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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Tried to post this yesterday, but connection problems.

Robin,Here's my take on Cirkovic's analysis (as presented by Robin). When Cikovic finally gets to "The optimization of all activities, most notably computation is the existential imperative. ... An advanced civilization willingly imposes some of the limits on the expansion. Expansion beyond some critical value will tend to undermine efficiency, due both to latency, bandwidth and noise problems." I think Cirkovic' expression of the existential imperative is plausible, but it looks to me to be more of a limit on rate of expansion than an absolute limit on expansion per se. It doesn't seem plausible to me that X of computonium will no matter what be more optimal for maximizing existential odds than 2X of computonium. But perhaps Cirkovic knows something I don't.

In Robin's critique of of Cirkovic's analysis I think they both share a common flaw: the idea that this expansion/seeking of the existential imperative will be run by and/or for the benefit of subjective conscious entities. It seems more likely to me that we live in an algorithmopic universe that selects for the algorithms best at persisting within it. Could be a bunch of beings policing themselves to maximize persistence odds, as in both Cirkovic's analysis and Robin's critique. Could be "optimized", subjective conscious denuded von neuwman replicators. Could be homogeneity. My money isn't on the first one, but our community depends upon it.

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Robin Hanson's avatar

Curiously, while most of my post critiqued Cirkovic's analysis, none of the comments have yet mentioned him.

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