>I do recognise that the threat of an invasion by an alien super-civilisation is at almost as remote as the threat from an emerging superintelligence
Uh.. Is that something one can 'recognise'? (It's a way of writing that begs the question.) Seems to me the threat of the first is not high, to say the least, but who knows. The threat of the second seems very high, well, at least if there are only 'a few nukes' on the planet. Otherwise nukes will get us first. I literally can't imagine 'nukes getting us first' but it does seem likely.
Whatever are the odds, I can't imagine nukes helping us in either situation.
A digital superinteligence (should I expect it to be organic?) will be either very concentrated or backed-up everywhere. On the first case traditional explosives will give us better bang for our bucks, and lead to less collateral losses. On the second case, nuclear weapons would destroy us much sooner than the AI.
On the case of aliens, the entire problem is how to reach them. If we can get some weapon into them, yes, a nuke would probably be marginally more effective than a lump of lead, but not by a large difference.
Oh, no, I didn't mean we'd try to nuke the aliens. I mean we'd threaten to nuke ourselves: irradiate the planet until it's incapable of supporting life (including the aliens' life), if they tried to exterminate us.
"Attack and the planet gets it", see?
Of course we get it along with the planet, but I'm assuming that if the aliens are invading they're planning to exterminate us anyway.
I think yes. If you think about it, we have evidence that a technological civilisation can exist- ours. We don't have any evidence that a superintelligence can exist. So an alien civilisation invading us is a more credible threat than an emerging superintelligence turning us all into paper clips and whatnot.
Uh.. Is that something one can 'recognise'? (It's a way of writing that begs the question.) Seems to me the threat of the first is not high, to say the least, but who knows. The threat of the second seems very high, well, at least if there are only 'a few nukes' on the planet. Otherwise nukes will get us first. I literally can't imagine 'nukes getting us first' but it does seem likely.