The Vulnerable World Hypothesis: could future technological development produce a civilization-destabilizing 'black ball,' and what responses become rationally considerable if it does?

Nick Bostrom, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

Technological development is like drawing balls from an urn. Most balls are white (beneficial), some are gray (mixed), and there may be black balls — technologies that, once developed, by default destroy or severely damage the civilization that invents them. If a black ball exists in the urn, the orderly continuation of civilization may require either differential technology development (delay the black ball, hasten its safeguards), international coordination at unprecedented scope, or preventive global governance up to and including a kind of singleton — a world order capable of regulating potentially-civilization-destabilizing technologies.12

The hypothesis is a conditional analysis: if a black ball exists, then certain responses become rationally considerable that would otherwise be unacceptable. The hypothesis does not endorse the totalitarian response; it identifies the dilemma.3

Sources

  1. Several counterfactual historical speculative future vulnerabilities analyzed arranged typology. general ability stabilize vulnerable world would require greatly amplifi capacities preventive policing global governance. vulnerable world hypothesis offers perspective which evaluate risk-benefi balance developments towards ubiquitous surveillance unipolar world order.
    The Vulnerable World Hypothesis, pp. 1–2
  2. Retard development dangerous harmful technologies, especially raise level existential risk; accelerate development fi technologies, especially those reduce existential risks posed nature other technologies Bostrom, 2002). principle differential technological development compatible plausible forms technological determinism. example, ordained technolodeveloped developed, still matter developed.
    The Vulnerable World Hypothesis, p. 9
  3. Glass production could banned, existing glass panes fiscated; pieces glass would remain scattered across landscape time. Batteries magnets could seized, though people would stashed these materials before could collected authorities. cities would destroyed nihilists, extortionists, revanchists, ' would hap- '. People would fl urban areas.
    The Vulnerable World Hypothesis, p. 3

Where the argument is made

  • "The Vulnerable World Hypothesis" (Global Policy, 2019)
  • "Information Hazards: A Typology of Potential Harms from Knowledge" (Review of Contemporary Philosophy, 2011)
  • "Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority" (Global Policy, 2013)
  • "Strategic Implications of Openness in AI Development" (Global Policy, 2017)
  • Superintelligence (Oxford UP, 2014)
  • "What is a Singleton?" (Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations, 2006)
  • "The Unilateralist's Curse and the Case for a Principle of Conformity" with Thomas Douglas & Anders Sandberg (Social Epistemology, 2016)

How the argument was received

Published 2019 in Global Policy. Has become the most controversial of the framework pieces because the conditional response set includes "turnkey totalitarianism." Critics on civil-liberty grounds collapse the position to "Bostrom wants surveillance state"; the actual position is more carefully conditional. Information Hazards (2011) and The Unilateralist's Curse (with Douglas and Sandberg, 2016) are the methodological companions.