I dunno about 10^-30, but top 5% seems easy. After all, if you posit that it only took about 10K years for civilization from scratch (and long periods of that were stagnant or in reverse, so I think it’s actually much less), and if we take 200K years as the total of human span so far, then we have only about 1 in 20 of the 10K periods we know of in which civilization was developed. If you consider Neanderthals and other hominids separately, it’s lower, and that’s just technological development. I think it’s really peculiar that nuclear weapons and weaponized bio agents haven’t been used more, either one of which has the potential to erase civilization, in theory.
In spite of Eliezer’s apparent optimism about how much better was possible, I think it’s likely that we’re clearly in the successful group.
I assume you’re talking about “worlds, whether they include humans or not”, otherwise what you’re saying seems very very dubious.
Eliezer seems to be talking more about “worlds that include humans”, which is a more interesting category.
I dunno about 10^-30, but top 5% seems easy. After all, if you posit that it only took about 10K years for civilization from scratch (and long periods of that were stagnant or in reverse, so I think it’s actually much less), and if we take 200K years as the total of human span so far, then we have only about 1 in 20 of the 10K periods we know of in which civilization was developed. If you consider Neanderthals and other hominids separately, it’s lower, and that’s just technological development. I think it’s really peculiar that nuclear weapons and weaponized bio agents haven’t been used more, either one of which has the potential to erase civilization, in theory.
In spite of Eliezer’s apparent optimism about how much better was possible, I think it’s likely that we’re clearly in the successful group.