On the other hand, even if we went extinct, the universe wouldn’t remain empty since some other civilization would be there to take our place.
Yes, but most of my existential risk comes from AGI Misalignment, which would not follow this law, because a Misaligned AGI is likely to spread up and fill our volume and be as immovable to alien civs as we would have been.
Moving quickly can allow humanity to gather a larger fraction of the universe for itself.
The incentives to move quickly were actually a lot greater before grabby aliens, due to accelerating cosmological expansion. (I learned this in a nice Ord paper, but there is also this kurtzgesagt) We expected to lose about three galaxies every passing day that we failed to alight towards the stars. Under this model, if we don’t get them, someone else will, which is not as bad, except insofar as, they would get to them slightly later, and a lot of energy would be lost as heat from the stars, and maybe a larger proportion of them would be unaligned AGI which we wouldn’t love so much as other living species.
The possibility of meeting alien civilizations also means that we have to consider how our actions will effect our reputation
We will have changed a lot since those radio broadcasts were sent out, it wont be long, on a cosmic scale, between them receiving those and meeting us in person, and by the time we meet we will be able to talk quickly enough that the dialog will overwhelm any of that.
By the way, I came across this post in the process of writing up some own thoughts about the implications of the Grabby Aliens model, which I’ve now posted, and would recommend to any long-term strategy thinker: Grabby Aliens could be Good, could be Bad
Yes, but most of my existential risk comes from AGI Misalignment, which would not follow this law, because a Misaligned AGI is likely to spread up and fill our volume and be as immovable to alien civs as we would have been.
The incentives to move quickly were actually a lot greater before grabby aliens, due to accelerating cosmological expansion. (I learned this in a nice Ord paper, but there is also this kurtzgesagt) We expected to lose about three galaxies every passing day that we failed to alight towards the stars. Under this model, if we don’t get them, someone else will, which is not as bad, except insofar as, they would get to them slightly later, and a lot of energy would be lost as heat from the stars, and maybe a larger proportion of them would be unaligned AGI which we wouldn’t love so much as other living species.
We will have changed a lot since those radio broadcasts were sent out, it wont be long, on a cosmic scale, between them receiving those and meeting us in person, and by the time we meet we will be able to talk quickly enough that the dialog will overwhelm any of that.
By the way, I came across this post in the process of writing up some own thoughts about the implications of the Grabby Aliens model, which I’ve now posted, and would recommend to any long-term strategy thinker: Grabby Aliens could be Good, could be Bad