For some value of “similar”, I agree. Aliens as ‘alien’ as the Babyeaters or the Superhappies don't sound terribly implausible to me, but it'd be extremely hard for me to imagine anything like the Pebblesorters actually existing.
Do you think that CEV-generating mechanisms are negotiable across species? I.e. whether other species would have a concept of CEV and would agree to at least some of the mechanisms that generate a CEV. It would enable determining which differences are reconcilable and where we have to agree to disagree.
Thought experiment:
Through whatever accident of history underlies these philosophical dilemmas, you are faced with a choice between two, and only two, mutually exclusive options:
* Choose A, and all life and sapience in the solar system (and presumably the universe), save for a sapient paperclipping AI, dies.
* Choose B, and all life and sapience in the solar system, including the paperclipping AI, dies.
Phrased another way: does the existence of any intelligence at all, even a paperclipper, have even the smallest amount of utility above no intelligence at all?
If anyone responds positively, subsequent questions would be which would be preferred, a paperclipper or a single bacteria; a paperclipper or a self-sustaining population of trilobites and their supporting ecology; a paperclipper or a self-sustaining population of australopithecines; and so forth, until the equivalent value is determined.