Anthropic Shadow: Observation Selection Effects and Human Extinction Risks

2010/07/09 by Milan M. Ćirković, Anders Sandberg, Nick Bostrom · 52 citations
Physics and Astronomy · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Psychology · #Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life #Marine and environmental studies #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Anthropic principle #Extinction (optical mineralogy) #Shadow (psychology) #Selection (genetic algorithm) #Computer science #Physics #Geology #Psychology #Theoretical physics #Paleontology #Artificial intelligence

paper · doi:10.1111/j.1539-6924.2010.01460.x

published in Risk Analysis 30(10), 1495-1506 (Wiley)

openalex publication_date 2010/07/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22

Abstract

We describe a significant practical consequence of taking anthropic biases into account in deriving predictions for rare stochastic catastrophic events. The risks associated with catastrophes such as asteroidal/cometary impacts, supervolcanic episodes, and explosions of supernovae/gamma-ray bursts are based on their observed frequencies. As a result, the frequencies of catastrophes that destroy or are otherwise incompatible with the existence of observers are systematically underestimated. We describe the consequences of this anthropic bias for estimation of catastrophic risks, and suggest some directions for future work.

Citations

• An Estimate of the Age Distribution of Terrestrial Planets in the Universe: Quantifying Metallicity as a Selection Effect
• Recovery from the most profound mass extinction of all time
• Origin of the cataclysmic Late Heavy Bombardment period of the terrestrial planets
• Is our vacuum metastable?
• Volcanic winter and accelerated glaciation following the Toba super-eruption
• Astrobiological Phase Transition: Towards Resolution of Fermi’s Paradox
• Observed spectral properties of near-Earth objects: results for population distribution, source regions, and space weathering processes
• Late Pleistocene human population bottlenecks, volcanic winter, and differentiation of modern humans
• Will relativistic heavy-ion colliders destroy our planet?
• Periodic variation of Oort Cloud flux and cometary impacts on the Earth and Jupiter
• Did a gamma-ray burst initiate the late Ordovician mass extinction?
• Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions
• POSSIBLE LARGEST-SCALE TRENDS IN ORGANISMAL EVOLUTION: Eight “Live Hypotheses”
• Evolutionary catastrophes and the Goldilocks problem
• Gravitational effects on and of vacuum decay
• Supereruptions as a Threat to Civilizations on Earth-like Planets

Cited by

• Global catastrophic risk [wikipedia]