Calamity Theory

Schuster, Joshua; Woods, Derek

doi:10.5749/9781452967004

Cited by 31 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Not too surprisingly, longtermism has an attraction for proponents of space travel and venture capitalism beyond the earth, which Rubenstein has characterized as corporate 'Astrotopia' (see Rubenstein, 2021). It is ultimately limited by a concern with extreme scenarios about human extinction and leaves out a good deal else, such as the biodiversity (Schuster & Woods, 2021).…”

Section: The Question Of the Temporality Of The Futurementioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: Social theory and the idea of the future

Delanty

2024

European Journal of Social Theory

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There is a new sensibility to the concept of the future in recent writings in the human and social sciences. The modern idea of the future is undergoing a tremendous rupture today such that older or taken-for-granted assumptions about it can no longer be left unscrutinized. While much of the new interest in the future is about events yet to come – and the spectre of catastrophe looms large in such thinking – the challenge for social theory is to understand how the future should be conceptualized today and how it relates to other concepts, such as space, hope, possibility and utopia. Some of the major controverses about how the future should be conceptualized can be summed up around the following debates, which are explored in this introductory article: the question of the temporality of the future, the extent to which the future is open, whether utopia has been superseded by dystopia and the implications of posthumanism especially in the context of the emergence of new technologies that have far-reaching implications for the human condition.

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Section: The Question Of the Temporality Of The Futurementioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: Social theory and the idea of the future

Delanty

2024

European Journal of Social Theory

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“…Outside of the community, critiques similarly contest ideological and technical underpinnings of x-risk and notions of intelligence. For instance, scholars have problematized Bostrom's prioritization of human intelligence above all other traits, especially given the historical harms that have been premised on hierarchies of individual or group-level intelligence (Colebrook, 2018;Schuster and Woods, 2021). Although Superintelligence was not the subject of these critiques, in it Bostrom describes genetic engineering as one of the mechanisms through which a superintelligent agent might be achieved.…”

Section: Public Critiquementioning

confidence: 99%

Field-building and the epistemic culture of AI safety

Ahmed,

Jaźwińska,

Ahlawat

et al. 2024

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The emerging field of “AI safety” has attracted public attention and large infusions of capital to support its implied promise: the ability to deploy advanced artificial intelligence (AI) while reducing its gravest risks. Ideas from effective altruism, longtermism, and the study of existential risk are foundational to this new field. In this paper, we contend that overlapping communities interested in these ideas have merged into what we refer to as the broader “AI safety epistemic community,” which is sustained through its mutually reinforcing community-building and knowledge production practices. We support this assertion through an analysis of four core sites in this community’s epistemic culture: 1) online community-building through Web forums and career advising; 2) AI forecasting; 3) AI safety research; and 4) prize competitions. The dispersal of this epistemic community’s members throughout the tech industry, academia, and policy organizations ensures their continued input into global discourse about AI. Understanding the epistemic culture that fuses their moral convictions and knowledge claims is crucial to evaluating these claims, which are gaining influence in critical, rapidly changing debates about the harms of AI and how to mitigate them.

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“…As pharmaka, x-values are not without risks. As Schuster and Woods (2021) have pointed out, existential risk thinking is not always planet-friendly, since while it remains true that concern for existential risk can promote resistance to the extractivist and productivist elements in the capitalist economy, it can also foster belief in the need to work towards becoming a multi-planetary civilization, given that even the most effective taming of our emissions will do nothing to palliate the long-term existential risks associated with volcanic eruptions, incoming meteorites, or a dying sun (MacAskill, 2022;Musk, 2017). Thus, given these dangers, it is unsurprising if some might feel tempted to join more classically post-modern ideology critics such as Zizek (2011) in throwing out all environmental criticism as mere ideology.…”

Section: X-valuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

On cosmic injustices: Critical thinking, outer space, green values, and capitalist ideologies in a planetary age

Tabas

2023

Environ Plan D

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It may seem obvious that the interests of social justice should always align with environmental justice on a limited planet Earth. Unfortunately, this is far from the case in practice, even in the Anthropocene. This essay provides a new cognitive mapping of how ideologically charged discourse splits the interests of people and planet. It offers a pragmatic, semantic, and spatial analysis of how arguments for planetary protection can infelicitously turn into justifications for broadening social inequalities (and the inverse). As such, it presents an implicit critique of holist theories. In striving to demonstrate the fundamental unity of society and the environemnt risk, holistic thinking leaves critics with an impoverished critical toolbox incapable of differentiating between transparently fraudulent greenwashing and scientifically supportable, but ideologically charged, claims. This text is focused on the spatial dimension of Anthropocene ideology. It places a particular focus on the growing place and rhetorical function of outer space within the Anthropocene economy. It illustrates that the promise of extraterrestrial growth, at least when this growth is contextualized against a zoned extraterrestrial space, has emerged as a potent means of justifying inequality in the name of planetary well-being, and so also of justifying the gospel of growth despite our increasing awareness of the limits of our planet.

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Calamity Theory

Cited by 31 publications

References 0 publications

Introduction: Social theory and the idea of the future

Introduction: Social theory and the idea of the future

Field-building and the epistemic culture of AI safety

On cosmic injustices: Critical thinking, outer space, green values, and capitalist ideologies in a planetary age

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