For galactic civilisations I’d guess that there would be a strong first mover advantage. If one civilisation (perhaps controlled be an AI) started expanding 1000 years before another then any conflict between them would likely be won by the civilisation that started capturing resources first.
But what if none of them know which of them expanded first? There might be several forces colonising the galaxy, and all keeping extremely quiet so that they don’t get noticed and destroyed by and older civilisation. Thus no need for a great filter, and even if UFAI were common we wouldn’t observe it colonising the galaxy.
The same way different species hid from each other to avoid being wiped out? You can’t expand and hide. And you must expand—so you can’t realistically hide.
The fairly obvious distinction is the species do not have centralling planning, or even sophisticated communication between individual members. Civilisations can and do have such things, and AIs also seem likely to.
Civiliszations could hide—if they were stupid—or if they didn’t care about the future. I wasn’t suggesting hiding was a strategy that was not available at all—just that it would not be an effective survival strategy.
That may be the case, but the fact that species did not hide is no evidence for it, as species could not realistically have hid even if it would have been optimal
Also, I would like to point out that where the hiding strategy is feasible, on the individual level, it is very common among animals.
In fact, arguably we do have a few cases of species ‘hiding’, such as the coelocanth, which has gone over a hundred million years without much significant evolution, vastly longer than most species survive.
Basically, I do not see any reason to believe either of the following assertions.
Perhaps I overstated my case. Hiding and expanding are different optimisation targets that pull in pretty different directions. It is challenging to expand while hiding effectively—since farming suns tends to leave a visible thermodynamic signature which is visible from far away and is expensive to eliminate. I expect civilizations will typically strongly prioritize expanding over hiding.
Okay, in that case I now agree with the first part of your claim, I will accept that there is certainly a trade-off, perfect expanding does not involve much hiding and perfect hiding does not involve much expanding.
So, to move on to the other side, why do you expect expanding to be more prevalent than hiding. It seems to me that Oscar Cunningham’s argument for why hiding might be preferable is quite convincing, or at any rate reduces it to a non-trivial problem of game theory and risk aversion.
Camouflage is pretty unlikely to be an effective defense against an oncoming colonisation wave. I figure the defense budget will be spent more on growth and weapons than camouflage.
For reasons of technological progress, I suspect a hiding civilisation could destroy an younger expanding civilisation before it was hit by the colonisation wave. If this is the case, it becomes a matter of how likely you are to be the oldest civilisation, how likely the oldest civilisation is to expand or hide, and how much you value survival relative to growth. If the first is low and the last is high, then hiding seems like quite a good strategy.
For reasons of technological progress, I suspect a hiding civilisation could destroy an younger expanding civilisation before it was hit by the colonisation wave.
That sounds like the wave’s leading edge to me.
If this is the case, it becomes a matter of how likely you are to be the oldest civilisation, how likely the oldest civilisation is to expand or hide, and how much you value survival relative to growth. If the first is low and the last is high, then hiding seems like quite a good strategy.
The issues as I see them are different. Much depends on whether progress “maxes out”. If it doesn’t the most mature civilization probaby just wins—in which case, hiding is irrelevant. If the adversaries are well matched they may attempt to find some other resolution besides a big fight which could weaken both of them. Again, hiding won’t help.
IMO, assuming the oldest civilization is in hiding is not a good way to start analysing this issue.
I am confused by this sentence, and cannot parse what it means.
Much depends on whether progress “maxes out”. If it doesn’t the most mature civilization probaby just wins
If it knows that its then oldest, then yes it wins. The whole point of Oscar-Cunningham’s comment is that it might not know this.
To model it as a simple game, 100 people are all put in separate rooms. One of them is designated as the ‘big player’, nobody knows who they are including them. Each has two choices expand or hide. If the big player expands then they receive a large pay-off and everyone else gets nothing. If the big player hides, then everyone who hides gets a small pay-off, and everyone who expands gets nothing.
Obviously much depends of the relative size of the large and small pay-offs, but it is not trivially obvious to me that expanding is the optimal strategy here.
If the adversaries are well matched they may attempt to find some other resolution besides a big fight which could weaken both of them. Again, hiding won’t help.
