In addition to the Financial Times review I posted on, there are now four web reviews of Age of Em. (Kindle version now $14.39, delivers tomorrow.) In reverse chronological order:
Great book ! The ems hypothesis is somehow the epitome of realist materialism: large scale production of minds (+/- bodies) and yet it evokes the strangest aspects of theologies ("how many angels can you pack on a pinhead" !). More intriguing : for me the book, together with the increased probability of trillions of potentially life supporting planets poses with more acuity the question of how small and how close could alien civ "outposts" be, and whether it's worth trying to design a sort of "nano-SETI" !!
I was thinking something similar - that such a huge and brilliant labor force would really have to be engaged in some sort of an arms race. But like you said, that might involve patent wars and not explosives. I think it's hard to picture an em future without picturing some great race which future factions are trying to win, badly enough to pay for the upkeep of a trillion ems, all toiling to give them an edge. If we think hard, we can imagine many other competitive situations where outcomes matter enough that it's worth it to add extra staff to improve your odds. They range from activities like getting ahead in basic science, in cultural influence, in a political horserace, hacking, or devising a first strike which knocks out any possibility of retaliation. Not all of these are zero-sum, but the ones that are easy to picture basically are.
You can fight wars over lots of things: patents, labor, real estate, honor. Even if raw materials matters more in the future, that doesn't by itself imply we'll have more war.
If you analyze the Iraq War and the rest of the M.E. slaughter as part of a zero-sum fight over control of oil - what then?
I wonder where you disagree with All-Out Sprint's logic. The fact that it isn't so clearly revealed empirically in today's world doesn't refute the claim that it would dominate where labor is almost free.
A lot of them are indirectly. The entire military industry is about who controls territory. Even when there is no war, there needs to be military upkeep to deter invaders. Same goes for a police force or other guard labor within a country. On top of that, there are highly paid professions like lawyers whose job is to navigate the legal framework to exert control over resources. And the ratio between professional labor supply and physical input supply is very different today than it would be in the em era.
Yes, but reproduction today is slow. In the em scenario, it is almost instantaneous. And while our economy grows, we *are* displacing other animals. And people *are* spending huge amounts of effort on zero-sum distribution games. With so many more agents relative to the resource base, their efforts aren't just going to go into physical production and maintainance. The physical inputs are the limiting factor then, so most of the work will be invested in control over them.
I find it hard to imagine that supplying and maintaining these physical computing inputs takes that much work. I'd expect most work to go into zero-sum games between agents about who controls them. Animals don't make their own food, they eat other organisms. A lot of energy goes into zero-sum games between predator and prey, with the caveat that sexually reproducing animals need to compete for mates as well.
With sexual reproduction out of the way, shouldn't the prediction be that most work goes into zero-sum games about who controls the computing power? After all, the physical inputs don't scale arbitrarily. After a couple of doublings, they would need interstellar travel to get more resources.
In a subsistence economy, most work goes to provide and maintain the basics required to exist. In the em era, this is supplying and maintaining computers, energy, cooling, structural support, real estate, communication, etc. Pretty much all animals and humans lived near subsistence level until a few hundred years ago. It is by far the usual condition.
"It seems he is just another victim of the conjunction fallacy. I still find hard to conceive how “today’s standard academic consensus science” (as the author writes) could analyze in an accurate and realistic way His very specific vision of future."
Sticking to academic consensus seems the opposite of the conjunction fallacy. Sure, academic consensus is a large number of core ideas, but if you're de facto ruling that out then you'd rule out all true academic toolkits merely because they were big.
In this situation, a conjunction fallacy would be if Robin was sticking in a load of pet economic / technological theories that weren't consensus, which he explicitly avoids doing.
I haven't read the book yet (out June 1?) so I hope this is addressed somewhere, but based on your talks and the blog, the strangest argument seems to be where you use the times and growth rate changes between the previous growth modes to extrapolate a new step change a few hundred years in the future.
Why is this a stronger line of reasoning than I think it is? What is the theory that the length of growth modes should decrease by roughly the same factor every time?
Not that your argument in total depends on this, but it seems more worthy of nitpicking than your guess that female Ems will like high-status males and males will prefer pretty females.
I'm pretty convinced by the modeling of the em scenario. The thing that remains hardest for me to picture is what all of these brilliant workers who toil endlessly would be working *on*. These days, the stuff we produce gets consumed, but where are the consumers in em world? It's not the laboring trillions, because competitive pressures have selected for workers of maximum productivity who have funneled basically 100% of their income into paying rent. They surely make due with entertainment that's free-to-consume, so there is no extra blood to squeeze from that turnip.
Is everybody busy just designing and making new computers and new power sources for the landlords, so as to make more room for rent-paying em laborers? Or are the capital-owning Malthusian escapees the only real consumers?
