CT Scan #1: Experiential Risks
CT Scans = Chaotic Thoughts Scans
It is scary to imagine the end of humanity. It is even scarier if it disappears from one day to another. There is a category for the events that threaten humanity existence, they are called existential risks. If any of these events happen, all or most of humanity will be eliminated. It could be a nuclear explosion, an asteroid impact or a pandemic. These events are very serious, there even exist institutes, like The Future of Life Institute (partially funded by Elon Musk), the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists or the Future of Humanity Institute (University of Oxford), dedicated to ensuring our existence doesn’t end catastrophically.
Existential risks have two main features, their scope is global (instead of local or personal) and their severity is terminal (instead of endurable). They focus on chaotic single events and serve as good material for fiction novels and movies (everyday closer to non-fiction). However, I think there should exist a category for the events that would not terminate human life as we know it, but significantly affect the way we experience it, I call them experiential risks.
The dynamics of experiential risks differ from the existential ones, their scope is global but their severity is endurable, meaning they are transitory. This transitory feature makes them see “necessary”, but are they? An example comes from Harari’s Sapiens, which describes how the transition to an agricultural civilization might have been one of the greatest errors of humanity, or the biggest fraud, as he calls it. The agricultural revolution started more than 10,000 years ago and very rapidly, the majority of people in the world, from the Middle East to South America, were practicing it. Our species went from the dangerous life of hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists. However, just a few years in, the agriculturalists were working harder (trying to keep wheat plantations safe from insects and building waterways) and getting in return a less nutritious diet compared to their hunter-gatherer ancestors. The essence of the agricultural revolution was the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions. Is that where we are heading?
Now, writing from my 16 billion-transistors laptop and being protected from the cold and wild animals, it is hard to say that the agricultural revolution wasn’t a necessary transition, but what if a small group of observant and critical people (futurists thinkers) would have pointed out that keeping more people alive under worse conditions was not a good deal? Would we be in a better place now? I think it is impossible to know, but interesting to imagine.
Which transitions are starting now that historians will write in 5 millennia? Irreversible damage to the ecosphere? The unsustainable pace of capitalism? Attention shift to the digital world? Very likely all of them. We have to make more thoughtful calculations. We need futurists thinkers imagining 100 years ahead to make sure we are not falling into a trap that promises progress and abundance but will dramatically affect how we experience life in the coming years.
