Robin Hanson on Grabby Aliens and When Humanity Will Meet Them

[@lockaltube]

From FTX docs: Similarly, on June 30, 2022, the FTX Foundation funded a $400,000 grant (wired directly from an account in the name of North Dimension) to an entity that posted animated videos on KZbin related to “rationalist and [Effective Altruism] material,” including videos on “grabby aliens.” Yay, money!

[@howardparis4911]

Yeah, Completely disregard all UAP reports and ignore all implications (sarcasm intended). All this speculation has been generated based on wholly misperceived circumstances. What a waste of cognition. Oh, well. GIGO.

[@Alexanderkowaliuk-s7i]

Hello Alexander kowaliuk here people should pay more attention to mr Hanson his math is correct so we are surrounded by aliens right now yet we don't see any.

[@ropeswingify]

I've got an African American girlfriend.. Absolutely gorgeous.. But "quiet"?? I wish.

[@owenlewis4540]

Excellent talk! This is also why we need to fight centralization and bureaucratic control like our lives depend on it. Because they, and the future of our civilization, do.

[@MelliaBoomBot]

28.04.... "in a few billion years it'll be awful..." LOL

[@RicardoMarlowFlamenco]

Understanding his statistical reasoning better, I feel there is a possibility that we actually do observe the “slower” expansion of the grabby galactic engineers. Evidence of the engineering as he described what to look for appears to explain the dark matter models where the engineered galactic structure have only left the gravitational signatures. The obvious cases are the anomalies where dark matter appears not present in certain “special” galaxies, which appear to obey normal GR dynamics minus any Dark Matter influence, and the opposite cases where the dark matter map shows “galaxies” that appear devoid of stars. What we can see at present are different engineering projects in process. The gravity signature is the only aspect we can observe until we understand what the technology is and what it is doing on galactic scales (obviously having to do with stars, ie visible matter which is perhaps simple the material not being “engineered yet”). The 1998 supernovae data reveals that at a certain point in cosmic history, the grabby engineers realized (perhaps due to certain interactions between grabby races) that it was necessary to “accelerate” the expansion rate in order to separate the engineering projects from each other in the far future. Perhaps to isolate and protect galaxies or to simply “hide” the history of whatever happened that lead them to engineer the accelerated expansion. So, astronomers should be looking at the distance scale where the acceleration kicked in for signs of the events that might have given rise to this decision. Perhaps inventory of dark matter galaxies with more or less stars than normal, would be a place to start looking for signatures.

[@Dan-dy8zp]

The simplest thing to do with the galaxy that's quiet is to sterilize it of simple life that could become competition.

[@charlesholder8957]

If you do something before dementia doesn't mean you didn't do it

[@andrewdunbar828]

I found the "Foom Debate" with Robin Hanson much more interesting where he was together with Eliezer Yudkowsky than he is in this video. The Foom Debate exists in at least wo KZbin videos. The video is pretty poor, something to listen to rather than watch.

[@cheeseheadfiddle]

Great talk. Wow. Thinking about biological species: don’t they generally die out from overshoot of carrying capacity in their environment? Are we humans in overshoot? Can you say that about technologies? Over saturating the market demand, until the need for it no longer exists?

[@oatlord]

There's little chance humanity won't spread out. It's like an inbuilt dream.

[@cricketkajanoon3363]

NYC

[@vblaas246]

Interesting view on 'rot' in systems and software engineering. Hardware we bulk in 'the cloud', software.. we just automate the rot away at lightning speed, not preventing increase in complexity though. Funghi are the most similar to humans in a networking analogy. Which system will be more interlinked? In space tech producticity and systemic intellect? China or Western World + Africa + India + Japan + Korea + Singapore. Compatible cultural, social and governmental national networks. This is the key..

[@cheeseheadfiddle]

For me, the elephant in this room is the nature of consciousness. To talk about the next billion years of human existence without contemplation of the revelation/exploration of consciousness and being itself leaves a big gap. For myself anyway.

[@grahamstewart615]

We Come in Peace

[@danielvarga_p]

Thank you! Robin Hanson is really great. My theory predicts Grabby Aliens if you interested more.

[@AngelinaGooseman]

so "specially intellectual" than every other human, so much to the extent of stupidity?

[@vblaas246]

Thanks! Got here from PBS Space Time, nice visualisations there in this topic.

[@jennifercall9014]

Aliens? like say humans on Earth? Perspective I guess.

[@inkpaper_]

amazing talk. thank you very much.

[@scottlemurianboxer]

I like this model and theory. I just don't like that he assumes if their is 1 there has to be hundreds? Well maybe the distances are so vast, and They expand at rate to slow to quickly over take the universe. Also given the that odds of a civilization making it through "all the great filters" to even become a "grabby civilization" are high enough to have many. I think if its True, "we as humans are a grabby civilization" and we see at the rate we expand.

[@StuGames]

From what I understood it doesn't assume that there are a lot of civ's, it concludes that by some kind of anthropic reasoning: We are very early => (anthropic reasoning) it is unlikely to be very much later than us => alien civ's must colonize the universe within the next few billion years => they must be expanding fast because we can't see them

[@RicardoMarlowFlamenco]

I felt the same as you at first until I understood his statistical reasoning. It is not that having only 1 data point or sample of tech civilization (us) means we have no right to assume there must be “more” data out there. Instead it is more about WHEN the data point comes in as a viable sample. His point is that based on stellar evolution and the age of the universe, WE should not be here YET. Yes we are allowed to exist alone in the universe, but as a statistical data point, we appear 10 to power 18 YEARS TOO EARLY!!! This is an enormous discrepancy based on the available parameters. It is so enormously improbable that it is orders of magnitude more likely that based on TIME ALONE, we arrive early because it is actually not “early”, it is the typical way it goes when you have many civilizations. Make sense? Don’t feel bad, the interviewer did not get the magnitude of the problem either and asked for more explanation after he had just clearly stated it.

[@RicardoMarlowFlamenco]

By the way he cancels this statistical problem easily by assuming both 1. Intelligent life is EASY and common….not supported even by history of life on earth, and 2. Long lived stars unlike ours (red dwarf stars) do not support life. Considering that Earth could function in orbit around a red dwarf EASILY, by moving its orbit in closer such that the radiation is equivalent to Earth Sun relation now, (not counting the possibility that a locked-face orbit might happen at certain closer distances), there is no reason to assume all life dies around a red dwarf. The timing improbability is so enormous that gradual chipping away of the statistic based on refined data of 1 and 2 above in favor of placing our arrival ever earlier in time, doesn’t remove the problem.