Thanks!

Yeah, and it must be noted that the grabby aliens idea works best if you consider specifically unaligned AGIs, which I expect would be the most dedicated possible expanders. Other civilizations with more sophisticated values might have plenty of reasons to not grow quite that relentlessly and brutally.

Oh, I didn't remember that was an option - do you mind if I do that too? Since it's a Google Docs link I'd appreciate the added privacy.

Here is my first entry. It's a story mostly about orthogonality and the difficulties of alignment - though it relies on something that you mostly could do already with present tech. Using the template of a very familiar fairy tale trope as a starting point:

Mirror, Mirror

I have one other entry planned, but haven't written it yet. Will post it if I manage it (though I'm not seeing a lot of participation yet - I wonder if I'm just early?).

I hadn't read this one first, but honestly I'm not sure if this counts as "completely accessible to the general public". I'd expect an accessible fable to be less rife with already assumed concepts about the key topics as this one is (like, don't say "utility maximizer", rather present a situation which makes it clear naturally what a utility maximizer is).

Are there any rules on multiple submissions?