I created a piece of hypertext fiction, tentatively titled Will We Flourish? A Choose-Our-Shared-Future.

Hypertext fiction allows the reader to affect the narrative they are reading, similar to choose-your-own-adventure gamebooks but with little to no gamification. Will We Flourish? also includes research and collaborative elements as I ask for your feedback on, and potential improvements to, the cases that these narratives made for [working on] existential risk. In summary, my fiction piece can be divided into three sections.

An introductory scenario that shows how humanity can overcome existential risk
A decision tree where readers are shown different value framings for a) working on existential risk and b) potential utopias
A survey for feedback and research purposes

Concept

There were two main aims I had for my final project. Firstly, I wanted to offer a vision of hope for the class to grasp onto. Throughout this course, ~80% of the class has unfailingly claimed that humankind is well and truly doomed. Perhaps most of the class was operating with a different definition of ‘doom’ than I was, but this troubled me. After all, existential despair is not only an issue for existentialists and nihilists to overcome;[i] climate change advocates are feeling this too.[ii] ‘Climate despair’ is but one type of hopelessness that can result when faced with these existential threats, and this hopelessness can be a barrier to necessary action.[iii] Thus why our professors have offered helpful resources for when we may feel emotionally distraught about our future, from the Good Grief Network to therapy.

Besides combatting the potential paralysis brought about by existential despair, I wanted to offer a different motivation for addressing existential risk. Our course centers around the potential for catastrophe. We literally discuss our doom! But less is said about the potential for incredible flourishing. For Week 4, we did get a glimpse into the possibility of utopia when we read Max Tegmark’s short story on the Omegas. I wanted to expand upon this because I am motivated to protect humanity’s future not only out of fear, but also because I deeply believe that “life in the future could be profoundly good.”[iv] Tegmark’s book Life 3.0, which opens with his story of the Omegas, even details several post-AGI utopias which I wove into my narratives.

There are so many things that we currently accept as ‘just how it has to be,’ like suffering. But does that have to be the case? In the future, if we really wanted then we could probably hook ourselves up into a real-world Happiness Machine. Whether this would be desirable is something we have to struggle with, but it is a possibility![v] Both what we could lose and what we could gain seem like potential motivations for addressing existential risks, so I wanted to amplify the latter to ensure awareness of both—especially given our bias towards negativity.[vi] Thus, I subtly reframed our course’s question to default towards the positive: not Are We Doomed? but, Will We Flourish?

Values for decision-making

Secondly, I wanted to catalyze conversation around values that may be relevant in thinking about existential risk. Toby Ord touches upon the importance of this in the final chapter of The Precipice. Ord suggests that after addressing existential risk, humanity can and should have time to ponder the kind of future we want to create, known as the ‘Long Reflection.’[vii] This would involve ethical reflection, which naturally implies discussing the values we hold.[viii] While it would be premature to begin this Reflection prior to addressing current existential risks, it seems helpful to consider the values we most want to steer towards in addressing these risks. Taking a values-based approach rather than a facts-based approach in motivating work on existential risk also seemed important given that facts don’t always change our minds[ix] and the increasing potential for misinformation (per our discussion on cyber warfare).

Values for messaging research

Furthermore, I wanted to understand whether there were differences in how people respond to existential risk based on the value that is centered. It is intuitive that different approaches of communicating an issue will be more effective for some people, and less effective for others. These different approaches are known as ‘frames:’ the way in which you message something. The impact of framing for existential risks has been little studied. Most of the literature is on climate issues[x] such as sustainability,[xi] nuclear energy,[xii]^{,[xiii],[xiv],[xv]} and energy transition.[xvi] There is surprisingly little around nuclear threat despite nuclear being one of the more salient existential risks, due to high-profile incidents like the Cold War[xvii] and Fukushima disaster.[xviii] There are recent studies on COVID-19,[xix] including on framing it as a bioweapon,[xx] but not general research around messaging the risks of bio-terror and bio-error. Yet, understanding how to effectively message existential risk could contribute to changing societal narratives in a way that might improve action (particularly policymaking) for the long-term future.[xxi]^,[xxii]

Given this, I wanted my project to potentially contribute to research on communication around existential risk. Taking inspiration from message testing, a type of study that helps identify the most effective frames for specific audiences, I honed in on values as the key feature I wanted to test.[xxiii] By adding a Google form at the end, I was conducting a survey to understand how my readers perceived the different ways in which these value-driven messages presented existential risk. While far from a rigorous study, I hope that this may form the foundation of a future study on different frames for a general assortment of existential risks. Similarly, scenarios may hold some research value in the field of existential risk.[xxiv]

I was also inspired by public deliberation, an approach towards political communication inspired by deliberative democracy.[xxv] While there are different models of public deliberation, they all put everyday citizens in conversation with typical decisionmakers, such as issue experts or elected officials, to amplify the voices of the public. Public deliberation is often used to make decisions for issues where there is no clear consensus, such as when we lack enough information. Thus, public deliberation centers around values to help participants reach clarification around the different perspectives that someone might take on the issue, and the respective costs and benefits that the community can accept.[xxvi] Additionally, some members of the effective altruism community have speculated that public deliberation could be useful for discussing issues around existential risk such as biosecurity or consideration of future generations (which would make existential risk more important).[xxvii]

Why hypertext fiction?

