In sum, just as a dog can’t possibly comprehend any of the natural and anthropogenic risks mentioned above, so too could there be risks that forever lie beyond our epistemic reach
This seems to prove too much. For any outcome X, there may be ways of reaching it that are “beyond our epistemic reach”, therefore the true probability must be higher than we think.
This also holds for ~X (not necessarily with the same evidential weight as for X). For instance, there may be events we are incapable of imagining which would drastically reduce existential risk, just like FAI would.
One might argue that such risks, if they exist at all, must be highly improbable, since Earth-originating life has existed for some 3.5 billion years without an existential catastrophe having happened. But this line of reasoning is deeply flawed: it fails to take into account that the only worlds in which observers like us could find ourselves are ones in which such a catastrophe has never occurred.
K-T, the extinction event famous for killing the dinosaurs, was only 66 Mya (million years ago), and would pretty certainly kill all humans if it were to reoccur today. So could other big extinction events that occurred in the past, like snowball earth scenarios.
The anthropic argument is misapplied here. Evolution has been extremely slow and ‘undirected’ in producing humans. If planetary sterilization events were much more common, then we would expect to observe a much shorter evolutionary past: tens of millions of years, not billions of them.
If planetary sterilization events were much more common, then we would expect to observe a much shorter evolutionary past: tens of millions of years, not billions of them.
If planetary sterilization events are common and it takes a long time for intelligent life to develop then we would expect to observe the Fermi paradox.
What evidence is there that it takes a lot of time for intelligence to evolve, in the sense of requiring very many sequential steps?
To me it seems intelligence is simply unlikely to evolve at any point of time. Roughly equally unintelligent animals may have existed for tens or hundreds millions of years before humans evolved in a few million years. (Who’s to say if the ancient ancestors of birds 100 million years ago were as smart as some birds are today?) Before that, life existed for billions of years before multicellular creatures evolved.
What evidence do we have that it takes a long time, other than that it happened late in history, which we already accounted for? My impression is that there weren’t progressively-more-multicellular forms evolving into one another over a very long period of time. The first animals lived possibly less than 700 Mya; complex Ediacaran animals appeared 575 Mya; and by 510 Mya we had ostracoderms, which were surely fully multicellular (i.e. with a germline and complex cell differentiation and organs).
That’s on the order of 100 million years for some complexity, and possibly some more tens of millions of years for more. But it’s also possible that multicellularity evolved much more quickly, and the animals just didn’t evolve larger and more complex forms for a while due to e.g. low sea oxygen levels, not having evolved eyes yet, etc.
This seems to prove too much. For any outcome X, there may be ways of reaching it that are “beyond our epistemic reach”, therefore the true probability must be higher than we think.
This also holds for ~X (not necessarily with the same evidential weight as for X). For instance, there may be events we are incapable of imagining which would drastically reduce existential risk, just like FAI would.
K-T, the extinction event famous for killing the dinosaurs, was only 66 Mya (million years ago), and would pretty certainly kill all humans if it were to reoccur today. So could other big extinction events that occurred in the past, like snowball earth scenarios.
The anthropic argument is misapplied here. Evolution has been extremely slow and ‘undirected’ in producing humans. If planetary sterilization events were much more common, then we would expect to observe a much shorter evolutionary past: tens of millions of years, not billions of them.
If planetary sterilization events are common and it takes a long time for intelligent life to develop then we would expect to observe the Fermi paradox.
What evidence is there that it takes a lot of time for intelligence to evolve, in the sense of requiring very many sequential steps?
To me it seems intelligence is simply unlikely to evolve at any point of time. Roughly equally unintelligent animals may have existed for tens or hundreds millions of years before humans evolved in a few million years. (Who’s to say if the ancient ancestors of birds 100 million years ago were as smart as some birds are today?) Before that, life existed for billions of years before multicellular creatures evolved.
You probably need multicellular life first, and this takes a while and does involve many steps.
What evidence do we have that it takes a long time, other than that it happened late in history, which we already accounted for? My impression is that there weren’t progressively-more-multicellular forms evolving into one another over a very long period of time. The first animals lived possibly less than 700 Mya; complex Ediacaran animals appeared 575 Mya; and by 510 Mya we had ostracoderms, which were surely fully multicellular (i.e. with a germline and complex cell differentiation and organs).
That’s on the order of 100 million years for some complexity, and possibly some more tens of millions of years for more. But it’s also possible that multicellularity evolved much more quickly, and the animals just didn’t evolve larger and more complex forms for a while due to e.g. low sea oxygen levels, not having evolved eyes yet, etc.