The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction 1st Edition by John Leslie (PDF)

Description

Are we in imminent danger of extinction? Yes, we probably are, argues John Leslie in his chilling account of the dangers facing the human race as we approach the second millenium. The End of the World is a sobering assessment of the many disasters that scientists have predicted and speculated on as leading to apocalypse. In the first comprehensive survey, potential catastrophes – ranging from deadly diseases to high-energy physics experiments – are explored to help us understand the risks. One of the greatest threats facing humankind, however, is the insurmountable fact that we are a relatively young species, a risk which is at the heart of the ‘Doomsday Argument’. This argument, if correct, makes the dangers we face more serious than we could have ever imagined. This more than anything makes the arrogance and ignorance of politicians, and indeed philosophers, so disturbing as they continue to ignore the manifest dangers facing future generations.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I am not done with this book yet. It took me a while to get used to this author’s style of writing, but I am hooked on it now. His theories are very compelling, and it really opens your brain to things that you never would think of. this book also provides very interesting facts to back up his theories. I would highly recommend this book!

⭐This book is a strange mixture of four elements. The first presents main dangers to the survival of humanity, with preliminary references to the Carter “doomsday argument.” The second deals with philosophical arguments on prolonging human history. The third takes up at greater length the doomsday argument. And the fourth suddenly jumps to a short excursus on nuclear deterrence.The book up to page 153 is recommended to all who worry, with good causes, about the future of the human species. This part well presents main dangers facing the survival of humanity in the short and long term. Necessary measures needed for reducing the likelihood of termination of the human species are hinted at, including “politically incorrect” ones such as strong global governance (pp. 98, 146) with a huge police force (p. 106), limitations on science and technology (p. 90), and intrusive personal surveillance (p. 42). This is all the more noteworthy as most books dealing with dangers to humanity fail to draw realistic conclusions on what needs to be done.The book fails to consider the main root cause of possible demise of humanity, namely the inadequacies of its moral, cognitive, emotional and institutional capacities, as limited by genetics and constrained cultural learning, for using well the unprecedented capabilities to shape its future supplied to the human species by science and technology.Still, the cardinal message emanating from the first 153 pages is compelling: Extinction of humanity in the foreseeable future is a real possibility, but its likelihood can be much reduced if humanity adopts a range of countermeasures, including counter-conventional ones.However I cannot in good conscience recommend the rest of the book. The philosophical position of the author in effect grants ontological standing to moral values, with some states of affairs being regarded as “in fact” good or bad. This misrepresents the very nature of values as depending ultimately on human choice, however influenced by genetics and environments, without which there cannot be deep moral responsibility.The Carlson hypothesis, claiming that it is unlikely that we are born in the early history of humanity, to which much space is devoted, is a stimulating probabilistic speculation. But it is not sound, in part by ignoring that the chance of anyone of us being born at all is infinitesimal small. Indeed, all the probabilistic approach of the author permeating the book does not fit the fuzziness of the subject. Thus, stating that the probability of humanity being soon destroyed is 30 per cent (p.133) illustrates misplaced exactness. It would be much better to use an adjusted version of the scales of modal logic, such as “possible,” likely,” and “unlikely.”Discussing deterrence in one of my books (Israeli Statecraft, 2011, pp. 25-26, 182-183), let me limit my comment on the book’s treatment of the subject to saying that this is much too serious an issue to be taken up apropos in the last few pages of the book).Professor Yehezkel DrorThe Hebrew University of Jerusalem