I knew I wanted to make my project creative. As we explored in Week 9, artists have long provoked discussion on Big Problems. This is especially the case when it comes to issues of ‘the future,’ particularly around technological development. So many of our existential threats are anthropogenic and yet have many unknowns, such as the timeline for developing artificial general intelligence (AGI). It is in this realm of uncertainty that fiction really shines. Although we may not know what the plausible or probable futures are, we can take possible futures and use them to better understand which possibilities we want to open—and which to close.

“Their fictional nature requires viewers to suspend their disbelief and allow their imaginations to wander, to momentarily forget how things are now, and wonder about how things could be. We rarely develop scenarios that suggest how things should be because it becomes too didactic and even moralistic. For us futures are not a destination or something to be strived for but a medium to aid imaginative thought-to speculate with.”[xxviii]

Science fiction is particularly adept at finding scenarios that balance fantasy and realism. I drew inspiration from the rich tradition of speculative fiction and futuristic imagination (see the ‘Resources’ at the bottom to find pieces much more developed than mine).[xxix] This grounds my work in existing tradition while offering a new direction for conversation: a futurist spin on existential risk narratives.

I was specifically inspired by the hypothetical scenarios featured in Max Tegmark’s Life 3.0 and The United Micro-Kingdoms in Speculative Everything.

Tegmark provides 12 scenarios for what human society might become after the development of AGI. I wanted to write a story inspired by his utopias and expand upon them by including other existential risks we covered this quarter, such as climate change. Since I oriented my project around three specific values, I matched each utopia with a value and provided a narrative to describe how maximizing that value could lead to the utopia. Of course, there are many different paths to each of Tegmark’s scenarios and I do not want to suggest that the pairs I chose are the only (or even most) appropriate ones.
Dunne and Raby designed four different kingdoms based on the political alignment chart. I thought this was similar to the approach I took of creating scenarios based on values. However, I did not think the values I picked fit neatly into a compass diagram. I would be interested in considering how to use a diagram to better illustrate and compare different value orientations in the future.

I chose to produce hypertext fiction specifically for its interactivity, which offers some of the benefits of a video game. offers readers some agency and prompts them to evaluate the kind of future they would choose. After exploring one narrative, readers can go back to see the others, giving them a chance to compare them and perhaps re-evaluate their initial intuitions regarding the value they most gravitated towards. This way, although my piece does not change in real-time like a video game, there is still an element of responsiveness and replayability. I created my piece using Twine because I liked its feature of clicking on links not only to proceed with the story but also to read more information (without making a story choice). This allows for modular design, as I can add new information and tangents without changing the overall narrative. I anticipate continuing with my project in the future, making improvements based on initial feedback from this course and expanding upon the narratives as I see fit.

I did not provide visual illustrations because I wanted to leave the mental image entirely up to the reader. While I inevitably constrained the reader’s imagination through choices I made while writing the narratives, such as using the United Nations as the model of future global governance, I did not want to further limit it by providing visual illustrations (especially poorly-drawn ones, as I am not a visual artist)! Since I chose to include a collaborative aspect to my piece, it seemed more appropriate to invite readers to rely on their own visions of their ideal futures.

Resources (italics = works)

Existential Hope

Utopia

Science Fiction

Bibliography

[i] D. R. Bhandari, “Existentialist Perception Of The Human Condition: With Special Reference To Sartre,” The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 6 (January 1, 1998): 31–34, https://doi.org/10.5840/wcp20-paideia19986131.

[ii] “Why We Need Climate Stoicism to Overcome Climate Despair,” State of the Planet (blog), May 19, 2020, https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/05/19/climate-stoicism-overcome-despair/.

[iii] Christie Nicole Godsmark, “Inspiring Climate Action without Inducing Climate Despair,” The Lancet Planetary Health 4, no. 5 (May 1, 2020): e169–70, https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(20)30102-9.

[iv] Joe Carlsmith, “Actually Possible: Thoughts on Utopia,” Hands and Cities (blog), January 18, 2021, https://handsandcities.com/2021/01/18/actually-possible-thoughts-on-utopia/.

[v] Frank Hindriks and Igor Douven, “Nozick’s Experience Machine: An Empirical Study,” Philosophical Psychology 31, no. 2 (February 17, 2018): 278–98, https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2017.1406600.

[vi] Amrisha Vaish, Tobias Grossmann, and Amanda Woodward, “Not All Emotions Are Created Equal: The Negativity Bias in Social-Emotional Development,” Psychological Bulletin 134, no. 3 (May 2008): 383–403, https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.134.3.383.

[vii] Andy Fitch, “What We Want to Do with Our Potential: Talking to Toby Ord,” BLARB (blog), March 27, 2020, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/interviews/want-potential-talking-toby-ord/.

