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<p>In a new work in which conceptual elaboration, storytelling, and poetics are fused in the infernal heat of the desert, the cycle of Omnicide is closed with a philosophy of doom, deception, and the game, plunging headlong into the inevitable, the fatal, and the infinite.</p>\n<p>A series of controlled combustions fuelled by fragments drawn from the poetry and literature of the Middle-East, Omnicide II introduces us to a new cast of manic visionaries, from the Selemaniac to the Crystallomaniac, the Bibliomaniac to the Aeromaniac. In his relentless cataloguing of the myriad figures and portents of omnicidal doom, Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh resumes the offensive of those writers, artists, and thinkers for whom the fiercest creative incandescence is only kindled in the shadow of certain doom.</p>\n<p>Amid war-cries and lullabies, mages, wolves and pelicans, sabres and crystals, drones and soul-stealers, in settings ranging from the opium den to the Qatari luxury hotels, with his unique style and methodology, his dizzying breadth of references, and his implacable will to follow the most deranging lines of thought and evoke the most startling images, Mohaghegh draws the reader into territories disturbing and unfamiliar, atmospheres delicate and grotesque, moods morbid yet life-affirming, in a book that evokes fever and exudes dead calm.</p>\n<p>The utterly absorbing music of this writing both lulls and disquiets—a contemporary Necronomicon, an inexhaustible treasury of recipes for disaster, catastrophe, ruination and destruction, all in the name of the most intense creation.</p>\n

Solving the AI alignment problem requires having clear, defensible values towards which AI systems can align. Currently, targets for alignment remain underspecified and do not seem to be built from a philosophically robust structure. We begin the discussion of this problem by presenting five core, foundational values, drawn from moral philosophy and built on the requisites for human existence: survival, sustainable intergenerational existence, society, education, and truth. We show that these values not only provide a clearer direction for technical alignment work, but also serve as a framework to highlight threats and opportunities from AI systems to both obtain and sustain these values.

Realist political theory purports to prioritize the goals of order, security, and ‘political survival’. In spite of these concerns, it has not yet addressed the growing risk that humanity might be lurching towards self-extinction. This contribution considers what omnicidal risk means for contemporary realism, making two arguments. First, we argue that omnicidal risk poses a political problem in a distinctly realist sense of the term. In doing so, we demonstrate that omnicide is a relevant concern for all realists, while ordorealists in particular hold an unrecognized commitment to mitigating omnicidal risk. Second, by demonstrating the extent to which capitalism can be considered a cause of contemporary omnicidal risk, we argue that this concern and commitment should draw realists – and, in particular, ordorealists – into a critique of contemporary political economy. Realism should not ignore omnicidal risk; instead, its consideration should work to radicalize realism.

In the increasingly likely event of an engineered-virus outbreak or pandemic of catastrophic potential, managing infectious aerosols to reduce transmission will be crucial. Now is the time to start preparing our buildings, public opinion, and regulatory environments for the infectious aerosol management interventions necessary to protect the public. But which interventions should governments and institutions invest in the most? We review the leading candidate methods for infectious aerosol management and discuss their respective advantages, disadvantages, and suitable settings. There is strong emerging evidence that two recently explored technologies, direct exposure to far-ultraviolet-C (UVC) light and triethylene glycol, are particularly efficacious and safe, but there remain open questions about the long-term safety and efficacy of these interventions. In the meantime, we recommend other interventions-especially upper-room UVC and in-room air cleaners-for settings where most occupants regularly spend more than a small fraction of their day. We conclude by listing research questions about these interventions that still need to be researched in social science, product development, medicine, engineering, economics, and ethics.

This paper explores what happens when animal slaughter is addressed in upper secondary school from a position of open solidarity with the animals themselves, i.e. an animal standpoint. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork from a collaborative project with teachers, students, activists, and scholars, the paper explores what happens when animal slaughter is addressed through critical animal pedagogies in two Swedish upper secondary schools by introducing video material from slaughterhouses produced by an animal rights organization. It is concerned with whether a pedagogy that aims to facilitate students in adopting an animal standpoint can create space for addressing (and resisting) the killing of nonhuman animals that is inherent in animal production, suggesting that an animal standpoint is decisive for enabling critical reflection on the killing of animals for food and space for action. The difficulty of taking this standpoint in education is identified but also potential for going beyond this difficulty.

This text presents talking with trees as a method of generating material for artistic and other research purposes based on conversations with pine trees recorded in May 2022 on Örö Island in southwestern Finland. Addressing one pine tree a day for six consecutive days as part of the project Pondering with Pines was an experiment that resulted in video works and podcast episodes. The perspective was human centred and subjective while also subjectifying the trees. In this context, the focus is on talking with trees as an undisciplinary method adaptable to other circumstances.

