"Should Epistemic Security Be a Priority GCR Cause Area?"

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: “Epistemic security” is a term used to describe the resilience of a society's social epistemic systems to detrimental interference called epistemic threats. Epistemic threats include, for example, adversarial influence operations, the erosion of trust in expertise, and extreme polarization. This paper argues epistemic security should be considered a priority global catastrophic risk (GCR) cause area. The reason is not, as one might expect, that our current state of epistemic security is particularly dire, or that we should expect epistemic threats to get much worse in the future. The reasoning centers instead on a rising “threshold level of epistemic security” which can be understood as the level of epistemic security needed for a society to be capable of effectively preparing for or responding to the risks and crises it faces.

Author	Seger, Elizabeth

DOI	https://doi.org/10.25740/bc884qy3778
Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/bc884qy3778

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND).

Preferred citation: Seger, E. (2023). "Should Epistemic Security Be a Priority GCR Cause Area?" in Intersections, Reinforcements, Cascades: Proceedings of the 2023 Stanford Existential Risks Conference. The Stanford Existential Risks Initiative. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/bc884qy3778. https://doi.org/10.25740/bc884qy3778.

Intersections, Reinforcements, Cascades: The Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Stanford Existential Risks Conference

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