I considered this possibility when I was writing my post. However, it’s possible that the sadistic aliens would be capable of making our planet invisible to others, or that the benevolent aliens never travel close enough to Earth to be aware of us.
If there is one another alien race in observable universe, where should at least several more, and they may not like the idea of torture: they will be “exo-humanists”, that is like effective altruist but for other alien races.
A superintelligent AI on Earth which has a goal of global torture is worse as it looks like that the help will never arrive (actually, it can but from other universes via complex acausal trade and indexical uncertainty).
I wonder if it’s possible that intelligent life is so rare in the universe that there is only one other civilization, which could be sadistic.
Would it be possible for you to expand more on how aliens from other universes can help “via complex acausal trade and indexical uncertainty”? I tried searching for those terms, but couldn’t find anything about other universes.
If an alien civilization is 1 billion light years from us in one direction (and it is highest distance for contact), it implies that median distances between civilizations is 1 billion ly, and there are 5 others: in opposite direction, as well as up, down, right and left direction. So it is 1 civ or at least 7 including ours, based on some symmetry considerations. Two civs seems unlikely.
If aliens could torture us, another alien race could come and save us.
This is a great point.
I considered this possibility when I was writing my post. However, it’s possible that the sadistic aliens would be capable of making our planet invisible to others, or that the benevolent aliens never travel close enough to Earth to be aware of us.
If there is one another alien race in observable universe, where should at least several more, and they may not like the idea of torture: they will be “exo-humanists”, that is like effective altruist but for other alien races.
A superintelligent AI on Earth which has a goal of global torture is worse as it looks like that the help will never arrive (actually, it can but from other universes via complex acausal trade and indexical uncertainty).
Thanks for your response.
I wonder if it’s possible that intelligent life is so rare in the universe that there is only one other civilization, which could be sadistic.
Would it be possible for you to expand more on how aliens from other universes can help “via complex acausal trade and indexical uncertainty”? I tried searching for those terms, but couldn’t find anything about other universes.
If an alien civilization is 1 billion light years from us in one direction (and it is highest distance for contact), it implies that median distances between civilizations is 1 billion ly, and there are 5 others: in opposite direction, as well as up, down, right and left direction. So it is 1 civ or at least 7 including ours, based on some symmetry considerations. Two civs seems unlikely.
The idea about prevention s-risks via acausal trade is discussed by me here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/3jgpAjRoP6FbeESxg/curing-past-sufferings-and-preventing-s-risks-via-indexical