The Future of Humanity Institute has shut down.
Oh, what a rough sentence to write! An organization devoted to ensuring that we as a species has a future ... now officially has only a past.
FHI was a multidisciplinary research center at the University of Oxford. And apparently one of the recurrent themes in the Institute's research was the "Fermi paradox." This is the idea that, on the one hand, there SHOULD BE technologically sophisticated aliens Out There, but that on the other hand we don't hear from them.
As FHI bigwig Robin Hanson has put it: there must be a filter. Something is preventing our approach and likely our colonization by such beings. It is possible that intelligence, and so advanced technology, is much more rare than exobiologist have tended to assume. In THAT case, this is something about life we should want to know. On the other hand, it is possible that the filter is still in our future. Perhaps once a species becomes sufficiently advanced, it tends to kill itself off before it can really go out colonizing brave new worlds.
Now the FHI is no longer around to help us figure this out. Alas. At least I can used a photo of Enrico Fermi above.
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