It is our pleasure to acknowledge the many people and institutions who have in one way or another contributed to the completion of this book. Our home institutions – the Future of Humanity Institute in the James Martin 21st Century School at Oxford University and the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade – have offered environments conducive to our cross-disciplinary undertaking. Milan wishes to acknowledge the Oxford Colleges Hospitality Scheme and the Open Society Foundation of Belgrade for a pleasant time in Oxford back in 2004 during which this book project was conceived. Nick wishes to thank especially James Martin and Lou Salkind for their visionary support.
Physicist and polymath Cosma R. Shalizi gave an entire draft of the book a close, erudite and immensely helpful critical reading. We owe a great debt of gratitude to Alison Jones, Jessica Churchman and Dewi Jackson of Oxford University Press, who took so much interest in the project and helped shepherd it across a range of time scales. We are also appreciative of the scientific assistance by Peter Taylor and Rafaela Hillerbrand and for administrative support by Rachel Woodcock, Miriam Wood and Jo Armitage.
We thank John Leslie for stimulating our interest in extreme risk many years ago. We thank Mathew Gaverick, Julian Savulescu, Steve Rayner, Irena Diklić, Slobodan Popović, Tanja Berić, KenD. Olum, Istvan Aranyosi, Max Tegmark, Vesna Milošević, Toby Ord, Anders Sandberg, Bill Joy, Maja Bulatović, Alan Robertson, James Hughes, Robert J. Bradbury, Zoran Živković, Michael Vasser, Zoran Knežević, Ivana Dragićević, and Susan Rogers for pleasant and useful discussions of issues relevant to this book. Despairing of producing an exhaustive acknowledgement of even our most direct and immediate intellectual debts – which extend beyond science into the humanities and even music, literature, and art – we humbly apologize to all whom we have egregiously neglected.
Finally, let all the faults and shortcomings of this study be an impetus for others to do better. We thank in advance those who take up this challenge.