I would only bet at 30% on meeting grabby aliens

LessWrong is reporting on a challenge to Robin Hanson's Grabby Aliens argument. Hanson's model says that if intelligent life requires multiple unlikely steps to emerge, we should be shocked to find ourselves on a young planet early in cosmic history—unless alien civilizations are rapidly conquering space. A researcher pushes back by considering cosmic endowment: how much of the universe each civilization can actually reach. Due to accelerating expansion, an early civilization spreading today could reach ninety billion galaxies, while one starting fifty billion years from now could reach only fourteen million. Because later civilizations get trapped in much smaller pockets, our early timing is far less unusual when weighted by our potential impact. The author concludes this shouldn't shift our odds of meeting alien life much, betting only thirty percent on ever encountering a powerful alien civilization.

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