Yeah, it’s loosely analogous to how various bits of jungle are preserved because faraway westerners care about preserving it and intercede on its behalf. If somewhere far away there are powerful AGIs that care about humanity and do ECL, (which is plausible since the universe is very big) and the unaligned AI we build does ECL such that it cooperates with faraway AGIs also doing ECL, then hopefully (and probably, IMO) the result of this cooperation will be some sort of protection and care for humans.
Thanks! Does that depend on the empirical question of how costly it would be for the AI to protect us and how much the aliens care about us or is the first number too small that there’s almost always going to be someone willing to trade?
I imagine the civilisations that care about intelligent life far away have lots of others they’d want to pay to protect. Also unsure about what form their “protect Earth life” preference takes—if it is conservationist style “preserve Earth in its current form forever” then that also sounds bad because I think Earth right now might be net negative due to animal suffering. Though hopefully there not being sentient beings that suffer is a common enough preference in the universe. And that there are more aliens who would make reasonable-to-us tradeoffs with suffering such that we don’t end up dying due to particularly suffering focused aliens.
My guess is that the first number is too small, such that there’s always going to be someone willing to trade. However, I’m not confident in this stuff yet.
I agree that not all of the civilizations that care about what happens to us, care in the ways we want them to care. For example as you say maybe there are some that want things to stay the same. I don’t have a good sense of the relative ratios / prevalence of different types of civilizations, though we can make some guesses e.g. it’s probable that much more civilizations want us not to suffer than want us to suffer.
Yeah, it’s loosely analogous to how various bits of jungle are preserved because faraway westerners care about preserving it and intercede on its behalf. If somewhere far away there are powerful AGIs that care about humanity and do ECL, (which is plausible since the universe is very big) and the unaligned AI we build does ECL such that it cooperates with faraway AGIs also doing ECL, then hopefully (and probably, IMO) the result of this cooperation will be some sort of protection and care for humans.
Thanks! Does that depend on the empirical question of how costly it would be for the AI to protect us and how much the aliens care about us or is the first number too small that there’s almost always going to be someone willing to trade?
I imagine the civilisations that care about intelligent life far away have lots of others they’d want to pay to protect. Also unsure about what form their “protect Earth life” preference takes—if it is conservationist style “preserve Earth in its current form forever” then that also sounds bad because I think Earth right now might be net negative due to animal suffering. Though hopefully there not being sentient beings that suffer is a common enough preference in the universe. And that there are more aliens who would make reasonable-to-us tradeoffs with suffering such that we don’t end up dying due to particularly suffering focused aliens.
My guess is that the first number is too small, such that there’s always going to be someone willing to trade. However, I’m not confident in this stuff yet.
I agree that not all of the civilizations that care about what happens to us, care in the ways we want them to care. For example as you say maybe there are some that want things to stay the same. I don’t have a good sense of the relative ratios / prevalence of different types of civilizations, though we can make some guesses e.g. it’s probable that much more civilizations want us not to suffer than want us to suffer.