Phil Torres

Torres leading a workshop on the interdisciplinary nature of x-risk research at the 2018 Princeton Envision Conference

Phil Torres is an American author and scholar specializing in existential risk. His work has spanned many topics such as cognitive enhancement, omnicidal agents, space colonization, superintelligence, anti-natalism, and emerging technologies. He has published many articles in peer reviewed academic journals and has written articles for Nautilus, HuffPost UK, Motherboard, Salon, and Patheos, among other outlets. He is an Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and the director of the Project for Future Human Flourishing.

Education

Torres grew up in Maryland and earned a BA in Philosophy with Honors from the University of Maryland, College Park, where he completed his thesis under Lindley Darden and won the Schlaretzki Prize for being the "most outstanding" student in the department. In 2009 he completed a masters in neuroscience at Brandeis University. Later he spent time as a graduate student at the Harvard philosophy department.

Work

Torres was formerly a writer for the Future of Life Institute and research assistant to Ray Kurzweil. His first two books on existential risk highlighted the threat religious fundamentalism poses to humanity: A Crisis of Faith (May, 2012) and The End: What Science and Religion Tell Us about the Apocalypse (February, 2016). His most recent work is Morality, Foresight, and Human Flourishing: An Introduction to Existential Risks. The book includes a forward by Martin Rees and received positive reviews by IEET scholar Steven Umbrello.

In more recent years he has written about the dangers of 'longtermism' and the rising influences of futurists.

External links

• Phil Torre's webpage
• Patreon - Phil needs support to help him through a transitional phase in 2019!
• Human Flourishing Project homepage
• xriskology on Twitter