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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.

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.

I actually disagree, if the gist of this argument is supposed to be some version of doomsday argument. The main weakness here I think is vague definition of individual. Who is individual, what traits does it have to have? Even for Earth, I'd say that in one end of the spectrum basically all mammals count as individuals, possibly even every insect is an individual and so forth, so can one argue that we are supposed to be living in the average period of mammalian/life dominance? And on the other hand I can say that individual is as narrow as georgioz at the time he was born. There was no other individual like georgioz ever created and there never will be one. The pool of georgioz individuals is exactly 1, and he was born when he was born so there can be no further argument made out of it.

In the end I find Fermi paradox/Doomsday/Ontological proof of god arguments as faulty way to logic something into existence. Out of all of them, Fermi paradox is at least useful as it tries to identify some parameters and logical assumptions which clarifies thinking. But it cannot be resolved on its own merit or by using other logic.

I think any reasonable definition will include more Grabby Aliens than humans, or mammals on grabby alien planets, etc.. I agree with your point though and find this whole perspective very unconvincing.