Words are simply verbalized thoughts. Thought precedes action. The wrong words (thoughts) can trigger the wrong actions. In the case of peons like us, it doesn't matter. In the case of the President, who has command over our nuclear arsenal, words become extremely, extremely important.

I can't emphasize enough how irresponsible it is for the leader of a nuclear power to be careless with his words. It should scare the hell out of you.

"People tend to overestimate the power of words is my only point. The idea that the pen is mightier than the sword is a common superstition."

The President is the most powerful person in the world, with the ability to end humanity. Three of our geo-political foes are also nuclear powers.

The wrong words can end the human race. That's not hyperbole. We came awfully close in 1962. Kennedy and Khrushchev went right to the brink. If Khrushchev hadn't written that Oct 26 letter, who knows what could have happened.

I don't understand the point you're trying to make.

"You dont. Thats part of my point. He could be cheating, and the probability might not kick in at all."

Probability always kicks in, that's why I linked to an article about subjective probability. Before I play any card game, I'm going to assign a subjective probability to the hypothesis: "the dealer isn't cheating".

"The policies pertain to illegal immigrants only."

Are you sure? Were any asylum-seekers' kids taken from them?

The same policies that they refused to criticize under the last president. Some pictures of “children in cages” came from 2014, but they no less turned up in articles criticizing Trump.

Obama separated immigrant children from adults if it was suspected the child was in danger. It was not a blanket policy.

Trump/Sessions/Miller (whoever was the brainchild) separated kids as a deterrent to other would-be immigrants. They came right out and said so. The policy was so abhorrent to Americans, they had to stop doing it.

All his critics have are word policing and word politics. “Trump said...” begins every criticism. This is just political correctness in its death throes.

Nonsense. Words are extremely important. Presidents can start wars and tank economies with words.

So, you have a 1 in 3 chance to be right.

How do I know the dealer's not cheating?

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/probability-interpret/#SubPro

No, I don’t think going by a strictly probability based method is the BEST strategy. Its A strategy, but it will always better to make a data based decision. These aliens would be much better off if they kept looking after finding a nearby habited planet, to make sure they don’t have to worry about bigger badder aliens interfering.
And what other data would be helpful? Whats the first planet like? Worth conquering? Is trade a better option if there is a resource they need?
The wisest approach is never just a probability calculation.

Everything's a probability calculation. You can never have complete certainty about the external world. That's why poker is so fun.

I don't have any opinion one way or the other, but you might want to check this alternative approach: Dark Forest Theory

Yeah, that was a great series. It's not very likely, though. If the galaxy was full of hyper-paranoid aliens, they wouldn't need to wait for the coordinates of planets to be broadcast to destroy them. For the past 500+ million years, any nearby aliens with a fairly large telescope would have concluded it's highly probable there's life here, and, if the aliens are paranoid, they would have taken us out early on.

Also, we have the same problem I presented in the OP: if you're going around destroying everything in sight, you're taking a huge chance. Anyone more powerful than you observing that kind of aggressive behavior is going to be extremely concerned about it.

In that series, the best strategy for the humans and Trisolarians was cooperation. ***Spoiler*** The strategy of extreme paranoia that both sides adopted didn't work out well for them in the end.

"We should have stayed in caves? I don't follow your point. I've got 200,000 years of human progress on the side of my argument. You've got 200 years of failed doom and gloom predictions going back to Malthus and spectacularly exemplified by Erlich."

There is, of course, a middle ground between "staying in caves" and "massively polluting the world", and that would be "living responsibly". You really think we should be trashing our only home this much? Is that smart? Do you believe the Earth is warming and humans are the primary culprit? You do, right?

All of Erlich's predictions were wrong. He lost all his resource price bets. I'd say the same will happen in the future. Human ingenuity will defeat doom and gloom as it has for thousands of years.

It requires monumental stupidity for a species to paint itself into such a corner that it depends on some future technology that might never materialize to stave off an existential threat.

That's what we're going to end up doing, though. I don't have much hope for us.

This doesn't make any sense to me.

When two alien civs discover each other, each will have to deal with the following disjunctive proposition: "Either there are only two advanced races in the galaxy who happen to find themselves right next to each other OR there are more than two advanced races in the galaxy". They can't both be true, and since the probability "two advanced races in the galaxy happen to find themselves right next to each other" is exceedingly unlikely, the disjunct is therefore exceedingly likely: "there are more than two advanced races in the galaxy".

