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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30406 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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Grabby Aliens is a Terrible Model

My understanding of Robin Hanson’s Grabby Aliens argument is as follows:

  1. Over time, most of the universe will be claimed by Grabby Aliens, leaving less and less room for other alien civilizations

  2. Therefore, most civilizations in the universe will appear near the beginning of the universe, before the Grabby Aliens are so visible and powerful

  3. Therefore, it’s no mystery that we find ourselves near the beginning of the universe, without other aliens in sight

Please let me know if I’ve misunderstood his argument--I’m sure I’ve lost some detail in this summary but the gist of it is that based on outside view it makes perfect sense that aliens are fairly common but that they’re not visible to us yet.

However, this is obviously the wrong perspective through which to view the issue. The outside view works on a civilizational level, yes. If we accept all premises, it makes sense that most civilizations would find themselves “early” in a cosmic sense. But on an individual level, which I’d argue is the much more relevant perspective, the vast, vast majority of individuals should be born into Grabby Alien civilizations.

So my argument is:

  1. If Grabby Aliens exist, in time most of the universe will be claimed by grabby aliens of one sort or another

  2. If at least one Grabby Alien civilization doesn’t immediately succumb to AI or a similar thing, the incredibly vast majority of sentient beings will be born under Grabby Alien rule

  3. It doesn’t matter what the distributions of early civilizations is, because how individuals are born is a more relevant, powerful, and potentially accurate use of Outside View

  4. 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?”

  5. (optional) If going by the outside view, I personally find it more likely that we actually have been born into a Grabby civilization, and are being fooled into thinking we’re alone. This is highly speculative though.

There are of course large weaknesses to using the outside view at all, but I’m just trying to use all the same premises that the original argument did. It frustrates me to see so many rationalists essentially dismiss the issue as solved now that a prominent rationalist has come up with an argument against it, when the argument is so weak.

I’d love to hear what you guys think.

I agree with your points 1 and 2, but not 3. Knowing the distribution of all civilizations tells us the probability of other aliens, given that we are born early and don't see others. I agree it's surprising that we weren't born later, but given that we weren't, it's likely that there are others being born around the same time as us.

I do think your point 5 has merit, It's pretty similar to the simulation hypothesis. But in that case, it doesn't really matter what we do anyways.

I think it's hard to really say "given that we were born early and don't see others" when the original premises make that impossible for us to determine. We're already surmising godlike alien beings who will conquer and populate galaxies; it can't be that difficult for them to fool us. I think the simulation argument or one like it is inevitable and defeats the original conclusion.

Why would they need to fool us?

Well, the religion I follow has an answer to that one. Godlike beings who value agency want to prepare their children before giving them the same godlike power. Therefore they set up a test of sorts, meant to prepare their children morally and sort out the ill-prepared.

Another possibility would just be for kicks and giggles. Maybe there's a planetary development reality show they all tune into. Maybe they just like watching primitive species evolve--who needs videogames when you have the power to accomplish virtually anything near-instantly in reality?

Grabby aliens are likely not very Godlike and would not want to give us the same Godlike power. They just want our resources. They're probably just going to come and kill us.

You seem to have completely missed the point of what grabby aliens are. They are aliens who expand aggressively in all directions at near the speed up light, consuming all available resources in the universe.

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Mass and the energy of the sun, which is the eventual limiting factor for an interstellar civilization. (Realistically, any civilization limited by anything less wouldn't be capable of interstellar travel in the first place)

They wouldn't be spreading across the galaxy for spices, gold, and women.

I'm not sure you understand what I'm saying. In this scenario we are the grabby aliens coming into our own. I also find it unlikely that the grabby aliens wouldn't be godlike--it's been billions of years. We already would appear godlike to cavemen, and the distance between grabby aliens and us is much larger than the distance between us and cavemen.

In this scenario we are the grabby aliens coming into our own.

In what scenario? I don't understand what you're talking about. My comment was in response to yours about not being able to see aliens.

I also find it unlikely that the grabby aliens wouldn't be godlike--it's been billions of years. We already would appear godlike to cavemen, and the distance between grabby aliens and us is much larger than the distance between us and cavemen.

Because, unlike us, they would be very focused on expanding aggressively and would have found a very efficient way of doing so, which would likely be done by purpose built machines, not humanlike beings.

Ah ok. Well those are both pretty plausible. I think even if they mostly use machines, they still probably heavily outnumber us, though.

Which religion is this?

There's an (I think) old SMBC comic that goes something like this:

Priest: People believe in an inherent light and goodness to the world. Perhaps this is true, and there is some entity greater than we can imagine who is doing good in the world.

Skeptic: OK...

Priest: In conclusion, the doctrines of the 3rd Evangelical Orthodox Church are exactly correct.

The religion is LDS, but I have a slightly nonstandard view of our doctrine, and I don't even believe my original post--I was just using it to argue against the Grabby Aliens model. So it's just a fun coincidence; it's pretty far from what we actually believe. Even if I did believe what I was saying (instead of just making an argument using the original argument's premises) I would expect my post to be the furthest thing from convincing because it's so incredibly speculative as to be worthless.

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