
Why we shouldn't fear our alien overlords: Comparative Advantage - amayne
http://weirdthings.com/2011/01/well-make-great-pets-why-we-shouldnt-fear-our-new-alien-overlords/
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alexophile
Of course, there's a great comparative advantage in forcing a lesser being to
work for no pay. Also, what about the scenario where _we_ are the resource?
Best case: Matrix; more likely: extinction (if they could sustainably
cultivate people, they wouldn't have crossed the galaxy to find us)

~~~
amayne
Comparative Advantage increases prosperity for all when both sides can
reinvest and become more efficient and more productive. That's why
industrialized China is a better trading partner than a non-industrial China
was.

Coerced, uncompensated labor diminishes the upside. That's one of the economic
reason why Europe and later the US moved away from slavery. It also decreases
your market for your products.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Slavery was economical for the slaveowners [1]. Agriculture wasn't economical
relative to industrialization (which is why the economy of the US South
sucked), but that was a separate matter.

Slavery was abolished primarily due to the religious beliefs of assorted
evangelical Christians (quakers, baptists, methodists), not for economic
reasons.

[1] If you ignore the utility function of the slaves, slavery is economically
equivalent to robots.

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amayne
I absolutely agree that changing morality had an effect on the abolishment of
slavery.

However the mechanical harvester and other machines made slavery inefficient.
While the cotton gin increased the potential yield from cotton (and increased
slavery in the South), later machines like the mechanical harvester made
mechanical production more efficient than unskilled labor.

Since an industrial robot from 2010 is much more efficient than one from 2000,
I'm not sure if we can make a statement that a robot is mechanically
equivalent to a slave.

You can only use more whips to increase the productivity of a human being.
After a point it's more productive to free him and educate him so he can
increase his or her efficiencies.

~~~
jeromec
The only time a machine would make slavery inefficient is when such a machine
could do everything a human can do, and with less energy requirements. Slaves
were not limited to harvesting cotton. Slaves were meant to provide wealth to
their masters in any form which could be had, including both physical (working
fields, being maids/nursemaids, cooking, cleaning etc.) and often sexual
labor. It's also not a widely known fact that slaves built much of the U.S.
capitol. Many Americans would love to have a butler, but can't afford one.
Well, you could if the only payment required was feeding them scraps you
intended for the trash anyway. Having slaves provided tremendous economic
benefit and wealth to slave owners, even if not always measured in dollar
terms.

~~~
amayne
Before you replace a slave with a machine there are other steps. Indentured
servants, share croppers, migrant labor. There is a whole ladder of human
exploitation. Ultimately, slavery is a less efficient substitute for free
skilled labor.

Having a slave is more than just feeding them scraps. You have to be able to
contain a slave population and keep them from murdering you. There are real
costs to this. At a certain point the costs are outweighed by the benefit of
freeing people and letting them create surpluses.

Communist Russia and North Korea were slave societies. They couldn't compete
with the free west. When China enable certain economic freedoms and gave up
(some, not all) of their slave-state tendencies they experienced the greatest
economic boon in history.

~~~
jeromec
Hold on a second. You're suggesting slavery is in the same category as
indentured servants, share croppers, and migrant labor for human exploitation?
The difference is night and day! If I have to spell it out, in one case you
work of your own free will, and in the other you don't and are abused and
beaten.

I do agree that in the macro sense it's better economically to free people and
educate them, but that is NOT the logical path slave owners in the U.S. were
on. And once, after war, slaves did become free they were not made to be
educated as whites.

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lucasjung
A very rational intelligent species might go out of their way to exterminate
other intelligent species. The logic goes something like this: _The resources
of the galaxy may seem vast, but on a long enough timescale they are finite
and will eventually become scarce. On such a long timescale, any other
intelligent species has the potential to compete with us for those resources.
If we lose that competition, we could be driven to extinction. Best to pre-
empt competition now while we have the upper hand_

The Greg Bear novels _The Forge of God_ and _Anvil of Stars_ dealt with this
scenario.

~~~
bluekeybox
> If we lose that competition, we could be driven to extinction. Best to pre-
> empt competition now while we have the upper hand

What's even scarier is that the most rational choice may be to pre-empt even
if resource competition is unlikely to ever occur, just because pre-emption on
the part of another civilization has a non-zero probability.

Basically it's the Cold War logic except with no diplomacy and with the other
side's strategy likely to be guided by a strong post-Singularity AI.

Thinking through these scenarios can be scary as fuck, but since we're all
still alive and well, it could be that we are truly alone.

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alanh
Terrible article. What the hell is a “secular zealot”? And why is proofreading
considered something no one has time to do anymore? Hint: Rationale ≠
rational; you’re missing the word “century,” and no one in the world uses this
supposed “citation style.”

~~~
amayne
Secular zealots: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_party>

~~~
alanh
Are you kidding me? Socialism is NOT secularism!

 _Edit_ I’m objecting to the article pretending that secular zealotry is a
_thing_ like socialist zealotry or religious zealotry. Secularism is never
itself a cause for zealotry. And the article even implies those who are
passionate about secularism despise individuality. Absurd.

~~~
amayne
Correct. No one said that it was.

My link was to the _communist_ party which is an avowed secular organization.
Unlike a group like the Christian Socialists or the Nazi party.

I used them as an example of secular zealots because that particular movement
killed more people than anyone else in the 20th century. And has religion
pretty evenly matched for zealots.

Just so you understand where I'm coming from, I'm an atheist (a very secular
position).

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RobertKohr
The article that was posted before was bs. Thanks for coming up with a
rebuttal.

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jacques_chester
Aliens wouldn't invade Earth for resources, because they can get far more, for
less effort, by mining the asteroid belt, the Kuiper cloud, the Oort cloud,
the gas giant systems etc etc. Schlepping down the Earth gravity well for a
tiny fraction of the minerals on a piddly rock is not worth the bother.

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snorkel
"we still have value we can bring to a superior civilization. That value may
be in providing services, cheap labor or producing reality television."

... or we may just have really delicious brain stems.

~~~
amayne
True. My biggest fear is that they make an alien version of the documentary
The Cove about what happened to earthlings...

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bumbledraven
What's the comparative advantage between a human and a hog? The same relation
may very well obtain between a superintelligence and a human.

