AGI isn't scary because it's smarter than me. AGI is scary because it's alien. I've met plenty of people smarter than me. Way way smarter. It's ok. We can sorta work out what the other wants. We can talk or fight or trade or whatever.

I have an uncountable number of assumptions to get by in the world. I have this vast heritage of knowledge. I try to keep a handle on why I believe what I believe, but it's not easy, and I'm sure I slip up. An alien would share none of these.

Take counting. That's super important for lots of stuff I do every day, like, what day it is. the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munduruku people don't count. I'm sure we could work something out - but we all gotta sleep and eat and stuff so we can sorta work out a framework for understanding wants and needs and such.

An alien doesn't require wants or needs. they may do stuff that we label wants and needs, and it might be a good mapping, but who fucking knows? Aliens are alien.

The water is triangular sentence is a great one. do the aliens mean they know that oxygen and 2 hydrogens don't make a straight line? And they know we mean oxygen and two hydrogens are water? and they know 3 non parallel lines in a plane means triangle? Maybe? Sure? maybe they mean all Ferrari's will be consumed for fuel.

Mean, dear reader, doesn't even mean anything, because they're aliens. I mean, you can point at math, prime numbers are a great one! but like, do you need prime numbers? Who knows? That's the path we took, but what would an alien need? I don't know. You, dear reader, may have strong opinions, but I'm pretty sure you can offer no proof.