Talk:Human extinction

Broken Reference Link

Hi, The following reference link leads to a 404 server error:

I tried to find the pdf, but didn't have success. Should this be removed? Or can someone else find the intended pdf?

References

Based on a formalization of this argument, researchers have concluded that we can be confident that natural risk is lower than 1 in 14,000 (and likely "less than one in 87,000") per year.[2]

I have truncated this part of the article to take attention off of what I feel are more like periphery characteristics of the important claim than relevant aspects of the scientific consensus. Specifically, I have removed the "likely 'less than one in 87,000'" (which should have been written as "1" btw, but I digress) with a reason I elaborated on in the edit summary. With that being said, this really does not get to the heart of the issue. Forecasts about forecasts actually project very little about the odds of an event: you can have some model, which is likely to be good, which forecasts the likelihood of an event as being very low, but have another one that is arbitrarily high, since there is no explicit constraint on it, and still say "the likelihood of this event is likely <<low>>". Really, we should try and procure a more productive risk profile for the case of a natural extinction event that actually offers an explicit probabilistic forecast instead of a meta-forecast on forecasts about the event themselves. 216.164.249.213 (talk) 19:57, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

This estimate is fallacious because of survival bias Imakesapage (talk) 22:42, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

Should this article really have top importance in the extinction Wikiproject?

It's a hypothetical mass-extinction event, not a documented mass-extinction like the Holocene, Jurassic, or Pleistocene extinction events. Going by a criteria for rating article importance, I highly doubt that a hypothetical event in the far future would be discussed in a printed encyclopaedia about extinction. This article should be downgraded to mid or low importance due to being a hypothetical event. Edelgardvonhresvelg (talk) 18:53, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Being humans ourselves, it's not that weird to think concerns about our extinction would be at a top priority, even if it's hypothetical. And what criteria are you judging this by? Harryhenry1 (talk) 03:41, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions/Archive 1242 - Wikipedia There is an old template/guideline for rating article importance in this discussion. I gave high importance to articles such as Vaquita, Colossal Biosciences, Northern white rhinoceros, and Judean date palm due to them contributing in depth knowledge about extinction. Vaquita and northern white rhino are prime examples of manmade extinctions/declines in the 21st century, Colossal is a pioneer in de-extinction and conservation technology, and the Judean date palm is the first successful de-extinct species. That criteria guideline implies that Human mass-extinction, a hypothetical event is a must have for a print encyclopaedia about extinction. Edelgardvonhresvelg (talk) 20:32, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Document was number five ~2025-42193-93 (talk) 15:07, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Real life, not I, Robot

This article should be rewritten with a more sober mind. Much of it is percentages handed out by different people without further explanation. There is also the addition of the potentiality of "catastrophe" (what does that entail?) or probabilities of most of humanity being wiped out, which is not what this article is about; extinction has one meaning. Researchers can give probabilities of AI killing everyone, but if there is no elaboration on how that would play out, the claim is worthless and doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. Swinub★ 18:18, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

Are you referring to the "Probability" section? (Or even the "Risk estimates" subsection?) It's large, but it's not the whole article. "Catastrophe" is covered at Global catastrophic risk and its spin-out Global catastrophe scenarios. WeyerStudentOfAgrippa (talk) 12:42, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

It's also important to distinguish human extinction (the end of the human species, from any cause) from Existential risk from artificial intelligence. The latter is less scientifically grounded, but still notable by Wikipedia's standards. WeyerStudentOfAgrippa (talk) 13:01, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

Should article say "possible" extinction, or "eventual" extinction?

There's been a lot of back and forth on this . I argue in favour of "possible" extinction.

Wikipedia relies upon reliable secondary sources. The secondary sources used are virtuously unanimous in positing probabilities of extinction less than 100%; so "possible" extinction.

To say “eventual” is original research. It may seem like an obvious conclusion, and it may well turn out to be correct, but it argues against other arrogant human considerations. In considering humans as extinct, the perseverance of human thought considers flight to other planets, evolution into other forms (à la Kurt Vonnegut’s “”Galápagos’’), and what if dinosaurs predicted themselves extinct without acknowledging birds? What if AI from Earth encounters AI from another source, and the difference reveals the perseverance of humanity beyond any physical extinction?

All of the previous paragraph is original research and speculation. When it comes to “possible” vs “eventual”, arrogant or illogical though it may seem, Wikipedia is bound to follow the secondary sources, which postulate various percentages less than 100. The sources used say "possible". _signed, Willondon (talk) 21:17, 30 July 2026 (UTC)