Comments on: Don’t Fear The Filter

By: Simulations and the Epicurean Paradox | The Rationalist Conspiracy

Simulations and the Epicurean Paradox | The Rationalist Conspiracy — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 07:37:30 +0000

[…] any strong reason to think existential risks are nearly impossible to avoid (see Scott’s Great Filter post). #2, because independent convergence across many possible worlds generally requires world […]

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By: Miscellaneous Gadgets 20140602 | JanNews Blog

Miscellaneous Gadgets 20140602 | JanNews Blog — Sun, 27 Jul 2014 20:59:37 +0000

[…] Don’t Fear The Filter […]

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By: Stuart Armstrong

Stuart Armstrong — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 19:08:27 +0000

>That means it can’t be the Great Filter, or else we would have run into the aliens who passed their Kyoto Protocols.

It’s not XOR – Xrisks can perfectly well slice off a portion of probability space, with earlier barriers slicing off more.

Incidentally, our paper shows the “ease” of crossing between galaxies, making the Fermi paradox a few million times stronger: http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/intergalactic-spreading.pdf

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By: anodognosic

anodognosic — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 14:40:39 +0000

“A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; not only in the news, but also in its presentation — which revealed the class bias of the paper — and especially of course what the paper did not say.”

But I’m super glad your pet theory explains literally everything.

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By: Matthew

Matthew — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 02:00:18 +0000

Completely forgot to link to this. Recommended. The Fermi Paradox is Our Business Model

Scott probably won’t check this thread now; somebody please bring this to his attention.

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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 16:10:33 +0000

Most people can’t tell the difference between an exponential and a hockey stick.

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By: John SF

John SF — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 14:13:48 +0000

“Technological improvement has been exponential since humanity began”
Sorry, no.
Over c.250,000 of homo sapiens what you see is a l-o-o-o-n-g period of relative lack of change then an exponential uptick at the end.
Arguably even post-neolithic, most cultures in most places were more static than changing until you get to c.1500 in Europe.

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By: Kaj Sotala

Kaj Sotala — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 05:45:03 +0000

Whoa, that story’s fantastic.

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By: Nornagest

Nornagest — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 16:37:56 +0000

I don’t know of any cases of social failure under similar circumstances, although similar circumstances are hard to come by. I wasn’t talking so much about social engineering as about boring old physical engineering, though; stable closed biospheres are pretty tough to make, and as far as I know ones of that size have never successfully been implemented. Certainly not by the 1970s.

From a social engineering perspective, I wouldn’t be concerned with wholesale collapse so much as with loss of the skills needed for colonization. A stable generation ship is a pretty different environment from a growing planetary colony.

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By: Alexander Kruel · Miscellaneous Items 20140602

Alexander Kruel · Miscellaneous Items 20140602 — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 09:36:45 +0000

[…] Don’t Fear The Filter […]

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