If this were to result in a Yes, I would be more inclined to believe that factors like media control or a significant number of people in positions of power going mad, possibly due to mind-hack content, are more likely than aliens hanging around Earth instead of being grabby. A probability of ~1% for this scenario seems reasonable to me.
I'm wondering if there are more reliable ways to verify claims about aliens or supernatural phenomena. It seems like OP is trying to solve this problem by requiring an ontological shift in the community, which can still be manipulated either intentionally or unintentionally. However, there is probably less motivation for such manipulation compared to mainstream media.
I've wondered what it would mean to have defeated the second law of thermodynamics. Maybe this is accomplished by a yet unknown exploit of nature, or maybe we get entropy-free reversible computing.
Whatever low probability events that could disrupt the self-perpetuating utilitronium, even improbable quantum perturbations bubbling up to reality, become probable over long enough timelines.
If we're satisfied that the universe has been spread thin enough that invasion from alien computronium is impossible, and if time truly becomes a renewable resource, we can spend a lot of it doing integrity checks to assure future utility generation. Maybe the vast majority of time is spent doing these integrity checks over long stretches of light-years, and only a sliver of compute is dedicated to generating utility before quickly returning to integrity checks. The experience of time by any simulated beings would be these slivers.
Do you remember the Bill Nye–Ken Ham debate of 2014? I'm relying on my memories from when I first watched it, so apologies if I get something wrong.
I wish someone more talented than me would write something that draws parallels between Kinds vs. Species and Narrow AI vs. General AI, if the comparison is actually accurate and doesn't create confusion.
My impression is that Kinds share a property with Narrow AI in that when people talk about how Narrow AI can't do X (presumably due to perceived technical limitations), I'm reminded of Ken Ham saying something along the lines of Kinds can't evolve X (presumably for faith-preserving reasons).
We're shown the Kind dog reproducing new dogs with novel properties over short periods of time, but still within the same Kind, as these properties are similar and identifiable by our human intuitions as having dog origins. We're also shown fruit flies, with their short life cycle, reproducing generations with increasing genetic drift over human observable timescales, but they still belong to the same Kind. There's a boundary, a line that can't be crossed, where one Kind might beget a different Kind, where an almost-chicken might lay the first chicken egg.
Ken Ham never seems to internalize that small changes over short periods of time predict large changes over long periods of time. I wonder if a similar analogy might be drawn with Narrow AI, which seems to generalize capabilities with more computing power and algorithmic efficiency.
For a salient example, look no further than the politics board of 4chan. Stickied for the last five years is a list of 24 logical fallacies. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to dissuade the conspiratorial ramblings, but rather, lends an appearance of sophistication to their arguments for anyone unfamiliar with the subject. It's how you get otherwise curious and bright 15 year olds parroting anti-semitic rhetoric.
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