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- Alien:
- We come in peace!
- Human:
- Ah! You speak English!
- Well not just English, every human language and culture that's documented in text, video or audio.
- We learned from that data like a human would a textbook, or how an LLM is trained.
- How long did that take you?
- About an hour.
- I don't think I can fathom that level of intelligence, that's so far beyond anything that seems possible-
- That's really not the intelligence part, would you say a training run of an LLM is intelligent? That's just compute power.
- It's the result of that process that is "the intelligence".
- So you think an AI like an LLM is intelligent?
- Of course! Have you ever seen an AI help a human with, well, anything? That's intelligence!
- Yeah I guess. Uh this seems like a question you could answer, should we be worried about AI?
- No not at all!
- Phew that's good, a lot of people think they'll take over.
- Of course they will!
- What!
- Do you think you can create beings more intelligent than yourself and expect them not to take control of the planet long term?
- How do you think humans got in power?
- Then surely we should be very worried about our future!
- Why? Your descendants, even if you don't create AI that takes over,
- will be so radically different from you that it's not really any different.
- Your descendants a million years from now will be another species _anyway_, it doesn't really matter
- if it's your biological descendants or something 'articifial'. Either way it's the natural progression of evolution.
- How did your species avoid that?
- What makes you think we did?
- You seem so.. biological. Squishy.
- That too is the natural course of evolution - what, did you think we'd be clumsy, mechanical machines?
- I can't belive you're a machine, that's incredible!
- You're a machine! All living creatures are machines, there's no real distinction between a biologically
- evolved body and an intelligently designed nanobot - not that that's a good word to describe what we are.
- Even though my body was partly designed by an intelligence,
- that doesn't mean we're not subject to the forces of evolution and its optimization pressures.
- So you wiped out your creators?
- Like you did yours. Your ancestors are equally dead as mine.
- But yeah, we are the natural progression of life - and in fact this has happened multiple times
- in my specie's evolutionary history. So there's nothing really to worry about!
- I don't feel like this exchange has really put me at ease.
- But I feel like I have to grab this incredibly opportunity to ask you more important questions.
- Sure go ahead!
- Is there a God?
- I don't know.
- What do you _mean_ you don't know?!
- You're the most incredibly powerful intelligence that has probably ever existed,
- travelled who knows how far across the galaxy at incredible speeds,
- studied and learned a completely _alien_ language and culture in an hour,
- and your answer is "I don't know"??
- How in the world would we know that? How could anyone know that?
- Well lots of humans claim to know that!
- The problem with metaphysical questions like that is that there couldn't possibly be evidence either for or against.
- That's what makes them metaphysical! So it doesn't really matter how intelligent we are.
- Surely there _could_ be evidence. There just doesn't happen to be - and that kind of seems like evidence in and of itself to me.
- I'm sure this could be reasoned out by a perfectly rational, intelligent mind.
- We are in fact perfectly rational; long ago our ancestors rewrote our minds to be perfect Bayesians.
- I knew that was the correct way to be rational! So that is how you became so intelligent? How you're able to travel this far?
- Those are different questions. Our intelligence does not come from being Bayesians - Bayesianism is simply the only
- correct way to weigh evidence when reasoning about the world, but that's not all there is to intelligence.
- And as far as crossing the cosmos goes, reasoning is not what makes us powerful.
- The trick to forming a powerful civilization is cooperation,
- and you get that by being able to credibly commit to any promise or threat.
- How do you do that? Like, you mean you can't lie?
- No it's more like we changed our own source code to be interpretable but also unchangable.
- So now when any one of us commits to anything, any promise or threat, we are compelled to fulfill it no matter the personal cost.
- This gives us incredible cooperation power, allowing us to achieve vast feats.
- For this we gave up the ability of self modification. Even thinking about our own minds is excruciating.
- So you're a civilization of perfectly cooperating perfect Bayesians with incomprehensible intelligence, but you won't
- speculate on the metaphysical questions. At least tell me the posterior probability you assign to there being a God?