[viii] MichaelA, “Quotes about the Long Reflection,” EA Forum, March 5, 2020, https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/H2zno3ggRJaph9P6c/quotes-about-the-long-reflection.

[ix] Elizabeth Kolbert, “Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds,” The New Yorker, February 19, 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds.

[x] Adam Corner, “The Role of Framing and Message-Tailoring in Communicating Climate Change,” The Climate Communication Project (blog), October 15, 2018, https://theclimatecommsproject.org/the-role-of-framing-and-message-tailoring-in-communicating-climate-change/.

[xi] Liesbeth Van de Velde et al., “The Importance of Message Framing for Providing Information about Sustainability and Environmental Aspects of Energy,” Energy Policy, The socio-economic transition towards a hydrogen economy – findings from European research, with regular papers, 38, no. 10 (October 1, 2010): 5541–49, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2010.04.053.

[xii] Shirley S. Ho et al., “Care, Competency, or Honesty? Framing Emergency Preparedness Messages and Risks for Nuclear Energy in Singapore,” Energy Research & Social Science 65 (July 1, 2020): 101477, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101477.

[xiii] Hyo Jung Kim, “The Effects of Gain versus Loss Framing and Issue Involvement on Publics’ Responses to Nuclear Energy Messages in South Korea,” Asian Journal of Communication 28, no. 5 (September 3, 2018): 541–58, https://doi.org/10.1080/01292986.2018.1491057.

[xiv] Kuhika Gupta, Joseph Ripberger, and Wesley Wehde, “Advocacy Group Messaging on Social Media: Using the Narrative Policy Framework to Study Twitter Messages about Nuclear Energy Policy in the United States,” Policy Studies Journal 46, no. 1 (2018): 119–36, https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12176.

[xv] Lucia Mannetti et al., “Framing Political Messages to Fit the Audience’s Regulatory Orientation: How to Improve the Efficacy of the Same Message Content,” PLOS ONE 8, no. 10 (October 9, 2013): e77040, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0077040.

[xvi] Àlex Boso et al., “Narratives of Resistance to Technological Change: Drawing Lessons for Urban Energy Transitions in Southern Chile,” Energy Research & Social Science 65 (July 1, 2020): 101473, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101473.

[xvii] Clark Murdock, Rebecca K. C. Hersman, and Shanelle Van, “Building and Communicating a Compelling Rationale for U.S. Nuclear Weapons,” The Evolving U.S. Nuclear Narrative (Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 2016), http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep23372.8.

[xviii] Annika Beelitz and Doris Merkl-Davies, “Discursive Framing in Private and Public Communication by Pro-Nuclear Corporate, Political and Regulatory Actors Following the Fukushima Disaster,” Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 32, no. 5 (June 17, 2019): 1585–1614, https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-05-2017-2928.

[xix] Carlos Gantiva, William Jiménez-Leal, and Joan Urriago-Rayo, “Framing Messages to Deal With the COVID-19 Crisis: The Role of Loss/Gain Frames and Content,” Frontiers in Psychology 12 (2021), https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.568212.

[xx] Toby Bolsen, Risa Palm, and Justin T. Kingsland, “Framing the Origins of COVID-19,” Science Communication 42, no. 5 (October 1, 2020): 562–85, https://doi.org/10.1177/1075547020953603.

[xxi] Maxime Stauffer et al., “Policymaking for the Long-Term Future: Improving Institutional Fit,” Working Paper (The Simon Institute for Longterm Governance, April 2021), https://www.simoninstitute.ch/project/public-policy-making-longterm-future/.

[xxii] Boso et al., “Narratives of Resistance to Technological Change.”

[xxiii] “Testing Comms Guide” (Public Interest Research Center, March 1, 2018), https://publicinterest.org.uk/testing-comms-guide/.

[xxiv] Rafael Ramirez et al., “Scenarios as a Scholarly Methodology to Produce ‘Interesting Research,’” Futures 71 (August 1, 2015): 70–87, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2015.06.006.

[xxv] “What Is Public Deliberation | University of Houston-Downtown,” accessed May 25, 2021, https://www.uhd.edu/academics/humanities/news-community/center-public-deliberation/Pages/uhd-cpd-what-is.aspx.

[xxvi] “What Is Public Deliberation | University of Houston-Downtown.”

[xxvii] Rethink Priorities, “Deliberation May Improve Decision-Making,” EA Forum, November 4, 2019, https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kCkd9Mia2EmbZ3A9c/deliberation-may-improve-decision-making.

[xxviii] Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming (Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London: The MIT Press, 2013).

[xxix] “Futurism, Futurity, and the Importance of the Existential Imagination,” Cultural Organizing (blog), May 17, 2017, https://culturalorganizing.org/futurism-futurity/.

BPRO 25800 (Spring 2021/Winter 2024) Are we doomed? Confronting the End of the World

Will We Flourish?: A Choose-Our-Shared-Future