AI-enabled synthetic biology has tremendous potential but also significantly increases biorisks and brings about a new set of dual use concerns. The picture is complicated given the vast innovations envisioned to emerge by combining emerging technologies, as AI-enabled synthetic biology potentially scales up bioengineering into industrial biomanufacturing. However, the literature review indicates that goals such as maintaining a reasonable scope for innovation, or more ambitiously to foster a huge bioeconomy do not necessarily contrast with biosafety, but need to go hand in hand. This paper presents a literature review of the issues and describes emerging frameworks for policy and practice that transverse the options of command-and-control, stewardship, bottom-up, and laissez-faire governance. How to achieve early warning systems that enable prevention and mitigation of future AI-enabled biohazards from the lab, from deliberate misuse, or from the public realm, will constantly need to evolve, and adaptive, interactive approaches should emerge. Although biorisk is subject to an established governance regime, and scientists generally adhere to biosafety protocols, even experimental, but legitimate use by scientists could lead to unexpected developments. Recent advances in chatbots enabled by generative AI have revived fears that advanced biological insight can more easily get into the hands of malignant individuals or organizations. Given these sets of issues, society needs to rethink how AI-enabled synthetic biology should be governed. The suggested way to visualize the challenge at hand is whack-a-mole governance, although the emerging solutions are perhaps not so different either.

Abstract Many researchers and intellectuals warn about extreme risks from artificial intelligence. However, these warnings typically came without systematic arguments in support. This paper provides an argument that AI will lead to the permanent disempowerment of humanity, e.g. human extinction, by 2100. It rests on four substantive premises which it motivates and defends: first, the speed of advances in AI capability, as well as the capability level current systems have already reached, suggest that it is practically possible to build AI systems capable of disempowering humanity by 2100. Second, due to incentives and coordination problems, if it is possible to build such AI, it will be built. Third, since it appears to be a hard technical problem to build AI which is aligned with the goals of its designers, and many actors might build powerful AI, misaligned powerful AI will be built. Fourth, because disempowering humanity is useful for a large range of misaligned goals, such AI will try to disempower humanity. If AI is capable of disempowering humanity and tries to disempower humanity by 2100, then humanity will be disempowered by 2100. This conclusion has immense moral and prudential significance.

Just like an army of ants caught in an ant mill, individuals, groups and even whole societies are sometimes caught up in a Death Spiral, a vicious cycle of self-reinforcing dysfunctional behavior characterized by continuous flawed decision making, myopic single-minded focus on one (set of) solution(s), denial, distrust, micromanagement, dogmatic thinking and learned helplessness. We propose the term Death Spiral Effect to describe this difficult-to-break downward spiral of societal decline. Specifically, in the current theory-building review we aim to: (a) more clearly define and describe the Death Spiral Effect; (b) model the downward spiral of societal decline as well as an upward spiral; (c) describe how and why individuals, groups and even society at large might be caught up in a Death Spiral; and (d) offer a positive way forward in terms of evidence-based solutions to escape the Death Spiral Effect. Management theory hints on the occurrence of this phenomenon and offers turn-around leadership as solution. On a societal level strengthening of democracy may be important. Prior research indicates that historically, two key factors trigger this type of societal decline: rising inequalities creating an upper layer of elites and a lower layer of masses; and dwindling (access to) resources . Historical key markers of societal decline are a steep increase in inequalities, government overreach, over-integration (interdependencies in networks) and a rapidly decreasing trust in institutions and resulting collapse of legitimacy. Important issues that we aim to shed light on are the behavioral underpinnings of decline, as well as the question if and how societal decline can be reversed. We explore the extension of these theories from the company/organization level to the society level, and make use of insights from both micro-, meso-, and macro-level theories (e.g., Complex Adaptive Systems and collapsology, the study of the risks of collapse of industrial civilization) to explain this process of societal demise. Our review furthermore draws on theories such as Social Safety Theory, Conservation of Resources Theory, and management theories that describe the decline and fall of groups, companies and societies, as well as offer ways to reverse this trend.

Abstract The singularity hypothesis is a hypothesis about the future of artificial intelligence on which self-improving artificial agents will quickly become orders of magnitude more intelligent than the average human. Despite the ambitiousness of its claims, the singularity hypothesis has been defended at length by leading philosophers and artificial intelligence researchers. In this paper, I argue that the singularity hypothesis rests on undersupported growth assumptions. I show how leading philosophical defenses of the singularity hypothesis fail to overcome the case for skepticism. I conclude by drawing out philosophical and policy implications of this discussion.

Abstract Studies of nuclear politics and IR more widely have failed to seriously engage with what future nuclear-disarmed worlds would or should look like. I respond to this failure of imagination by advocating for a project of ‘post-nuclear worldmaking’. Counter-hegemonic political efforts around the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) are a useful first step to ‘connecting’ our nuclear-armed present to a disarmed future. However, they do not tell us much about the broader characteristics of this future. Moreover, they often fail to transcend conservative assumptions of plausibility and probability, which unnecessarily exclude what might be called ‘utopian’ visions of alternative futures. In the context of mounting uncertainty generated by threats to planetary security, post-nuclear worldmaking can assist in drawing strong connections between the present and radically different future worlds, which should not be discounted as improbable or impossible. This project enables a widening of the scope of nuclear futures and policy options which are considered thinkable, as well as contributing a future-facing, prefigurative element of politics which complements existing counter-hegemonic strategy. It highlights the unavoidable obligation for nuclear scholars to think in utopian terms.

