I think it will probably not doom the long-term future.
This is partly because I’m pretty optimistic that, if interstellar colonization would predictably doom the long-term future, then people would figure out solutions to that. (E.g. having AI monitors travel with people and force them not to do stuff, as Buck mentions in the comments.) Importantly, I think interstellar colonization is difficult/slow enough that we’ll probably first get very smart AIs with plenty of time to figure out good solutions. (If we solve alignment.)
But I also think it’s less likely that things would go badly even without coordination. Going through the items in the list:
Galactic x-risk
Is it possible?
Would it end Galactic civ?
Lukas’ take
Self-replicating machines
100% | ✅
75% | ❌
I doubt this would end galactic civ. The quote in that section is about killing low-tech civs before they’ve gotten high-tech. A high-tech civ could probably monitor for and destroy offensive tech built by self-replicators before it got bad enough that it could destroy the civ.
”50%” in the survey was about vacuum decay being possible in principle, not about it being possible to technologically induce (at the limit of technology). The survey reported significantly lower probability that it’s possible to induce. This might still be a big deal though!
This seems like an incredibly broad category. I’m quite concerned about something in this general vicinity, but it doesn’t seem to share the property of the other things in the list where “if it’s started anywhere, then it spreads and destroys everything everywhere”. Or at least you’d have to narrow the category a lot before you got there.
Artificial superintelligence
100% | ✅
80% | ❌
The argument given in this subsection is that technology might be offense-dominant. But my best guess is that it’s defense-dominant.
Conflict with alien intelligence
75% | ❌
90% | ❌
The argument given in this subsection is that technology might be offense-dominant. But my best guess is that it’s defense-dominant.
Expanding on the question about whether space warfare is offense-dominant or defense-dominant: One argument I’ve heard for defense-dominance is that, in order to destroy very distant stuff, you need to concentrate a lot of energy into a very tiny amount of space. (E.g. very narrowly focused lasers, or fast-moving rocks flinged precisely.) But then you can defeat that by jiggling around the stuff that you want to protect in unpredictable ways, so that people can’t aim their highly-concentrated energy from far away and have it hit correctly.
Now that’s just one argument, so I’m not very confident. But I’m at <50% on offense-dominance.
(A lot of the other items on the list could also be stories for how you get offense-dominace, where I’m especially concerned about vacuum decay. But it would be double-counting to put those both in their own categories and to count them as valid attacks from superintelligence/aliens.)
Thanks for the in-depth comment. I agree with most of it.
if interstellar colonization would predictably doom the long-term future, then people would figure out solutions to that.
Agreed, I hope this is the case. I think there are some futures where we send lots of ships out to interstellar space for some reason or act too hastily (maybe a scenario where transformative AI speeds up technological development, but not so much our wisdom). Just one mission (or set of missions) capable of self-propagating to other star systems almost inevitably leads to galactic civilisation in the end, and we’d have to catch up to it to ensure existential security, which would become challenging if they create von-Neumann probes.
“50%” in the survey was about vacuum decay being possible in principle, not about it being possible to technologically induce (at the limit of technology). The survey reported significantly lower probability that it’s possible to induce. This might still be a big deal though!
Yeah this is my personal estimate based on that survey and its responses. I was particularly convinced by one responder who put 100% probability that its possible to induce (conditional on the vacuum being metastable), as anything that’s permitted by the laws of physics is possible to induce with arbitrarily advanced technology (so, 50% based on that chance of the vacuum is metastable).
anything that’s permitted by the laws of physics is possible to induce with arbitrarily advanced technology
Hm, this doesn’t seem right to me. For example, I think we could coherently talk about and make predictions about what would happen if there was a black hole with a mass of 10^100 kg. But my best guess is that we can’t construct such a black hole even at technological maturity, because even the observable universe only has 10^53 kg in it.
Similarly, we can coherently talk about and make predictions about what would happen if certain kinds of lower-energy states existed. (Such as predicting that they’d be meta-stable and spread throughout the universe.) But that doesn’t necessarily mean that we can move the universe to such a state.
I think it will probably not doom the long-term future.
This is partly because I’m pretty optimistic that, if interstellar colonization would predictably doom the long-term future, then people would figure out solutions to that. (E.g. having AI monitors travel with people and force them not to do stuff, as Buck mentions in the comments.) Importantly, I think interstellar colonization is difficult/slow enough that we’ll probably first get very smart AIs with plenty of time to figure out good solutions. (If we solve alignment.)
But I also think it’s less likely that things would go badly even without coordination. Going through the items in the list:
Expanding on the question about whether space warfare is offense-dominant or defense-dominant: One argument I’ve heard for defense-dominance is that, in order to destroy very distant stuff, you need to concentrate a lot of energy into a very tiny amount of space. (E.g. very narrowly focused lasers, or fast-moving rocks flinged precisely.) But then you can defeat that by jiggling around the stuff that you want to protect in unpredictable ways, so that people can’t aim their highly-concentrated energy from far away and have it hit correctly.
Now that’s just one argument, so I’m not very confident. But I’m at <50% on offense-dominance.
(A lot of the other items on the list could also be stories for how you get offense-dominace, where I’m especially concerned about vacuum decay. But it would be double-counting to put those both in their own categories and to count them as valid attacks from superintelligence/aliens.)
Thanks for the in-depth comment. I agree with most of it.
Agreed, I hope this is the case. I think there are some futures where we send lots of ships out to interstellar space for some reason or act too hastily (maybe a scenario where transformative AI speeds up technological development, but not so much our wisdom). Just one mission (or set of missions) capable of self-propagating to other star systems almost inevitably leads to galactic civilisation in the end, and we’d have to catch up to it to ensure existential security, which would become challenging if they create von-Neumann probes.
Yeah this is my personal estimate based on that survey and its responses. I was particularly convinced by one responder who put 100% probability that its possible to induce (conditional on the vacuum being metastable), as anything that’s permitted by the laws of physics is possible to induce with arbitrarily advanced technology (so, 50% based on that chance of the vacuum is metastable).
Hm, this doesn’t seem right to me. For example, I think we could coherently talk about and make predictions about what would happen if there was a black hole with a mass of 10^100 kg. But my best guess is that we can’t construct such a black hole even at technological maturity, because even the observable universe only has 10^53 kg in it.
Similarly, we can coherently talk about and make predictions about what would happen if certain kinds of lower-energy states existed. (Such as predicting that they’d be meta-stable and spread throughout the universe.) But that doesn’t necessarily mean that we can move the universe to such a state.