Great book ! The ems hypothesis is somehow the epitome of realist materialism: large scale production of minds (+/- bodies) and yet it evokes the strangest aspects of theologies ("how many angels can you pack on a pinhead" !). More intriguing : for me the book, together with the increased probability of trillions of potentially life supporting planets poses with more acuity the question of how small and how close could alien civ "outposts" be, and whether it's worth trying to design a sort of "nano-SETI" !!
Exactly.
I was thinking something similar - that such a huge and brilliant labor force would really have to be engaged in some sort of an arms race. But like you said, that might involve patent wars and not explosives. I think it's hard to picture an em future without picturing some great race which future factions are trying to win, badly enough to pay for the upkeep of a trillion ems, all toiling to give them an edge. If we think hard, we can imagine many other competitive situations where outcomes matter enough that it's worth it to add extra staff to improve your odds. They range from activities like getting ahead in basic science, in cultural influence, in a political horserace, hacking, or devising a first strike which knocks out any possibility of retaliation. Not all of these are zero-sum, but the ones that are easy to picture basically are.
Even if raw materials matters more in the future, that doesn't by itself imply we'll have more war.
However, it seems like a "weak clue" in that direction.
You can fight wars over lots of things: patents, labor, real estate, honor. Even if raw materials matters more in the future, that doesn't by itself imply we'll have more war.
If you analyze the Iraq War and the rest of the M.E. slaughter as part of a zero-sum fight over control of oil - what then?
I wonder where you disagree with All-Out Sprint's logic. The fact that it isn't so clearly revealed empirically in today's world doesn't refute the claim that it would dominate where labor is almost free.
A lot of them are indirectly. The entire military industry is about who controls territory. Even when there is no war, there needs to be military upkeep to deter invaders. Same goes for a police force or other guard labor within a country. On top of that, there are highly paid professions like lawyers whose job is to navigate the legal framework to exert control over resources. And the ratio between professional labor supply and physical input supply is very different today than it would be in the em era.
Industries today that focus on physical inputs, such as mining and farming, are not dominated by zero sum fights over "control".
Yes, but reproduction today is slow. In the em scenario, it is almost instantaneous. And while our economy grows, we *are* displacing other animals. And people *are* spending huge amounts of effort on zero-sum distribution games. With so many more agents relative to the resource base, their efforts aren't just going to go into physical production and maintainance. The physical inputs are the limiting factor then, so most of the work will be invested in control over them.
The world today employs billions of people, most in productive activities. It really is a lot of work to maintain and grow a world civilization.
I find it hard to imagine that supplying and maintaining these physical computing inputs takes that much work. I'd expect most work to go into zero-sum games between agents about who controls them. Animals don't make their own food, they eat other organisms. A lot of energy goes into zero-sum games between predator and prey, with the caveat that sexually reproducing animals need to compete for mates as well.
With sexual reproduction out of the way, shouldn't the prediction be that most work goes into zero-sum games about who controls the computing power? After all, the physical inputs don't scale arbitrarily. After a couple of doublings, they would need interstellar travel to get more resources.
In a subsistence economy, most work goes to provide and maintain the basics required to exist. In the em era, this is supplying and maintaining computers, energy, cooling, structural support, real estate, communication, etc. Pretty much all animals and humans lived near subsistence level until a few hundred years ago. It is by far the usual condition.
I treat it as a weak line of evidence, whose predictions happen to be confirmed by other lines of evidence.
"It seems he is just another victim of the conjunction fallacy. I still find hard to conceive how “today’s standard academic consensus science” (as the author writes) could analyze in an accurate and realistic way His very specific vision of future."
Sticking to academic consensus seems the opposite of the conjunction fallacy. Sure, academic consensus is a large number of core ideas, but if you're de facto ruling that out then you'd rule out all true academic toolkits merely because they were big.
In this situation, a conjunction fallacy would be if Robin was sticking in a load of pet economic / technological theories that weren't consensus, which he explicitly avoids doing.
I haven't read the book yet (out June 1?) so I hope this is addressed somewhere, but based on your talks and the blog, the strangest argument seems to be where you use the times and growth rate changes between the previous growth modes to extrapolate a new step change a few hundred years in the future.
Why is this a stronger line of reasoning than I think it is? What is the theory that the length of growth modes should decrease by roughly the same factor every time?
Not that your argument in total depends on this, but it seems more worthy of nitpicking than your guess that female Ems will like high-status males and males will prefer pretty females.
I'm pretty convinced by the modeling of the em scenario. The thing that remains hardest for me to picture is what all of these brilliant workers who toil endlessly would be working *on*. These days, the stuff we produce gets consumed, but where are the consumers in em world? It's not the laboring trillions, because competitive pressures have selected for workers of maximum productivity who have funneled basically 100% of their income into paying rent. They surely make due with entertainment that's free-to-consume, so there is no extra blood to squeeze from that turnip.
Is everybody busy just designing and making new computers and new power sources for the landlords, so as to make more room for rent-paying em laborers? Or are the capital-owning Malthusian escapees the only real consumers?