disinfozone/The_Info_Web
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull requests Projects Releases Packages Wiki Activity Actions

vault backup: 2026-09-25 23:36:07

Browse source
This commit is contained in:
disinfo.zone 2026-09-25 23:36:07 -04:00
parent f3aadfd333
commit 39c4e2e672
No known key found for this signature in database
108 changed files with 4656 additions and 172 deletions
Download patch file Download diff file Expand all files Collapse all files

2
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Nick Bostrom.md
View file

@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ Nick Bostrom (born March 10, 1973) is a Swedish-born philosopher who founded the
### Transhumanism and Existential Risk
Bostrom took a PhD at the [[London School of Economics]] in 2000 and in 1998 cofounded, with the philosopher [[David Pearce]], the World Transhumanist Association (later [[Humanity Plus|Humanity+]]), which promoted the use of technology to transcend human biological limits. With Pearce he drafted the Transhumanist Declaration and the Transhumanist FAQ, the latter formalized as version 2.1 under the association's name in 2003 and serving as the movement's reference document. His 2003 paper "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?" advanced the simulation argument, and his work formalized the concept of "existential risk," a catastrophe that would permanently curtail humanity's potential. These ideas placed the prevention of human extinction, especially from artificial intelligence, at the center of the emerging longtermist program.[^1][^3]
Bostrom took a PhD at the [[London School of Economics]] in 2000 and in 1998 cofounded, with the philosopher [[David Pearce]], the [[World Transhumanist Association]] (later [[Humanity Plus|Humanity+]]), which promoted the use of technology to transcend human biological limits. With Pearce he drafted the Transhumanist Declaration and the Transhumanist FAQ, the latter formalized as version 2.1 under the association's name in 2003 and serving as the movement's reference document. His 2003 paper "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?" advanced the simulation argument, and his work formalized the concept of "existential risk," a catastrophe that would permanently curtail humanity's potential. These ideas placed the prevention of human extinction, especially from artificial intelligence, at the center of the emerging longtermist program.[^1][^3]
The simulation argument held that at least one of three propositions must be true: that civilizations almost always go extinct before reaching a "posthuman" stage capable of running ancestor simulations, that such civilizations almost never choose to run them, or that we are almost certainly living inside one. Bostrom maintained the paper asserted only that a rational person cannot dismiss the third possibility, not that we are in fact simulated, but the argument achieved unusual popular reach after Elon Musk adopted it as a talking point. Bostrom's earlier reasoning ran back to the 1990s [[Extropianism|extropian]] mailing list, on which he participated alongside the figures who later built the AI-risk and rationalist movements.[^3][^7]