3. Existential Risk and Science Governance

Abstract

As existential risks are deeply related to science and scholars, this chapter proposes a new consideration of scientific governance, self-governance of technologies, and research culture as socio-technical processes opposed to the conventional idea of science as something extrinsic and beyond conditioning. The chapter provides examples of instances where scientists and communities have worked together to improve existing modalities.

Systemic contributions to global catastrophic risk

“…For example, the relatively decentralised nature of the international system leaves us with profound governance gaps regarding both GCR and global systemic risk (Goldin & Vogel, 2010;Kemp & Rhodes, 2020), coordination problems, and a lack of identi able risk owners. Top-down control is not necessarily better: existing top-down paradigms and institutions also struggle to govern systemic contributions to GCR (Kreienkamp 10 For a brief discussion of minimum viable human population sizes in the context of a post-collapse world, see Baum et al (2019) & Pegram, 2020;Sundaram, 2023). Any system created to help govern the complexity becomes a part of the complexity (Fisher & Sandberg, 2022), with a non-zero chance of making things worse.…”