Existential Risk

An existential risk is a danger that could end humanity or permanently cut short its future. Scripture pairs God's covenant that the human family will continue with Noah's labor in building the ark, and Mormon transhumanists read that pairing as a charge to prepare for catastrophes no one has yet seen, including those their own hopes could cause.

The phrase existential risk entered philosophy in 2002 to name a catastrophe that would either destroy intelligent life from Earth or permanently and drastically curtail its potential. Researchers place nuclear war, engineered pandemics, and misaligned artificial intelligence among the leading candidates, with natural threats such as a large asteroid impact far less likely in any given century. One widely cited estimate puts the chance of such a catastrophe in this century at one in six, a figure that rests on judgment more than data. Believers often meet these warnings in one of two ways: the end of the world is foretold and belongs to God, or God will never let his children destroy themselves. Restoration scripture supports a narrower confidence. The timing of the end is withheld, since "of that day and hour knoweth no man" (Matthew 24:36), and the scriptures that promise humanity a future also record the complete destruction of peoples who ignored their warnings.

The Ark and the Covenant

The flood narrative joins a divine promise of continuity to human preparation for a disaster without precedent.

Hebrews commends Noah, who, "being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house" (Hebrews 11:7). The phrase suits existential risk closely, since such catastrophes leave no earlier instance from which to learn. The Hebrew tevah, "ark," means a box or chest, and the Bible uses it elsewhere only for the basket of bulrushes that carried the infant Moses, so that both deliverers of Israel's early history were saved in a vessel of the same name. Noah was also told to cover the ark with kopher, "pitch," from the root kaphar, "to cover," which also yields the vocabulary of atonement; the echo would hardly have been lost on Hebrew hearers. Latter-day Saint interpreters have read the ark's three decks as a pattern for the tabernacle's three divisions, making the ark a sanctuary built against the waters. After the flood God promised that "neither shall all flesh be cut off any more" (Genesis 9:11), and Restoration scripture adds his oath to Enoch that Noah's line would endure, "that a remnant of his seed should always be found among all nations, while the earth should stand" (Moses 7:52).

Two Peoples Destroyed

The Book of Mormon is itself a record of civilizations that ended, kept for readers who might avoid the same end.

It has long been recognized that the Book of Mormon closes on two destructions, of the Jaredites and of the Nephites. Surveying the Nephite dead at Cumorah, Mormon lamented, "O ye fair ones, how could ye have departed from the ways of the Lord!" (Mormon 6:17), and his son Moroni wrote, "I even remain alone to write the sad tale of the destruction of my people" (Mormon 8:3). Less often noticed is how closely both endings follow the pattern that students of catastrophe fear most. Each people destroyed itself with its own weapons and its own conspiracies, after repeated warnings, past any point of recovery. The covenant with Noah promises that humanity will continue. It gives no such promise to any particular civilization, and the Book of Mormon was preserved for readers who could still choose differently.

Prepared and Not Afraid

Restoration revelation counsels preparation without fear, and Mormon transhumanists apply that counsel to the risks of the technologies they hope for.

A revelation given in January 1831 promises that "if ye are prepared ye shall not fear" (D&C 38:30). The Mormon Transhumanist Affirmation commits its signers to "identify and prepare for risks and responsibilities associated with future advances." The association's best-known argument for faith in God begins by assuming that humanity will not go extinct before it becomes posthuman, and it treats that assumption as a reason to act, since those who trust in survival have reason to work for it. Indeed, many of the gravest risks arise from the technologies transhumanists most want, among them artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and molecular manufacturing. A capacity that could cure disease or end scarcity could also, misused or poorly controlled, end the human future.

The Long Future and the Present Household

Concern for the distant future can become a reason to neglect people alive now, and the flood narrative keeps both in view.

Some philosophers argue that the vast number of people who could live in the future makes even a tiny reduction in extinction risk worth more than nearly any present good. Critics answer that this reasoning can excuse harm to the living for the sake of speculative billions, and that it concentrates decisions about the whole human future in a few hands. Noah built the ark "to the saving of his house," and the covenant that followed embraced "all flesh." The test for any technology that could end or permanently diminish the human future is whether its makers prepare for harms not seen as yet, on behalf of everyone those harms would reach, or stake the whole human family on a risk they would not accept for their own house.