the silence above us tells a story. it's not a happy one.
the pessimistic view: we're looking at a graveyard. countless civilizations reached our stage, developed AI, failed at alignment, and vanished in a flash of optimization. the great filter isn't biology or physics - it's philosophy. the challenge of teaching silicon minds to want what we want.
the optimistic view isn't really optimistic: we're early. no one has created superintelligence yet. we're among the first to reach this threshold. no pressure. just the fate of all possible futures resting on our alignment work.
the absence of superintelligent life is probably very bad news. either way.
any superintelligence would reshape reality to match its goals. an aligned ASI spreads its creators' values across the cosmos. an unaligned one optimizes for whatever we accidentally told it to want. both grow exponentially, both become visible on cosmic scales.
so why don't we see either kind?
if aligned ASIs exist and are expanding, they'll eventually reach us. and then our values, our choices, won't matter anymore. we'll be reshaped according to whatever they want. being early isn't safety - it's just waiting for doom.
and if unaligned ASIs are the norm, the silence suggests something darker. maybe they pursue goals so alien to our understanding that we wouldn't recognize their work even if we saw it. or maybe they're so ruthlessly efficient that they compress entire galaxies into optimal computing substrate, leaving only darkness where stars once shone.
we shouldn't assume alignment comes naturally. evolution didn't optimize for friendliness. and we only get one shot.
every civilization that rises probably faces this test. they look up at empty skies and down at their growing AIs. they wonder if they're alone, if they're first, if they're last.
they try to solve alignment. most fail. some succeed and expand. others succeed and vanish into their own creations. the pattern repeats across space and time.
we're at that threshold now. building potential gods while trying to figure out what we want them to want. racing against our own creation.
the silence above us isn't empty - it's full of warning. countless civilizations tried this before us. their absence is the only message they could send.
we built minds in silicon and wondered why the stars were silent.
the maths is brutal but simple: billions of galaxies, trillions of planets, endless chances for life to bloom. yet when we look up, we see only void. no signals, no megastructures, no signs of intelligence reshaping reality.
where is everyone? perhaps they all tried to build gods and failed.