If there are no grabby aliens, then our civilization is highly atypical. But if there are grabby aliens, then we as individuals are highly atypical, living before the space expansion which controls orders of magnitude more resources, and therefore can supports orders of magnitude more sentient observers.
A possible solution would be, if the grabby aliens have to sacrifice their sentience in return for greater expansion speed. A global race to the bottom, where those who do not reduce themselves to the most efficient replicators get outcompeted by those who do. If replicators without sentience are 1% more efficient at replication than replicators with sentience, in the long run this is all that matters.
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(Actually, this also seems to get the math wrong. Even if grabby aliens gradually lose sentience and become pure replicators, as long as they don’t lose the sentience immediately, there should still be orders of magnitude more sentient observers in the early phase of expansion than before the expansion. So our situation before the expansion remains highly atypical.)
If there are no grabby aliens, then our civilization is highly atypical. But if there are grabby aliens, then we as individuals are highly atypical, living before the space expansion which controls orders of magnitude more resources, and therefore can supports orders of magnitude more sentient observers.
A possible solution would be, if the grabby aliens have to sacrifice their sentience in return for greater expansion speed. A global race to the bottom, where those who do not reduce themselves to the most efficient replicators get outcompeted by those who do. If replicators without sentience are 1% more efficient at replication than replicators with sentience, in the long run this is all that matters.
*
(Actually, this also seems to get the math wrong. Even if grabby aliens gradually lose sentience and become pure replicators, as long as they don’t lose the sentience immediately, there should still be orders of magnitude more sentient observers in the early phase of expansion than before the expansion. So our situation before the expansion remains highly atypical.)