The cosmic host idea, from a recent Bostrom paper, is that the preferences of advanced civilisations might constitute norms that we and our ASIs should follow. Can we say anything concrete or empirically useful about it, or is it mostly unfalsifiable? I think the cosmic host framing rests on assumptions about advanced ASI motivation; rationality and expansionary motives in aliens/ETIs; and convergent cognition across ASI/aliens. Those assumptions need better grounding. A subsequent post (previewed below) will cover frontier LLM attitudes to the issues Bostrom raises.
The linked post has three fairly self-contained threads; read them in order,
or pick the one that interests you most.
Thread A: How would cosmic norms actually form? This is the most compact part of the post. It lays out the assumption ladder behind Bostrom’s argument, identifies three formation mechanisms (contact norms, influence bargaining, acausal coordination) that produce different kinds of norms, and maps conditions under which the concept fails. Read: What is the cosmic host? → Mechanics of cosmic norm formation → Convergence on norms.
Thread B: Do the premises hold up? This thread stress-tests those assumptions using astrobiology, evolutionary biology, and philosophy. It considers who would be in the cosmic host (and why many advanced civilisations may have no desire to influence the cosmos), examines cosmic norm content (including substrate-neutral norms, the status of suffering, and the Fun Remainder), asks whether it is up to us to set cosmic norms, and argues that rational convergence may not hold across arbitrary minds. Read: Why the cosmic host (might) matter → Epistemic challenges → Who’s in the cosmic host? through Bindingness → Cosmic norms → On rationality in alien forms-of-mind.
Thread C: Research agenda. Proposes empirical approaches to assessing ASI–cosmic-host convergence using frontier models, with early results on constitutional steerability tests on selected LLMs. Key finding: model families have distinct attractors, and show persistent anthropocentric anchoring that constitutional framing does not easily dislodge. Also asks whether humanity can strike a bargain with the ASI it creates. Read: Research agenda → Early results → Is there a trade to be done?.
