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On the Galactic Zoo hypothesis
Recently, I was reading some arguments about Fermi paradox and aliens and so on; also there was an opinion among the lines of "humans are monsters and any sane civilization avoids them, that's why Galactic Zoo". As implausible as it is, but I've found one more or less sane scenario where it might be true.
Assume that intelligence doesn't always imply consciousness, and assume that evolution processes are more likely to yield intelligent, but unconscious life forms, rather than intelligent and conscious. For example, if consciousness is resource-consuming and otherwise almost useless (as in Blindsight).
Now imagine that all the alien species evolved without consciousness. Being an important coordination tool, their moral system takes that into account -- it relies on a trait that they have -- intelligence, rather than consciousness. For example, they consider destroying anything capable of performing complex computations immoral.
Then human morality system would be completely blind to them. Killing such an alien would be no more immoral, then, say, recycling a computer. So, for these aliens, human race would be indeed monstrous.
The aliens consider extermination of an entire civilization immoral, since that would imply destroying a few billions of devices, capable of performing complex enough computations. So they decide to use their advanced technology to render their civilizations invisible for human scientists.
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Comments (19)
Taboo 'consciousness', and attempt to make that assumption still work.
The feasibility of this idea is inversely proportional to the resource expenditure required to remain invisible. It is more likely that - if aliens exist - that they are naturally mostly-invisible as a result of computational optimization into compact cold dark arcilects. If stealth/invisibility plays a role, they are more likely to be hiding from other powerful civs rather than us.
Taboo 'intelligence' as well.
The main problem with this is that it says that human beings are extremely unlike all nearby alien races. But if you willing to admit that humanity is that unique you might as well say that intelligence only evolved on earth, which is a much simpler and more likely hypothesis.
Are your aliens p-zombies?
I thought the defining feature of being a p-zombie was acting as if they had consciousness while not "actually" having it, whereas these aliens act as though they did not have consciousness.
(I think a generic and global intelligence-valuation ethos is very unlikely to arise, and so I think there are other reasons to dislike this formulation of the Galactic Zoo.)
It's more than just a matter of behavior. P-zombies are supposed to be physically indistinguishable from human beings in every respect while still lacking consciousness.
Why do you think it is unlikely? I think any simple criterion which separates aliens from environment would suffice.
Personally, I think that the scenario is implausible for the other reason: human moral system would easily adapt to such aliens. People sometimes personify things that aren't remotely sentient, let alone aliens who would actually act as sentient/conscious beings.
The other reason is that I consider sentience without consciousness relatively implausible.
Basically, the hierarchical control model of intelligence, which sees 'intelligence' as trying to maintain some perception at some reference level by actuating the environment. (Longer explanation here.) If you have multiple control systems, and they have different reference levels, then they will get into 'conflict', much like a tug of war.
That is, simple intelligence looks like it leads to rivalry rather than cooperation by default, and so valuing intelligence rather than alignment seems weird; there's not a clear path that leads from nothing to there.
Makes sense.
Anyway, any trait which isn't consciousness (and obviously it wouldn't be consciousness) would suffice, provided there is some reason to hide from Earth rather than destroy it.
Isn't the Galactic Zoo hypothesis based on wanting to maintain the humans in their primitive habitat, and not interfere with the "natural" development?
It's not that we're horrible monsters that need to be avoided. The Earth is just a nature preserve.
It is; and actually it is a more plausible scenario. Aliens surely may want it; like humans do both in fiction and reality -- for example, see the First directive in Star Trek and the practice of sterilizing rovers before sending them to other planets in real life.
I, however, investigated that particular flavor of the Zoo hypotheses it the post.
There's this extremely intelligent alien species that has evolved a distinct sense of morality very similar to our own, just more rigid. So rigid that they are incapable of even comprehending the way we might think. And we view killing them just as we view recycling computers.
What happens next?