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Vitalik Buterin's avatar

My value ratio is close to 1:1. My reasoning:

1. With sufficiently advanced medical technology I will be able to live at least ~10^34 years.2. The utility increment of living 10^34 years instead of 10^2 years (call it w) is much higher in absolute value than the utility decrement of dying now (call it -1). 3. I expect a ~50% chance that we'll achieve escape velocity in time for myself, or via cryogenics. Hence, my current expected future utility is ~w/24. If aliens come and help us, technology will improve massively, including technology to help us live longer. Hence my utility will be ~w.5. If aliens kill us my utility will be ~0.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

The 100 million years figure shouldn't matter if the probability of extinction of all life isn't too high (if so much as a subterranean tardigrade survives you can have a wide variety of complex life again within 100 million years).

I think there are 3 plausible explanations. They're not there (or at least not in range), they think getting here is too costly/not interesting enough (note that on a small scale they may send scientific probes without us ever knowing) and finally the third, least plausible, but most optimistic one: one of the alien civilizations is "protecting" us (they may do this passively, with us simply being located inside or behind their defensive perimeter).

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