⭐John Leslie is a professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph. Much of this book is taken up with explorations of, criticisms of, and defences of the ‘Doomsday Argument’, championed by Leslie and cosmologist Brandon Carter. The ‘Doomsday Argument’ goes something like this:-if humanity were to continue to prosper and multiply, eventually spreading beyond the solar system, and perhaps the galaxy, the total number of human beings today (6 billion) will seem insignificant compared to the potential trillions and trillions of humans in the future. But if this were to actually happen, humans today would be among the very earliest of the race -perhaps in the first 0.1 per cent or even 0.001 per cent. How likely is it that we are that special? In the year 2090 the population of earth might be 12 billion people. Of all the humans who had ever lived, one in ten would be alive in that year. Instead of expecting to be in a remarkably early stage of human civilization, say in the first 0.1 per cent, it is much more likely that an inhabitant of the year 2090 will be among that 1 in 10 present when humanity died.To me this argument seems flimsy, sophistic, and somehow just wrong, but Leslie does an impressive and thorough job of refuting the many objections to it. My eyes glazed over during some of these detailed and convoluted defences, but then I only took one philosophy course in university. What I liked this book for was the exploration of the many delicious ways in which humanity could be wiped out. Some of these faces of doom might seem quite far-fetched and unlikely, but all have some formidable scientists and philosophers backing them. Here is an abbreviated list:-nuclear war. “Small nations, terrorists, and rich criminals wanting to become still richer by holding the world to ransom, can already afford very destructive bombs.” Suitcase bombs in particular worry me. I believe a few well-placed bombs could de-stabilize the United States almost overnight.-biological warfare. Such weapons are less costly than nuclear weapons, easier to conceal, and could be more dangerous because their field of destruction is harder to limit.-chemical warfare.-destruction of the ozone layer. “…by chlorofluorocarbons or other things.”-‘Greenhouse effect’. “On Venus, greenhouse effect temperatures are sufficient to melt lead.”-poisoning by pollution. “Hundreds of new chemicals enter the environment each year. Their effects are often hard to predict.”-disease. Many deadly diseases are developing immunity to our best drugs. New viruses are thought to filter down from outer space. Global warming could thaw out some virulent disease from the past, such as the 1918-1919 flu, which preferred younger, healthy victims. (“They died horribly, their lungs filling with fluid, becoming stiff and solid, literally drowning them. As they expired, they vented pints of the highly infectious liquid from their mouths and noses.” -Calgary Herald, October 4, 1997)-volcanic eruptions. Which might produce a ‘volcanic winter’ akin to ‘nuclear winter’.-hits by asteroids or comets. If Shoemaker-Levy had hit earth instead of Jupiter, we would all be having drinks with the dinosaurs right now in the Restaurant At the End of the Universe.-an extreme ice age due to passage through an interstellar cloud.-a nearby supernova. Earth would be bathed in deadly rays, cleansing it of all life.-essentially unpredictable breakdown of a complex system. As investigated by Chaos Theory: “the system in question might be earth’s biosphere; its air, soil, its water, and its living things interact in highly intricate ways.”-something-we-know-not-what. “It would be foolish to think we have foreseen all possible natural and technological disasters.”-unwillingness to rear children. Seen already to a certain extent in rich nations.-a disaster from genetic engineering. “Perhaps a ‘green scum’ disaster, in which a genetically engineered organism reproduces itself with immense efficiency, smothering everything.”-a disaster from nanotechnology. “Very tiny self-reproducing machines -they could be developed fairly soon through research inspired by Richard Feynman -might perhaps spread world-wide within a month in a ‘gray ooze’ calamity.” Sounds like something from a Philip K. Dick story.-disasters associated with computers. Okay, so Y2K was a bust. That doesn’t mean a real computer disaster isn’t possible. We are becoming more and more reliant on them.-production a new Big Bang in the laboratory.-the possibility of producing an all-destroying phase transition. ‘Comparable to turning water into ice”, as in Ice 9 from Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. “In 1984, Edward Farhi and Robert Jeffe suggested that physicists might produce ‘strange quark matter’ of a kind which attracted ordinary matter, changing it into more of itself until the entire earth had been converted (‘eaten’).” In contrast, there might be a very real vacuum meta-stability danger associated with experiments at extremely high energies. The vacuum we live in is not stable, it is meta-stable. This is because it is not a true vacuum. It is filled with a force field (a scalar field) and so is a pseudo-vacuum. While stable at low energies, a high energy experiment (such as planned in conjunction with the new super particle-colliders due to come on line in the near future) might provide enough of a jolt to destabilize it (like a ball bearing resting in a hollow on a wooden incline that starts rolling because of a nudge). An experiment might produce a bubble of ‘true vacuum’ which would then expand at nearly the speed of light, destroying everything in sight. “Rather as a tiny ice crystal changes a large volume of super-cooled water into more ice crystals.”-annihilation by extra-terrestrials. If and when E.T. finds us, he/she/it might not be cuddly or even friendly; he/she/it might just be hungry.-risks from philosophy. Suppose a fundamentalist U.S president or general wanted to hasten Judgement Day a wee bit by pressing a certain red button (see Dr Strangelove). Alternatively, someone in a position of power might, when looking at the prevalence of evil in the world, agree with Schopenhauer that “it would have been better if our planet had remained like the moon, a lifeless mass.” So why not release a humanity-destroying plague (see Twelve Monkeys).Leslie goes into much more depth concerning these threats, and isn’t saying that any of them are inevitable. He is just saying that when we look at these areas of concern in the light of the ‘Doomsday Argument’ we should take their potential very seriously. We should be asking ourselves as individuals, as nations, and as a species, what we can do to lower their risk of occurring. Our survival is far from assured.