This introduction, co-written by the book’s editors, contextualizes the edited collection as a whole by detailing the volume’s origins, defining key terms, and identifying a series of cross-cutting themes that recur throughout the chapters. Through a discussion of pandemics, pandemic fiction, and ecological breakdown, it poses a question central to the volume: how do pandemics show us the ways that humans are—and have always been—deeply interconnected with the other-than-human world? The introduction discusses the importance of theories such as posthumanism, new materialism, and decolonialism for the volume, among others from the environmental humanities and environmental social sciences, while simultaneously highlighting the immense influence of utopian studies on the volume’s content and aims. In particular, it describes the importance of cultural imaginaries and the utopian impulse in providing critical exegesis and producing social change in societies, and emphasizes hope as a critical affect. Finally, it provides a detailed description of each of the four thematic sections of the book, alongside summaries of each of the chapters therein.

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Excepting the Nobel Peace Prize, most of the international peace prizes are little known; some are not even regularly awarded; and a number of these, including the Nobel Peace Prize, shows little appreciation for the role of peace educators and researchers in promoting peace and building peace in different parts of the world. The denial of Noble Peace Prize to peace academics like Richard Falk, Elise Boulding and Johan Galtung and several others is a reflection of its bias against peace thinkers, peace educators and peace researchers. Such a show of disrespect to the weavers of peace ideas, peace seeders, peace planters, and fosterers of peace movements negatively impacts the creation, flow and flourishing of new peace ideas. Emphasizing the need to build a fearless peace perspective on Gaza and on other conflicting issues, the present paper highlights the importance of new peace ideas in these dangerous times. In addition, it calls for an energetic role of the peace visionaries, peace educators and peace researchers in dealing with the challenges arising especially after the genocide in Gaza. In this context, it suggests the creation of a new peace prize, as prestigious as the Nobel Peace Prize, but more impactful. It further suggests that this prize should be named Johan Galtung International Peace Prize to memorialize Galtung’s contribution as a brilliant peace thinker and prolific peace scholar and to keep the succeeding generations informed about the grave injustice done to him by the Nobel Peace Prize, which denied this award to one of the most deserving candidates. This paper, which includes a brief appraisal of a few, indeed very few, international peace prizes currently being awarded, attempts to explore the prospects for the institution of a new international peace prize and seeks answer to questions like why should such a prize be called the Johan Galtung International Peace Prize, how can such a prize be instituted and how can this prize induce the peace educators and peace researchers to come out with new peace ideas in these tormenting times.

Research with enhanced potential pandemic pathogens (ePPP) makes pathogens substantially more lethal, communicable, immunosuppressive or otherwise capable of triggering a pandemic. We briefly relay an existing argument that the benefits of ePPP research do not outweigh its risks and then consider why proponents of these arguments continue to confidently endorse them. We argue that these endorsements may well be the product of common cognitive biases-in which case they would provide no challenge to the argument against ePPP research. If the case against ePPP research is strong, the views of professional experts do little to move the needle in favour of ePPP research.

I contribute to an emerging politics of loss through an empirical analysis of temporalities of climate change loss and damage in Australia. How people temporalize climate change informs their conception of causality, designation of losses and damages, and political response. By drawing attention to the diversity of onto-epistemological understandings and characterizations of climate change loss and damage, I illuminate some of the values diverse actors perceive as currently, or at risk of, being lost. I do this by unearthing and theorizing commonly identified temporalities held by a cross-section of social actors in regional Australia. These include the following temporalities: (1) anticipatory loss; (2) natural variability; (3) future perfect (e.g., climate catastrophe, human ingenuity); and (4) the longue durée (i.e., climate change as a historical crisis linked to colonial-capitalism). I consider the social, cultural, psychological, and political determinants of such temporalities and the implications for climate politics in Australia. I argue that recognizing the complexity of temporalities of loss and damage is crucial for both geographical research and climate politics. This nuanced understanding of difference can contribute toward the development of a progressive more-than-climate politics, which, I suggest, must be based on the longue durée temporality of climate change loss and damage.

Homo sapiens, and all other species inhabiting our planet, are by definition vulnerable to whatever nature throws at them. Sapienza-informed efforts to overthrow nature’s supremacy by harnessing its forces to human ends have simply upped the ante by producing conditions for the near or total obliteration of life on Earth. Since ‘Trinity’, the first detonation of a nuclear device, on 16 July 1945, and the subsequent development and escalation of such weapons of mass destruction, humanity has lived under a cloud of both suicidal and omnicidal foreclosure. Yet by a different, if closely related historical route, associated primarily with the burning of geologically sequestrated solar energy leading to global warming, the species has doubly confirmed its uniquely anthropogenic capacity to bring about not only its own demise but within the planetary record a sixth extinction of life-forms. 1 Indeed, in 2020, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists , largely on the basis of these two possibilities, moved its symbolic Doomsday Clock forward to just 100 seconds to midnight. 2