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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30435 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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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.

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

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