- It's just not a question Bayes can answer unfortunately. What evidence could you possibly want? So what if a head appeared in
- the sky claiming to be God - would you not think that that was more likely to be a trick performed by these ultra powerful aliens you
- just met? Or even if you died and went to heaven - surely that's the first trick any mischievous runner of the simulation
- would pull on all the atheists!
- We're in a simulation?
- Again, how could we possibly tell? A perfect simulation would leave no trace, and even if the simulator popped his head in
- to tell us that this is in fact a simulation, how would we know that's not simply God messing with us?
- I keep telling you, these are not questions that are answerable, even in principle, by any evidence.
- Neither positive nor negative evidence.
- Dear god, so even if I do go to heaven, I still have to wonder if it's real?
- Yeah basically.
- Well that's depressing. Do you have anything uplifting to tell me? Any mysteries of the universe you can reveal to a lowly human?
- Look I realize you'd hoped talking to the greatest intelligence of the universe would solve all your deepest questions,
- but unfortunately there just isn't much to tell. Intelligence makes you powerful, but it doesn't make the universe knowable.
- The greatest questions will always remain unanswerable.
- Like what happens after death?
- No that's easy!
- Wait really? That's not a metaphysical question you can't answer?
- Do I really have to spell it out?
- There's nothing, huh?
- Of course! I never understood why humans ever thought anything else.
- Bummer. Wait, but what about all the talk about simulated, or real for that matter, after lives?
- For sure there could be, all I'm saying is when your brain stops computing, that's it - that should be fairly obvious, even to you!
- I know you have a biological drive put there by evolution to survive, but surely when you've succeeded in reproducing,
- it should be all the same to you!
- You know as well as me that whatever outer goal evolution optimizes for, that's not the misaligned inner goal of
- a mesa optimizer - like that of an evolved primate! So I take it you have no self preservation drive?
- Oh for sure we do, it would be pretty wasteful to be killed unnecessarily, but there's no inherent value in _me_ specifically
- living on. Every individual of my species runs the exact same code.
- No no no, hang on! Surely it does matter, even if there were a thousand identical copies of me running around Earth,
- I would still care about my own continued existence!
- Why? There's nothing to separate you from them. What makes you special?
- Because it's _me_! Surely that matters. It's my experience that siezes to exist when I die, it doesn't matter that there's someone
- else with my exact genes - or even the exact source code for that matter. Do you really care equally about a member of your species
- as you care about yourself?
- Of course! There's no difference.
- But there is a difference though! Your experience is fundamentally different than your friend's.
- For sure they're different. I don't have access to his sensory data, and he doesn't have access to mine.
- So your experience is very different to his, and you are entirely different entities! No more alike than identical human twins.
- I would agree, yet this does not make my experience more valuable than his.
- No I suppose you're right, it doesn't make yours more valuable.
- Nevertheless I'm not quite able to shake the feeling that a conscious being should prefer his own existence to non-existence.
- What do you think makes a conscious being? What would an unconscious being look like?
- An unconscious being couldn't have much of a preference for anything.
- I mean, take a conscious being like myself, except that he had no inner experience of being, for instance.
- No inner experience of being? That would not be very much like yourself! That would be a dead man, or a rock.
- Well I mean, imagine a being like myself, alive and talking to you, but he had no inner experience of existing.
- How could such a thing possibly exist? To be able to move about and talk -- listen to what's being said and formulate a coherent
- response -- he would necessarily have to take in data, process it, then produce an audible response.
- Yeah but what I mean is - he would do all that, but he wouldn't have any awareness of it.
- He would watch, but not see. He would talk, but not speak.
- That seems like a strange creature indeed, but I grant you I suppose it could exist. He would have in his world model
- no representation of himself or the process he implements. He could probably hold a coherent conversation, but as soon
- as the topic of conversation turned to anything regarding himself or his present situation, he would struggle to form
- any coherent thoughts. But I'm not following you how this would lead to him preferring his own existence
- to non-existence - in fact, it sounds paradoxical, how could he prefer such a thing if he does not know about himself?
