Элиезер Юдковски - Three Worlds Collide

"And what's left?" Akon said. "Oh, never mind, I get it."

"Well, not quite," said the Master. "To summarize the best ideas -" He gestured a small holo into existence.

Ask the Superhappies if their biotechnology is capable of in vivo cognitive alterations of

Babyeater children to ensure that they don't grow up wanting to eat their own children. Sterilize the current adults. If Babyeater adults cannot be sterilized and will not surrender, imprison them. If that's too expensive, kill most of them, but leave enough in prison to preserve their culture for the children. Offer the Superhappies an alliance to invade the Babyeaters, in which we provide the capital and labor and they provide the technology.

"Not too bad," Akon said. His voice grew somewhat dry. "But it doesn't seem to address the question of what the Superhappies are supposed to do with us. The analogous treatment -"

"Yes, my lord," the Master said. "That was extensively pointed out in the comments, my lord. And the other problem is that the Superhappies don't really need our labor or our capital." The Master looked in the direction of the Lord Programmer, the Xenopsychologist, and the Lady Sensory.

The Lord Programmer said, "My lord, I believe the Superhappies think much faster than we do. If their cognitive systems are really based on something more like DNA than like neurons, that shouldn't be surprising. In fact, it's surprising that the speedup is as little as -" The Lord Programmer stopped, and swallowed. "My lord. The Superhappies responded to most of our transmissions extremely quickly.

There was, however, a finite delay. And that delay was roughly proportional to the length of the

response, plus an additive constant. Going by the proportion, my lord, I believe they think between fifteen and thirty times as fast as we do, to the extent such a comparison can be made. If I try to use Moore's Law type reasoning on some of the observable technological parameters in their ship -

Alderson flux, power density, that sort of thing - then I get a reasonably convergent estimate that the aliens are two hundred years ahead of us in human-equivalent subjective time. Which means it would be twelve hundred equivalent years since their Scientific Revolution."

"If," the Xenopsychologist said, "their history went as slowly as ours. It probably didn't." The Xenopsychologist took a breath. "My lord, my suspicion is that the aliens are literally able to run their entire ship using only three kiritsugu as sole crew. My lord, this may represent, not only the superior programming ability that translated their communications to us, but also the highly probable case that Superhappies can trade knowledge and skills among themselves by having sex. Every individual of

their species might contain the memory of their Einsteins and Newtons and a thousand other areas of expertise, no more conserved than DNA is conserved among humans. My lord, I suspect their version of Galileo was something like thirty objective years ago, as the stars count time, and that they've been in space for maybe twenty years."

The Lady Sensory said, "Their ship has a plane of symmetry, and it's been getting wider on the axis through that plane, as it sucks up nova dust and energy. It's growing on a smooth exponential at 2%

per hour, which means it can split every thirty-five hours in this environment."

"I have no idea," the Xenopsychologist said, "how fast the Superhappies can reproduce themselves -

how many children they have per generation, or how fast their children sexually mature. But all things considered, I don't think we can count on their kids taking twenty years to get through high school."

There was silence.

When Akon could speak again, he said, "Are you all quite finished?"

"If they let us live," the Lord Programmer said, "and if we can work out a trade agreement with them under Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage, interest rates will -"

"Interest rates can fall into an open sewer and die. Any further transmissions from the Superhappy ship?"

The Lady Sensory shook her head.

"All right," Akon said. "Open a transmission channel to them."

There was a stir around the table. "My lord -" said the Master of Fandom. "My lord, what are you going to say?"

Akon smiled wearily. "I'm going to ask them if they have any options to offer us."

The Lady Sensory looked at the Ship's Confessor. The hood silently nodded: He's still sane.

The Lady Sensory swallowed, and opened a channel. On the holo there first appeared, as a screen:

The Lady 3rd Kiritsugu

temporary co-chair of the Gameplayer

Language Translator version 9

Cultural Translator version 16

The Lady 3rd in this translation was slightly less pale, and looked a bit more concerned and

sympathetic. She took in Akon's appearance at a glance, and her eyes widened in alarm. "My lord, you're hurting!"

"Just tired, milady," Akon said. He cleared his throat. "Our ship's decision-making usually relies on markets and our markets are behaving erratically. I'm sorry to inflict that on you as shared pain, and I'll try to get this over with quickly. Anyway -"

Out of the corner of his eye, Akon saw the Ship's Engineer re-enter the room; the Engineer looked as if he had something to say, but froze when he saw the holo.

There was no time for that now.

"Anyway," Akon said, "we've worked out that the key decisions depend heavily on your level of technology. What do you think you can actually do with us or the Babyeaters?"

The Lady 3rd sighed. "I really should get your independent component before giving you ours - you should at least think of it first - but I suppose we're out of luck on that. How about if I just tell you what we're currently planning?"

Akon nodded. "That would be much appreciated, milady." Some of his muscles that had been tense, started to relax. Cultural Translator version 16 was a lot easier on his brain. Distantly, he wondered if some transformed avatar of himself was making skillful love to the Lady 3rd -

"All right," the Lady 3rd said. "We consider that the obvious starting point upon which to build further negotiations, is to combine and compromise the utility functions of the three species until we mutually satisfice, providing compensation for all changes demanded. The Babyeaters must compromise their

values to eat their children at a stage where they are not sentient - we might accomplish this most effectively by changing the lifecycle of the children themselves. We can even give the unsentient children an instinct to flee and scream, and generate simple spoken objections, but prevent their brain from developing self-awareness until after the hunt."

Akon straightened. That actually sounded - quite compassionate - sort of -

"Our own two species," the Lady 3rd said, "which desire this change of the Babyeaters, will compensate them by adopting Babyeater values, making our own civilization of greater utility in their sight: we will both change to spawn additional infants, and eat most of them at almost the last stage before they become sentient."

The Conference room was frozen. No one moved. Even their faces didn't change expression.

Akon's mind suddenly flashed back to those writhing, interpenetrating, visually painful blobs he had seen before.

A cultural translator could change the image, but not the reality.

"It is nonetheless probable," continued the Lady 3rd, "that the Babyeaters will not accept this change as it stands; it will be necessary to impose these changes by force. As for you, humankind, we hope you will be more reasonable. But both your species, and the Babyeaters, must relinquish bodily pain,