Against an equally matched foe, attempts to negotiate are inherently highly risky, if negotiations break down, then one of them may well destroy the other, given the possibility of a first mover advantage, one civilisation may decide to attack if negotiations merely look likely to break down, applying the game theory backwards, we get an extremely volatile situation where as soon as anything ceases to go absolutely perfectly both sides attack. Hiding from an equally matched civilisation may well be much safer than trying to talk to them.
Furthermore, if you become aware of an equally matched civilisation hiding from you, it may be better to continue to pretend you are not aware, rather than opening negotiations straight away. This may go to rather high levels of I know You know I know and as long a mutual knowledge isn’t attained both can survive.
The more realistic version of that game always has expanding, since we know the total payout on expanding is greater than the total on hiding, and the big player is allowed to share the resources equally if she wants to.
We modify the game to make sure that the pay-off for successful expanding exceeds all the hiding pay-offs put together, and we also allow the big player, after the fact, to share their expanding pay-out if they want to.
Clearly, not sharing produces a higher pay-off than sharing, so the big-player will not do this. Negotiating in advance doesn’t work, as it requires revealing yourself, so once you’ve done that you’ve made your move and its no longer “in advance”.
If a civilisations utility is linear in its size, then it is always wise for it to expand. If it is risk-averse, which seems plausible, (most of us would not accept a plan which had a 50% chance of colonising Mars and a 50% chance of wiping out humanity), then it may still be wise to hide. If all civilisations are risk averse, hiding is a Nash equilibrium.
The total payout must be higher because in the hiding scenario a lot of negentropy is wasted into nowhere, in the natural lifecycle of stars and the like. The universe is a pie of a fixed size, but one that gradually rots away you take to long deciding who gets to eat it.
And it might be the case that nobody in fact chose to share, but due to game theory it still matters that they had the option.
Also, things like TDT allow for coordination even while hiding, and in fact seems to be one of the assumptions behind this thing in the first place.
The total payout must be higher because in the hiding scenario a lot of negentropy is wasted into nowhere, in the natural lifecycle of stars and the like. The universe is a pie of a fixed size, but one that gradually rots away you take to long deciding who gets to eat it.
I wasn’t disputing this.
And it might be the case that nobody in fact chose to share, but due to game theory it still matters that they had the option.
Game theory is not magic. If there is an option that nobody intends to take, and everyone knows that no-one intends to take it, and everyone knows that, etc, then this option has no effect on the game.
Also, things like TDT allow for coordination even while hiding, and in fact seems to be one of the assumptions behind this thing in the first place.
This is more promising, but I would be a lot more convinced to see the logic actually worked through rather than just using “TDT, therefore everyone is nice” as a magic wand.
That’s quite a different situation from the one in the context, which was:
There might be several forces colonising the galaxy, and all keeping extremely quiet so that they don’t get noticed and destroyed by and older civilisation.
Yes, I did not link to that to either refute or support your point, it was merely mentioning an interesting article on the “civilizations in hiding” tangent. For the public good, you know.
But what if none of them know which of them expanded first? There might be several forces colonising the galaxy, and all keeping extremely quiet so that they don’t get noticed and destroyed by and older civilisation. Thus no need for a great filter, and even if UFAI were common we wouldn’t observe it colonising the galaxy.
This requires either:
Interstellar travel is much slower than seems to be possible (a non-trivial fraction of the speed of light)
“Colonizing” or rather fully exploiting the resources of a star system or other object takes a long time and is also for a long time more economical than just expanding again to grab the low hanging fruit a few light years away.
That no civilization in our galaxy has a head start long enough to win. My best estimate is that a few hundred thousand years before any other is more than enough.
It seems much likelier that we are alone in the galaxy. Either civilizations are pretty rare or we are the oldest one. If the latter is true this seems anthropic evidence in favour of the simulation hypothesis.
Your argument works much better on a much larger scale, for example it does take millions of years for light to travel between galaxies.
But what if none of them know which of them expanded first? There might be several forces colonising the Virgo Supercluster, and all keeping extremely quiet so that they don’t get noticed and destroyed by and older civilisation. Thus no need for a great filter, and even if UFAI were common we wouldn’t observe it colonising the Virgo Supercluster.