⭐This book is a strange mixture of four elements. The first presents main dangers to the survival of humanity, with preliminary references to the Carter “doomsday argument.” The second deals with philosophical arguments on prolonging human history. The third takes up at greater length the doomsday argument. And the fourth suddenly jumps to a short excursus on nuclear deterrence.The book up to page 153 is recommended to all who worry, with good causes, about the future of the human species. This part well presents main dangers facing the survival of humanity in the short and long term. Necessary measures needed for reducing the likelihood of termination of the human species are hinted at, including “politically incorrect” ones such as strong global governance (pp. 98, 146) with a huge police force (p. 106), limitations on science and technology (p. 90), and intrusive personal surveillance (p. 42). This is all the more noteworthy as most books dealing with dangers to humanity fail to draw realistic conclusions on what needs to be done.The book fails to consider the main root cause of possible demise of humanity, namely the inadequacies of its moral, cognitive, emotional and institutional capacities, as limited by genetics and constrained cultural learning, for using well the unprecedented capabilities to shape its future supplied to the human species by science and technology.Still, the cardinal message emanating from the first 153 pages is compelling: Extinction of humanity in the foreseeable future is a real possibility, but its likelihood can be much reduced if humanity adopts a range of countermeasures, including counter-conventional ones.However I cannot in good conscience recommend the rest of the book. The philosophical position of the author in effect grants ontological standing to moral values, with some states of affairs being regarded as “in fact” good or bad. This misrepresents the very nature of values as depending ultimately on human choice, however influenced by genetics and environments, without which there cannot be deep moral responsibility.The Carlson hypothesis, claiming that it is unlikely that we are born in the early history of humanity, to which much space is devoted, is a stimulating probabilistic speculation. But it is not sound, in part by ignoring that the chance of anyone of us being born at all is infinitesimal small. Indeed, all the probabilistic approach of the author permeating the book does not fit the fuzziness of the subject. Thus, stating that the probability of humanity being soon destroyed is 30 per cent (p.133) illustrates misplaced exactness. It would be much better to use an adjusted version of the scales of modal logic, such as “possible,” likely,” and “unlikely.”Discussing deterrence in one of my books (Israeli Statecraft, 2011, pp. 25-26, 182-183), let me limit my comment on the book’s treatment of the subject to saying that this is much too serious an issue to be taken up apropos in the last few pages of the book).Professor Yehezkel DrorThe Hebrew University of Jerusalem

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