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BlogAnatoly Karlin Archive
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Existential Risks
�BlogAnatoly Karlin Archive
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Existential Risks

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Megatsunami
•�September 19, 2021
•�400 Words •�73 Comments
There's not much point worrying much over geological existential risks. They come too infrequently too be a major risk, and those that do occur more often, are not big enough to matter in the big picture. Still, if there's one risk that is both potentially highly destructive and occurs at a relatively high rate, it... Read More
Existential Risks
•�March 4, 2021
•�400 Words •�141 Comments
There are only three real ones. Malevolent superintelligence. Aliens. The simulation ends. And various permutations thereof. (I suppose biological lifeforms losing consciousness during mind uploading is another one, but it can be considered a subset of the first one). Nuclear war isn't an X risk. It wasn't one during the height of the Cold War.... Read More
Musk Industries' Teleology
•�January 14, 2021
•�900 Words •�100 Comments
One observation I've seen people make is that Elon Musk's industrial empire seems ultra-optimized for the distinctly non-commercial ambition of establishing a Mars colony: SpaceX for providing the reusable rockets to throw large payloads into space at much lower cost. Tesla to provide the batteries for Mars vehicles. Boring Company to dig out the tunnels... Read More
Venusian Lifeforms
•�September 14, 2020
•�700 Words •�123 Comments
Greaves, Jane S., Anita M. S. Richards, William Bains, Paul B. Rimmer, Hideo Sagawa, David L. Clements, Sara Seager, et al. 2020. “Phosphine Gas in the Cloud Decks of Venus.” Nature Astronomy, September. In reality, as Nick Bostrom
doomed-earth
The Katechon Hypothesis
That Which Withholds Eschaton: The Katechon Hypothesis for Resolving the Fermi Paradox
•�October 20, 2019
•�14,900 Words •�381 Comments
I have been mulling over the ideas in this article since early 2016, when they crystallized in more or less their current form. I am not quite sure whether these ideas are rather important, or the ravings of a lunatic. But I am certainly glad to be able to finally unload them from the confines... Read More
Limits to Calculating Space
•�February 28, 2019
•�200 Words •�25 Comments
There are 10^23 to 10^24 neurons on the planet. The human brain has around 86 billion neurons. World population * human neurons = 10^~10*11^~10 = 10^~21 (slightly less, but let's round up). This means the human population can "safely" increase by at least two more orders of magnitude to 1 to 10 trillion, so the... Read More
The Case for Superintelligence Competition
•�July 3, 2017
•�600 Words •�40 Comments
I want to gather most of my arguments for skepticism (or, optimism) about a superintelligence apocalypse in one place. (1) I appreciate that the mindspace of unexplored superintelligences is both vast and something we have had absolutely zero experience with or access to. This argument is also the most speculative one. That said, here are... Read More
Kic 8462852
•�November 6, 2015
•�600 Words •�31 Comments
Image by Kerihobo. While everybody is discussing the tantalizing possibility that this far off star with its strange dimming patterns hosts an alien megastructure, perhaps a Dyson Sphere under construction, there are even more exotic scenarios out there. For instance, why not the ruins of one? One of the obvious (if pessimistic) solutions to the... Read More
"Existential Risks" Items Across Entire Archive
Anatoly Karlin
About Anatoly Karlin

I am a blogger, thinker, and businessman in the SF Bay Area. I’m originally from Russia, spent many years in Britain, and studied at U.C. Berkeley.

One of my tenets is that ideologies tend to suck. As such, I hesitate about attaching labels to myself. That said, if it’s really necessary, I suppose “liberal-conservative neoreactionary” would be close enough.

Though I consider myself part of the Orthodox Church, my philosophy and spiritual views are more influenced by digital physics, Gnosticism, and Russian cosmism than anything specifically Judeo-Christian.