5 ms·

I like the idea that any advanced civilization which eventually starts to ask the same questions will come up with the following conclusion: That it's our mora

I like the idea that any advanced civilization which eventually starts to ask the same questions will come up with the following conclusion: That it's our moral duty to each other, to transmit and send out artifacts. To let others know the answer to our common question. "No, you were not alone"

vintermann 3y ago
Sure it's a pretty idea. But terms like "intelligent", "civilization", "duty", "alone", "advanced" or even "questions" may not be as universal as we think. It may be features of us more than they are features of reality. People don't even appreciate how different other humans are, I don't think we're close to imagining how different other "life-forms" are (the very idea of a "life-form" is also a concept humans impose on the universe more than a feature of it).
- persnickety 3y ago
  I wish more people recognized that. We simmer in a human-centric world, and describe it in a human way, all our lives. It takes conscious and significant effort to step out of our preconceptions and imagine what the world might look like for the Other. We've been struggling to understand how animals see the world, we're struggling to guess whether AI sees the world, we struggle to imagine how extraterrestials see the world. Heck, we don't even have a solid definition for what an "alien" is, one that could help us draw a line between e.g. a geological process and a living thing. See the novels "Solaris" and "Invincible" by Stanisław Lem. For a more Earthly take, Frank Schätzing explored what another animal might see like in The Swarm. For me, the realization came with the advent of LLMs. If we dropped a probe on a different planet, and found something behaving like LLMs there, I would not be able to say if that's an advanced form of a native inhabitant of the planet or not.

5 ms·

I like the idea that any advanced civilization which eventually starts to ask the same questions will come up with the following conclusion: That it's our mora

by supportengineer 3y ago

vintermann 3y ago
Sure it's a pretty idea. But terms like "intelligent", "civilization", "duty", "alone", "advanced" or even "questions" may not be as universal as we think. It may be features of us more than they are features of reality. People don't even appreciate how different other humans are, I don't think we're close to imagining how different other "life-forms" are (the very idea of a "life-form" is also a concept humans impose on the universe more than a feature of it).
- persnickety 3y ago
  I wish more people recognized that. We simmer in a human-centric world, and describe it in a human way, all our lives. It takes conscious and significant effort to step out of our preconceptions and imagine what the world might look like for the Other. We've been struggling to understand how animals see the world, we're struggling to guess whether AI sees the world, we struggle to imagine how extraterrestials see the world. Heck, we don't even have a solid definition for what an "alien" is, one that could help us draw a line between e.g. a geological process and a living thing. See the novels "Solaris" and "Invincible" by Stanisław Lem. For a more Earthly take, Frank Schätzing explored what another animal might see like in The Swarm. For me, the realization came with the advent of LLMs. If we dropped a probe on a different planet, and found something behaving like LLMs there, I would not be able to say if that's an advanced form of a native inhabitant of the planet or not.