~110 or ~200 million year head start on intelligent civilization building life on a Earth like planet still doesn’t seem obviously unlikely.
But what if none of them know which of them expanded first? There might be several forces colonising the visible universe, and all keeping extremely quiet so that they don’t get noticed and destroyed by and older civilisation. Thus no need for a great filter, and even if UFAI were common we wouldn’t observe it colonising the visible universe.
This is almost certainly true, but at these scales the speed limit of the universe is a potent ally. By the time anyone notices you are doing anything many hundreds of millions of years of you already doing whatever you wanted to do with the local matter have passed.
It seems much likelier that we are alone in the galaxy. Either civilizations are pretty rare or we are the oldest one. If the latter is true this seems anthropic evidence in favour of the simulation hypothesis.
Or it could be anthropic evidence that the first mover advantage is so large that the first civilization to expand prevents all others from even developing.
For galactic civilisations I’d guess that there would be a strong first mover advantage. If one civilisation (perhaps controlled be an AI) started expanding 1000 years before another then any conflict between them would likely be won by the civilisation that started capturing resources first.
But what if none of them know which of them expanded first? There might be several forces colonising the galaxy, and all keeping extremely quiet so that they don’t get noticed and destroyed by and older civilisation. Thus no need for a great filter, and even if UFAI were common we wouldn’t observe it colonising the galaxy.
The same way different species hid from each other to avoid being wiped out? You can’t expand and hide. And you must expand—so you can’t realistically hide.
The fairly obvious distinction is the species do not have centralling planning, or even sophisticated communication between individual members. Civilisations can and do have such things, and AIs also seem likely to.
Civiliszations could hide—if they were stupid—or if they didn’t care about the future. I wasn’t suggesting hiding was a strategy that was not available at all—just that it would not be an effective survival strategy.
That may be the case, but the fact that species did not hide is no evidence for it, as species could not realistically have hid even if it would have been optimal
Also, I would like to point out that where the hiding strategy is feasible, on the individual level, it is very common among animals.
In fact, arguably we do have a few cases of species ‘hiding’, such as the coelocanth, which has gone over a hundred million years without much significant evolution, vastly longer than most species survive.
Basically, I do not see any reason to believe either of the following assertions.
Perhaps I overstated my case. Hiding and expanding are different optimisation targets that pull in pretty different directions. It is challenging to expand while hiding effectively—since farming suns tends to leave a visible thermodynamic signature which is visible from far away and is expensive to eliminate. I expect civilizations will typically strongly prioritize expanding over hiding.
Okay, in that case I now agree with the first part of your claim, I will accept that there is certainly a trade-off, perfect expanding does not involve much hiding and perfect hiding does not involve much expanding.
So, to move on to the other side, why do you expect expanding to be more prevalent than hiding. It seems to me that Oscar Cunningham’s argument for why hiding might be preferable is quite convincing, or at any rate reduces it to a non-trivial problem of game theory and risk aversion.
Camouflage is pretty unlikely to be an effective defense against an oncoming colonisation wave. I figure the defense budget will be spent more on growth and weapons than camouflage.
For reasons of technological progress, I suspect a hiding civilisation could destroy an younger expanding civilisation before it was hit by the colonisation wave. If this is the case, it becomes a matter of how likely you are to be the oldest civilisation, how likely the oldest civilisation is to expand or hide, and how much you value survival relative to growth. If the first is low and the last is high, then hiding seems like quite a good strategy.
That sounds like the wave’s leading edge to me.
The issues as I see them are different. Much depends on whether progress “maxes out”. If it doesn’t the most mature civilization probaby just wins—in which case, hiding is irrelevant. If the adversaries are well matched they may attempt to find some other resolution besides a big fight which could weaken both of them. Again, hiding won’t help.
IMO, assuming the oldest civilization is in hiding is not a good way to start analysing this issue.
I am confused by this sentence, and cannot parse what it means.
If it knows that its then oldest, then yes it wins. The whole point of Oscar-Cunningham’s comment is that it might not know this.
