Max Tegmark and Nick Bostrom
Abstract
The risk of a doomsday scenario in which high-energy physics experiments trigger the destruction of the Earth has been estimated to be minuscule1. But this may give a false sense of security: the fact that the Earth has survived for so long does not necessarily mean that such disasters are unlikely, because observers are, by definition, in places that have avoided destruction. Here we derive a new upper bound of one per billion years (99.9% confidence level) for the exogenous terminal-catastrophe rate that is free of such selection bias, using calculations based on the relatively late formation time of Earth.
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Nick Bostrom Ph.D. is a philosopher at Oxford University, the Director of the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute, and the Chair of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. He co-founded the World Transhumanist Association in 1998 and is a frequent spokesperson and commentator in the media.