Latest News
Global Catastrophic Risks Conference (17-20 July, 2008)
In July the Future of Humanity Institute will play host to a number of leading experts on a range of different global catastrophic risks. The conference in Oxford is intended to advance knowledge and increase academic interest in this neglected area and provide a forum to discuss the common problems and methodologies which affect the study of global catastrophic risks.
Global Catastrophic Risks forthcoming, OUP, June 2008), edited by Nick Bostrom and Milan Cirkovic, with a foreword by Sir Martin Rees.
amazon.com
Oxford University Press
Definition
The term global catastrophic risk refers to the possibility of serious damage to human well-being on a global scale. Using this definition, an immensely diverse collection of events could constitute global catastrophes: potential factors range from volcanic eruptions to pandemic infections, nuclear accidents to worldwide tyrannies, out-of-control scientific experiments to climatic changes, and cosmic hazards to economic collapse.
Commonalities
Although the risks are of various kinds, treating global catastrophic risk as a field for academic enquiry is a useful, coherent and important endeavour. Many methodological, conceptual, and cultural issues crop up across the range of global catastrophic risks. Moreover, some general insights – for example, into the biases of human risk cognition – can be applied to many different risks and used to improve our assessments across the board.
The Future of Humanity Institute
The Future of Humanity Institute is a unique multidisciplinary research Institute at the University of Oxford and is part of the Philosophy Faculty and the James Martin 21 st Century School. FHI's mission is to bring excellent scholarship to bear on big picture questions for humanity. One of our research areas is global catastrophic risk, and this website exists to focus attention on our work in this area, which includes a Conference on Global catastrophic risks (17-20 July) intended to advance knowledge and increase academic interest in this neglected area. This summer we also publish a book outlining the main catastrophic risks, and the problems and methodologies they share: Global Catastrophic Risks (forthcoming OUP, 2008).