To model it as a simple game, 100 people are all put in separate rooms. One of them is designated as the ‘big player’, nobody knows who they are including them. Each has two choices expand or hide. If the big player expands then they receive a large pay-off and everyone else gets nothing. If the big player hides, then everyone who hides gets a small pay-off, and everyone who expands gets nothing.
Obviously much depends of the relative size of the large and small pay-offs, but it is not trivially obvious to me that expanding is the optimal strategy here.
Against an equally matched foe, attempts to negotiate are inherently highly risky, if negotiations break down, then one of them may well destroy the other, given the possibility of a first mover advantage, one civilisation may decide to attack if negotiations merely look likely to break down, applying the game theory backwards, we get an extremely volatile situation where as soon as anything ceases to go absolutely perfectly both sides attack. Hiding from an equally matched civilisation may well be much safer than trying to talk to them.
Furthermore, if you become aware of an equally matched civilisation hiding from you, it may be better to continue to pretend you are not aware, rather than opening negotiations straight away. This may go to rather high levels of I know You know I know and as long a mutual knowledge isn’t attained both can survive.
The more realistic version of that game always has expanding, since we know the total payout on expanding is greater than the total on hiding, and the big player is allowed to share the resources equally if she wants to.
I fail to see that this carries.
We modify the game to make sure that the pay-off for successful expanding exceeds all the hiding pay-offs put together, and we also allow the big player, after the fact, to share their expanding pay-out if they want to.
Clearly, not sharing produces a higher pay-off than sharing, so the big-player will not do this. Negotiating in advance doesn’t work, as it requires revealing yourself, so once you’ve done that you’ve made your move and its no longer “in advance”.
If a civilisations utility is linear in its size, then it is always wise for it to expand. If it is risk-averse, which seems plausible, (most of us would not accept a plan which had a 50% chance of colonising Mars and a 50% chance of wiping out humanity), then it may still be wise to hide. If all civilisations are risk averse, hiding is a Nash equilibrium.
The total payout must be higher because in the hiding scenario a lot of negentropy is wasted into nowhere, in the natural lifecycle of stars and the like. The universe is a pie of a fixed size, but one that gradually rots away you take to long deciding who gets to eat it.
And it might be the case that nobody in fact chose to share, but due to game theory it still matters that they had the option.
Also, things like TDT allow for coordination even while hiding, and in fact seems to be one of the assumptions behind this thing in the first place.
I wasn’t disputing this.
Game theory is not magic. If there is an option that nobody intends to take, and everyone knows that no-one intends to take it, and everyone knows that, etc, then this option has no effect on the game.
This is more promising, but I would be a lot more convinced to see the logic actually worked through rather than just using “TDT, therefore everyone is nice” as a magic wand.
Obligatory “extraterrestrial superintelligence has put a planetarium-like illusion around the Earth that appears and behaves exactly like real spacetime would in the absence of extraterrestrials.”
That’s quite a different situation from the one in the context, which was:
Yes, I did not link to that to either refute or support your point, it was merely mentioning an interesting article on the “civilizations in hiding” tangent. For the public good, you know.
This requires either:
Interstellar travel is much slower than seems to be possible (a non-trivial fraction of the speed of light)
“Colonizing” or rather fully exploiting the resources of a star system or other object takes a long time and is also for a long time more economical than just expanding again to grab the low hanging fruit a few light years away.
That no civilization in our galaxy has a head start long enough to win. My best estimate is that a few hundred thousand years before any other is more than enough.
It seems much likelier that we are alone in the galaxy. Either civilizations are pretty rare or we are the oldest one. If the latter is true this seems anthropic evidence in favour of the simulation hypothesis.
Your argument works much better on a much larger scale, for example it does take millions of years for light to travel between galaxies.
~110 or ~200 million year head start on intelligent civilization building life on a Earth like planet still doesn’t seem obviously unlikely.
This is almost certainly true, but at these scales the speed limit of the universe is a potent ally. By the time anyone notices you are doing anything many hundreds of millions of years of you already doing whatever you wanted to do with the local matter have passed.
Also see metric expansion of space. The farther away an object is, the faster it recedes from us.
Or it could be anthropic evidence that the first mover advantage is so large that the first civilization to expand prevents all others from even developing.