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Ripples on the Great Sea of Life: A Brief History of Existential Risk Studies
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.
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Added Sep 23, 2026 · 0 opens