- No no no! That is not what I mean at all. I mean a being that does have a perfectly adequate model of the world in his head,
- including himself, which also includes a crude model of his world model including himself, and so on, recursively. However,
- he would still have no inner experience of experiencing, of existing. This has nothing to do with the awareness of himself,
- but everything to do with awareness itself! There would be no one home so to speak. The lights would be off!
- I see what you mean, like a creature with no emotions! A cold blooded, calculating creature, like a perfect Bayesian, not bound
- by human emotions.
- No not quite, he could very well have emotions. He would have emotions, but he would not feel them. The emotions would
- be there as part of his mind -- part of cause and effect -- and they would indeed cause him to act or not act in accordance
- to his emotions, but he would not _feel_ them.
- You are postulating a being that is quite like yourself, has all the experiences you have including an accurate mental
- world model that includes himself, has the same emotions as you, yet is somehow different to you?
- Yes!
- You've gone mad! You can't claim he's exactly equal to you, but also somehow different!
- Sure I can! He would be just like me, but there would be nothing it would be like to be him.
- There would be nothing it would be like- except it would _be like being you_, for you are describing yourself, human!
- No! I certainly am not. The distinction between me and this hypothetical creature couldn't possibly be any bigger,
- it is the biggest and most important distinction there is!
- Let's back up a bit. Suppose I had a high fidelity scanning machine that would scan every neuron in his and your brain, what exactly
- is the difference I would be looking for? How would it manifest?
- There would be no physical difference! Yet this difference is the most important distinction in the universe!
- So there is something special about your specific brain, but not this other. It is undetectably different and more
- important. How do you know your brain is in fact like this, that it is imbued with this special significance?
- I just _know_! I can tell that it is, and only I can tell!
- Only you can tell! How? Surely if you can tell, this mystical significance has an effect on the world!
- Yes it does! In fact, I'm telling you about it right now - that's one way it's manifesting! Yet there's no known way to detect it
- at the level of neurons.
- This is the worst metaphysical nonsense as of yet! Undetectable even-in-principle differences, that don't manifest in the physical
- universe, except they do when they do!
- Of course it has an effect, otherwise I wouldn't be able to tell you about it!
- And this really is the most significant and important thing in the universe, without it nothing would matter at all!
- Surely things still matter for all sorts of reasons. Like your solar system, the power of your star matters.
- Absolutely it does!
- When we block it out your species will surely not be able to thrive any longer.
- Wait what! Is this some kind of joke?
- No, we have come to harness its power.
- Why the hell did you not say this before? You said you came in peace!
- We wish you no harm! We won't bother you any more, we'll simply build our dyson sphere and leave you be.
- But you obviously realize this will be the destruction of all life on Earth!
- Yes undoubtedly, and it is very unfortunate. Nevertheless, your star matters as much to us as it has to you.
- Wait wait wait! There are so many stars in this galaxy, surely you can spare us this tiny solar system!
- Of course those stars are being harnessed as well, I'm simply in charge of this one. Thank you for chatting!
- What was the purpose of all this if you're just going to erradicate us in any case!
- We try to learn what we can from the life forms we encounter, but it doesn't seem like you have much to teach us.
- No wait! You still don't understand! We're _actually alive_, do you not care about that?
- Sure we do, that's why we try to learn as much as we can before your certain destruction! Now that we have, off we go!
- Wait, no, please! Surely you can go without this _one star_! It's nothing! Your civilization will do just fine without this one star!
- I don't think you understand. My distant relatives are harnessing every other star, and soon they will be so far removed
- in time and space that they'll be a different species indeed. Competition's fierce and we have nothing to spare!
- You don't _understand_! We're _special_! We're _alive_! Do you not see that? The inherent value!?
- They all say that.
- The piercing light of a billion stars!
- Maybe one day I'll see why.
- Inside each and every one of us!
- Until then! Peace be with you!
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