarding nuclear warfare and how that affects the clock, how do you differentiate rhetoric and empty threats from a serious potential issue? A: Essentially, everyone on the board and who decides on the time until midnight is a professional (including 15 Nobel laureates). These professionals discuss and really study what is rhetoric [...]
