“I coined the word ’eucatastrophe’: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears...this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made.” —JRR Tolkien
Avoiding existential catastrophe is a critical necessity, but so is avoiding stasis and locking in the existentially wasteful status quo.
Cotton-Barratt and Ord used Tolkien’s term to suggest that ”an existential eucatastrophe is an event which causes there to be much more expected value after the event than before.”
In this episode, of the podcast David Manheim, 2021 Foresight Fellow in Positive Long Term Futures and a visiting professor at the Technion focusing on long-term risks and future prospects for humanity talks about the definition of eucatastrophe, historical examples of these, increasingly dynamic civilizational stability, and much more.
Music:
I Knew a Guy by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Session Summary: David Manheim | Eucatastrophes & Dynamic Stability; Exploring Tensions between Risk & Opportunities - Foresight Institute
The Foresight Institute is a research organization and non-profit that supports the beneficial development of high-impact technologies. Since our founding in 1987 on a vision of guiding powerful technologies, we have continued to evolve into a many-armed organization that focuses on several fields of science and technology that are too ambitious for legacy institutions to support.
Allison Duettmann is the president and CEO of Foresight Institute. She directs the Intelligent Cooperation, Molecular Machines, Biotech & Health Extension, Neurotech, and Space Programs, Fellowships, Prizes, and Tech Trees, and shares this work with the public. She founded Existentialhope.com, co-edited Superintelligence: Coordination & Strategy, co-authored Gaming the Future, and co-initiated The Longevity Prize.
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