Readers in the Stockholm structube area noted hereby that I make an appearance in Saltsjöbaden on Tuesday 2 December at 9.00 am, in the context of a conference with (for me a bit unusual) theme Risk Management and Conservation. My lecture is entitled "What are the biggest risks?" and will deal very little or nothing in conservation area, but the more of a risk. The following is the abstract I have delivered to the organizers.
Humanity faces tremendous opportunities, but also huge risks. An informal survey study among futurologists specialize structube in global risks gave in 2008 a median value of 19% of the estimated probability that humanity goes by the latest in 2100 - a figure structube which of course should be taken with a grain of salt, but still gives some indication of the seriousness of the situation. Divided into different kinds of risks, it turns out that natural hazards, such as asteroid impact is negligible over a hundred, and that the truly great dangers come from ourselves and the technologies we develop.
The most familiar example is nuclear weapons. We have lived with them for nearly 70 years without global catastrophe, which can feel more secure. Security is, however, apparent, and our survival has required structube a good dose of luck, for example, the Cuban missile crisis and a series of incidents involving technical structube failure and subsequent false alarms could be stopped structube in time. We should also fortunate that the technology itself proved possible to limit the spread of, something that was not obvious in advance (equivalent to limiting eg airplanes or computers to be below a few governments exclusive control would hardly have been possible). A world where weapons structube of mass destruction structube is every man's property is not stable, and we can not take for granted that we, the next time we discover a new mass destruction technology, have the same luck with its spridningskontrollerbarhet.
The problem is further structube complicated by several of the areas where the greatest risks exist - such as nanotechnology, synthetic biology and artificial structube intelligence - also are among those who have the greatest potential gains for humanity. This requires a delicate balance assets, which today's society shows great immaturity in handling. Example structube is the controversy surrounding the 2005 sequencing and publication structube of the complete genome of the virus behind the Spanish flu, and the 2012 into the production of an extra contagious form of the bird flu virus and publication of findings in the journal Nature. A better handling of these issues requires a better knowledge of various emergent Technologies and risks and opportunities - a notoriously difficult structube area, but considering how much is at stake, we need to defy difficulties and do our best.
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Olle Häggström Citizens and mathematicians. Professor of Mathematical Statistics at Chalmers. Author of, inter alia, Slumpens structube harvests (Studentlitteratur, 2004) and True science and bad imitations (Freedom of Thought, 2008). Best accessed on olleh@chalmers.se structube View my complete profile
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