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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30432 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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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.

Why wouldn't the energy being output by stars be a useful resource?

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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