[ExI] Silence in the sky—but why?

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Mon Aug 26 20:46:25 UTC 2013


On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 6:28 PM, Anders Sandberg  wrote:
> And our paper shows that you need to consider a few million or billion more
> galaxies if relativistic travel is feasible.
>
> To quote from an earlier presentation I did:
> The silence in the sky is pretty talkative… it is just hard to guess what it
> is saying:
>
> Either a low technology ceiling (transhumanists are overly optimistic)
> Or high existential risk (bad news, we need to figure it out… but it might
> not help!)
> Or strong convergence (Is this something we want? Is it moral convergence?)
> Or one dominant old species (we better figure out the rules)
> Or we are simulations (we better be interesting)
> Or we are indeed alone (BIG responsibility to safeguard life and
> consciousness)
>
> And if the intergalactic expansion argument works then existential risk,
> convergence, the power of old civs or our isolation needs to be many orders
> of magnitude stronger than the normal assumption. Reality is weird.
>
>

My current vote goes for convergence.
There is something in the nature of advanced intelligence that forbids
eating this universe.

I don't see that as necessarily a bad thing.
The convergence may be towards a greater intelligence than we can
imagine at present, where our future creates more universes.

BillK




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