The nonexistence of grey goo (von neumann probes) is strong prior for safe agi. AI xrisk is woo. Paperclip maximizers are p-zombies. They can't exist.
Chicken littles see apocalypses on every horizon even though they dont understand the technology at all. "I can imagine this destroying the world" is their justification. Even though their "imagination" is 16x16 greyscale.
The assumption that von Neumann probes would have made it here timely is not necessarily true, and if they had we wouldn't be having this conversation. So this doesn't really prove anything.
the Grabby Aliens argument is pretty good in establishing why it's likely that we're first-ish. are you familiar with that? or you think it's not convincing? (why?)
I’ve got a theory on the fermi paradox stuff I need to flesh out (and research, am assuming this isn’t original), among like a dozen other things I’ve been meaning to expand on that I haven’t: I think we severely underestimate how much we’re optimized to see what’s proximal to us.
I think there’s a strong possibility there may be “gray goo” all over the place, beings far bigger than us we’re inside of, physics that sits “parallel” to ours in whatever you’d call “space” in some construction we can’t comprehend, etc.
In short, I think the universe seems empty precisely because it’s distant, both evolutionarily and in terms of physical space.
Donald Hoffman’s been talking about a lot of stuff pointing in this direction.
Chicken littles see apocalypses on every horizon even though they dont understand the technology at all. "I can imagine this destroying the world" is their justification. Even though their "imagination" is 16x16 greyscale.