To those wondering why the crew doesn't report back: isn't it even more implausible that two alien civilizations exchange petabytes of information about themselves, translate each other's languages, and start a philosophical discussion within hours of contacting each other, as opposed to, oh I don't know, almost anything else? This is a stage for some archetypes to discuss some ethical point, and you can assume that they will think of everything that Eliezer wants to cover (or else appropriate actors will appear at the right time). That's all that matters.
Implausibilities abound, but whether or not they matter depends on one's assumptions about the goals of the story. Given that I'm not yet... (read more)
To those wondering why the crew doesn't report back: isn't it even more implausible that two alien civilizations exchange petabytes of information about themselves, translate each other's languages, and start a philosophical discussion within hours of contacting each other, as opposed to, oh I don't know, almost anything else? This is a stage for some archetypes to discuss some ethical point, and you can assume that they will think of everything that Eliezer wants to cover (or else appropriate actors will appear at the right time). That's all that matters.
Implausibilities abound, but whether or not they matter depends on one's assumptions about the goals of the story. Given that I'm not yet... (read more)