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Ripples on the Great Sea of Life: A Brief History of Existential Risk Studies
- Authors
- SJ Beard, Émile P. Torres
- Venue
- Working paper
- Published
- March 2021
- ID
- SSRN:3730000
How to cite it
Built from the details listed on this page. Check them against the paper before you submit.
Beard, S., & Torres, É. P. (2021). Ripples on the Great Sea of Life: A Brief History of Existential Risk Studies. Working paper. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3730000
Beard, SJ, et al. "Ripples on the Great Sea of Life: A Brief History of Existential Risk Studies." Working paper, 2021, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3730000.
@article{beard2021ripples,
title = {Ripples on the Great Sea of Life: A Brief History of Existential Risk Studies},
author = {SJ Beard and Émile P. Torres},
journal = {Working paper},
year = {2021},
url = {https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3730000},
}What it is
A 39-page history by SJ Beard (University of Cambridge) and Émile P. Torres of how existential risk became an academic field, tracing three successive waves: an explicitly transhumanist and techno-utopian first wave, a second built on longtermism and closely tied to Effective Altruism, and a third formed where the field met disaster studies, environmental science and public policy. Posted to SSRN January 2021, revised March 2021.
Why I recommend it
Free — the full PDF downloads without an account. This is the piece to read before anyone quotes an extinction probability at you, because it shows the field's assumptions were inherited from a particular movement rather than discovered. It is a working paper posted by the authors, not journal peer-reviewed, and the authors are participants in the debate they are describing, so it is a history written from inside.
Topics
Added Sep 23, 2026 · 0 opens