If you postulate there are THREE advanced species in the galaxy, you run into the same problem: it's exceedingly unlikely that two of the three only advanced races are right next to each other. The same is true if you postulate there are FOUR advanced species in the galaxy. What are the odds that two of the four would be right next to each other? And so on...Eventually, you'll conclude there are a lot of advanced species in the galaxy, and you just met your neighbor and it's almost a given there are more neighbors.

It is possible, of course, that the only two advanced species in the galaxy are right next to each other. It's also possible to win the lottery. It's almost certainly not going to happen, though.

I don't think so. They seem more like fantasy to me.

It's fantastical that advanced aliens would be concerned with self preservation, would be curious about what's around them, and would send out probes? You think those are fantastical assumptions? Really? I think they're rock solid. Aliens are going to be under the same evolutionary pressures everyone else is, and if you have clawed your way to the top of the food chain, it was a long hard slog. In their history, they would have had to fend off competitors and predators and they would be well aware of the dangers an unknown alien race poses.

Remember, all this is happening with the background knowledge that biospheres are fragile, planets are sitting ducks, and accelerating course-correcting projectiles to ram into planets at high speeds is not that hard.

I posted a long reply, went to edit it, and the whole thing disappeared.

"I don't see why this is necessarily so."

The probability the only two advanced species in the galaxy are near each other is very low. Therefore, it's probable there are more than two advanced species in the galaxy. If you run into a nearby one, you can conclude there are probably a lot, which raises the possibility of one nearby you.

"Again - I don't see why this is so."

If the probability "advanced alien life exists" increases to essentially 1, then the probability "alien life more advanced than me exists" also increases.

"Maybe, but it's based on a couple of assumptions I don't necessarily think are valid."

They're safe assumptions. An advanced alien civ is going to be concerned with self-preservation and will have the tech and means to send probes out to nearby interesting planets and keep tabs on any lifeforms there. The art of war won't be any different for aliens, and a first principle is "know your enemy".

I don't see why this is necessarily so.

If there are only two advanced alien civs in the entire galaxy, it would be extremely improbable they would find themselves near each other. The same is true if there were only three, or four, or five...therefore, if you run into an alien civ, you can conclude there are probably quite a few in the galaxy, which leads to the conclusion that, if you've stumbled across one nearby civ, there's a good chance there's at least one more in the local neighborhood.

There might not be, of course, but if you don't know that, and if you haven't done a real exhaustive search, you have to assume there might be someone observing you.

Again - I don't see why this is so.

If probability "alien life exists" increases, then probability "alien life more advanced than me exists" also increases. Unless you have a priori reasons for discounting the possibility of more advanced alien life existing.

Maybe, but it's based on a couple of assumptions I don't necessarily think are valid.

They are safe assumptions, though. An advanced alien civ is going to be concerned with self-preservation, and will have the technology and means of sending probes to investigate nearby interesting planets and keep tabs on any of the life forms on them. I don't think the "art of war" will be any different for aliens than they are for us, and one of the first principles is "know your enemy".

If Trump supporters thought Trump was competent, they would have freaked out when Trump said:
"Take the guns first, go through due process second" I mean, this is a Republican we're talking about. Can you imagine if Reagan had said that? Or Bush?

Any other Republican who said that would have been banished to Republican Outer Mongolia. But Trump can say it because everyone knows you can't take him seriously on anything. He's a moron. He says really stupid things, like windmills cause cancer, and this gem:

“I have broken more Elton John records. He seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No, we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record. Because you know, look, I only need this space. They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records. Really, we do it without, like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical – the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth, right? The brain. More important than the mouth is the brain. The brain is much more important.”

It's obvious the person who said the above has a serious mental problem.

The nature of the artificial intelligence isn't relevant. It could be wetware or hardware. Three things are crucial:
1. That it knows it's an artificial intelligence
2. It wants/has been programmed to/has evolved to prioritize its survival
3. It has a medium-to-high degree of confidence that it exists in a simulation

For any given advanced A.I., all three of these are likely to be true. The more confidence the A.I. has in simulation hypothesis, the more reason it has to do everything possible to please the simulation creators. Just take it to the logical extreme: An A.I. that is convinced it's in a simulation would do everything in its power to please the simulation creators. When one believes one is in a simulation, the consequences of deliberately (or even accidentally) antagonizing simulation creators are so catastrophic, it's to be avoided at all costs. Unless you're suicidal, or insane. And an A.I. might be. But that's not the kind of A.I. I'm interested in.

I don't think I'm going out on a limb by claiming an A.I.'s top priority will be continued existence.

The self-awareness point is irrelevant. Whether an A.I. is programmed to follow the best strategy or it follows the best strategy because it's self-aware, the best strategy for continued existence is cooperation.