Notes on the Vulnerable World Hypothesis

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Of course, not all scientists accept the notion that other advanced civilizations exist. A few who have speculated on this subject lately are asking: if extraterrestrial intelligence is abundant, why have we not already seen its manifestations?.. Why have these beings not restructured the entire Galaxy for their convenience?… Why are they not here? The temptation is to deduce that there are at most only a few advanced extraterrestrial civilizations - either because we are one of the first technical civilizations to have emerged, or because it is the fate of all such civilizations to destroy themselves before they are much further along. It seems to me that such despair is quite premature. – Carl Sagan (1978) In 2019, Nick Bostrom published an important paper on "The Vulnerable World Hypothesis" in Global Policy. Loosely speaking, the Vulnerable World Hypothesis (VWH) is the idea that it may be near-inevitable that intelligent species discover near-ungovernable technologies which cause

Notes on the Vulnerable World Hypothesis xrisk ai notes Astera Institute December 16, 2023 Of course, not all scientists accept the notion that other advanced civilizations exist. A few who have speculated on this subject lately are asking: if extraterrestrial intelligence is abundant, why have we not already seen its manifestations?.. Why have these beings not restructured the entire Galaxy for their convenience?… Why are they not here? The temptation is to deduce that there are at most only a few advanced extraterrestrial civilizations - either because we are one of the first technical civil

Notes on the Vulnerable World Hypothesis

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