Anthropics arguments seem to support this: we can observe only those parts of the universe where we a) first—or b) grabby aliens are not destroying everything.
I think we need to just scrap everything we think we “know” about anthropics and grabby aliens and lightcone-tiling AGI if this is true. The Aristotelian epistemology that has led us to those “conclusions” are obviously garbage, if it turns out that no, high-tech aliens with seemingly capped technology are here and they’re not doing anything to us. Confirmed UFO craft would be an absurd, catastrophic indictment of the standard LessWrong worldview and our overconfidence in these sorts of arguments.
Yeah, I really strongly agree with this. If high-tech aliens have been in contact with Earth for some significant time, the general public weren’t aware, and we aren’t all dead? “Halt and Catch Fire” moment for sure (wanted to make that a link to where I learned that phrase in The Sequences but I couldn’t find it by search. Did I confabulate??)
Anthropics arguments seem to support this: we can observe only those parts of the universe where we a) first—or b) grabby aliens are not destroying everything.
I think we need to just scrap everything we think we “know” about anthropics and grabby aliens and lightcone-tiling AGI if this is true. The Aristotelian epistemology that has led us to those “conclusions” are obviously garbage, if it turns out that no, high-tech aliens with seemingly capped technology are here and they’re not doing anything to us. Confirmed UFO craft would be an absurd, catastrophic indictment of the standard LessWrong worldview and our overconfidence in these sorts of arguments.
Yeah, I really strongly agree with this. If high-tech aliens have been in contact with Earth for some significant time, the general public weren’t aware, and we aren’t all dead? “Halt and Catch Fire” moment for sure (wanted to make that a link to where I learned that phrase in The Sequences but I couldn’t find it by search. Did I confabulate??)
(“Halt, Melt, and Catch Fire” is in a few posts in the Coming of Age sequence)