The idea that “grabby aliens” pose a danger assumes that we are not a grabby alien colony.
Suppose that the hardest step towards technological intelligence is that from chimpanzee-level cognition to human-level cognition. And suppose that grabby aliens are not concerned with propagating their biological substrate, but rather their cognitive architecture. Then their approach to expanding could be to find worlds where chimpanzee-level beings have already evolved, and “uplift” them to higher-level cognition. This is a theme of a series of novels by David Brin.
But now, unlike Brin, suppose that they believe that the best approach for the new creatures with higher-level cognition to mature is to just leave them alone (until they reach some threshold known only to the grabby aliens). Then we could be a grabby alien colony without knowing it, and hence have nothing to fear from the grabby aliens. (At least nothing to fear along the usual lines.)
And suppose that grabby aliens are not concerned with propagating their biological substrate, but rather their cognitive architecture. Then their approach to expanding could be to find worlds where chimpanzee-level beings have already evolved, and “uplift” them to higher-level cognition.
I think a wide variety of strategies can be imagined that would be far more effective at colonizing the universe, in the sense of squeezing out the most computations per unit of matter. Direct manufacturing of computing hardware aided by autonomous self-replicating AI around every star system would probably work well.
More generally, the insight of grabby aliens is that aliens should be big and visible, rather than quiet and isolated (as they’re traditionally depicted). This puts big constraints on what should be possible, assuming we buy the model.
Maybe a Dyson sphere consisting of a cloud of self-replicating nanomachines works better that a planet with biological organisms. But remember, whatever one might think from reading lots of posts on lesswrong, that’s not actually a proven technology, whereas biology is (although “uplifting” isn’t).
One issue is robustness to occasional catastrophes. If I may reference another work of fiction, there’s The Outcasts of Heaven Belt, by Joan Vinge.
The idea that “grabby aliens” pose a danger assumes that we are not a grabby alien colony.
Suppose that the hardest step towards technological intelligence is that from chimpanzee-level cognition to human-level cognition. And suppose that grabby aliens are not concerned with propagating their biological substrate, but rather their cognitive architecture. Then their approach to expanding could be to find worlds where chimpanzee-level beings have already evolved, and “uplift” them to higher-level cognition. This is a theme of a series of novels by David Brin.
But now, unlike Brin, suppose that they believe that the best approach for the new creatures with higher-level cognition to mature is to just leave them alone (until they reach some threshold known only to the grabby aliens). Then we could be a grabby alien colony without knowing it, and hence have nothing to fear from the grabby aliens. (At least nothing to fear along the usual lines.)
I think a wide variety of strategies can be imagined that would be far more effective at colonizing the universe, in the sense of squeezing out the most computations per unit of matter. Direct manufacturing of computing hardware aided by autonomous self-replicating AI around every star system would probably work well.
More generally, the insight of grabby aliens is that aliens should be big and visible, rather than quiet and isolated (as they’re traditionally depicted). This puts big constraints on what should be possible, assuming we buy the model.
Maybe a Dyson sphere consisting of a cloud of self-replicating nanomachines works better that a planet with biological organisms. But remember, whatever one might think from reading lots of posts on lesswrong, that’s not actually a proven technology, whereas biology is (although “uplifting” isn’t).
One issue is robustness to occasional catastrophes. If I may reference another work of fiction, there’s The Outcasts of Heaven Belt, by Joan Vinge.