site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

13
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Therefore, the Fermi Paradox has not been resolved; it’s just been transmuted into the question “Why weren’t we born into a Grabby civilization at its peak?”

The Simulation Hypothesis has an answer for you: we were.

I don't see that as an answer at all: it just pushes the question down a level. If we're in a simulation, why weren't we born into a Grabby civilization inside it?

That isn't a very compelling counterargument unless you have reason to believe that the simulators will simulate more experiences within grabby civilizations than not. It may be that bespoke single-player experiences better fit the designs of the simulators, and grabby civilizations in their prime aren't the most useful backdrop for those experiences. Or it may be that the simulators are our own descendants trying to learn more about their pre-grabby past.

That isn't a very compelling counterargument unless you have reason to believe that the simulators will simulate more experiences within grabby civilizations than not

Well that's the whole point of my post. Our current understanding of physics suggests that more experiences will happen inside grabby civilizations than outside, which suggests that for some reason simulators want to simulate that. Positing that we're in a simulation does not change this observation at all.

Our current understanding of physics suggests that more experiences will happen inside grabby civilizations than outside

Agreed

which suggests that for some reason simulators want to simulate that

No, this is where I disagree. You are claiming that a grabby civilization at its peak will simulate more experiences that appear subjectively from within the simulation to be part of a grabby civilization than that do not. But why? You and I know almost nothing about what kinds of simulation an advanced civilization would want to run.

Look, you're conflating two things here.

  1. Based on our understanding of the universe, it appears that more sentient entities will be born within Grabby civilizations

  2. Grabby civilizations are by definition more capable of simulating vast quantities of entities, meaning that more entities will be simulated by Grabby civilizations

My post focused entirely on #1. I don't think #2 is very logical, since we don't really know what the rules of the reality simulating ours are, or if there really are any rules at all. I think it's a bit of a reach to surmise that they will follow similar rules, but assuming that the rules are similar, then I suppose #2 is correct and it's probably a Grabby civilization simulating us.

The point I'm trying to make is that the truthiness of #2 doesn't strongly affect #1. and our observations (inasmuch as outside view can be trusted) seem to support #1.

You and I know almost nothing about what kinds of simulation an advanced civilization would want to run.

Exactly, so we can safely reason as if we're not in a simulation, in which case my post remains uncontested.

Here was your original question:

Therefore, the Fermi Paradox has not been resolved; it’s just been transmuted into the question “Why weren’t we born into a Grabby civilization at its peak?”

The Simulation Hypothesis demonstrates that we are likely not in the bottom layer of reality. If this universe is real, then it looks like we'll soon be able to (and likely will) simulate a large number of sentiences, which means it would have been massively coincidental that our indexical experience was located in the "real universe." This does not tell us much about what the simulators' universe actually looks like, or what resemblance it bears to ours, if any, but it does tell us that we probably aren't in the bottom layer. This suffices to dispatch your purported transmutation of the Fermi Paradox.

If the Fermi Paradox is even meaningful at the layer of the simulators' universe, then the answer is that we probably were born (simulated) into a grabby civilization at or near its peak. If the Fermi Paradox isn't meaningful at the layer of the simulators' universe, then it has been resolved. Take your pick, but either way your purported transmutation of the Fermi Paradox isn't paradoxical anymore.

Yeah, but if the Fermi Paradox isn't meaningful on that base layer, it could still be meaningful on this current layer, which is the layer I was talking about.

If our current layer is a simulation -- and the simulation hypothesis says that we are -- then the Fermi Paradox isn't meaningful.

More comments

Well that's the whole point of my post. Our current understanding of physics suggests that more experiences will happen inside grabby civilizations than outside, which suggests that for some reason simulators want to simulate that.

I don't understand why you think B follows from A.

Our current understanding of physics suggests that amongst IRL, non-simulated beings more experiences will happen inside grabby civilizations than outside. But there's no reason to think that Grabbys will predominantly run simulations of other Grabbys. If anything, they should be running simulations of any civilizational stage EXCEPT Grabbyness because if they want to know what being in a Grabby civilization looks like, they need only look out the window, no need to sim it.

We should therefore think it probable to be born as (a) an IRL Grabby or as (b) a simulation by but not of a Grabby.

Simulated civilisations are not subject to the same anthropic logic as non-simulated civilizations, because simulated civilizations don't have to deal with pesky encumbrances like "making chronological sense". A simulated civilization neither has to start low tech to become high tech, not does it have to persist for arbitrary aeons into the timeless depths of the cosmos until it dies out. The IRL Grabby simulator can just go "Uhhh, today I feel like starting at the Hypernegentropic Noosphere stage of civilization and continuing until the discovery of Sanguomaxtic Inversiololology, then I'll turn it off".

Assuming we are in a simulation, I don't think we can draw really any conclusions about our simulators, including whether they're Grabby or not. We have literally no evidence at all about that layer of reality except that they simulated us. I can think of countless reasons why they would simulate other Grabby's--maybe they want to simulate a war, or how history would have unfolded differently, etc.--but they're all worthless because we know nothing at all about our simulators.