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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

In "Good to Great" Jim Collins' team of researchers found that so called "level 5 leadership" was the single most advantageous asset a company could have in improving a business' prospects of success. Level 5 leadership is characterized by a paradoxical mix between personal humility and strong professional ambitions. The personal humility exhibited by these personalities would manifest itself in the way they forfeited celebrity status and admiration from others and channeled that effort into ensuring that the company did well.

I don't know how a docile slave would willingly internalize the objectives of his workplace and ensure its long-term success if he has a hostile relationship with his boss and his workplace. Investing in motivating personnel is a largely fruitless effort (motivational speakers, team building etc). According to Collins et al workplaces wherein employees are internally motivated outperform those where they are externally motivated. Internal motivation is another aspect of Level 5 leadership.

Granted, this only appears to apply to leadership positions and creative positions, but in an Em world it is conceivable that AI is sufficiently advanced to complete almost all mundane tasks. In this case the only positions worth enslaving Ems over would be held by AI, and for all positions where level 5 leadership is required Ems would be used.

So I don't think slavery would occur in an Em economy.

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Riothamus's avatar

I am skeptical of the enslavement and torture arguments. Why would it make sense to go to the trouble of torturing them when for every environment we could just choose to copy the most successful ems *in* that environment?

I also suggest there would be diminishing returns. In order for torture to be effective, I infer the ems would have to devote compute cycles to remembering and anticipating the torture. In regular humans, too much suffering induces trauma, which is where our memories and expectations interfere with our lives.

I expect that there would be curves of compute cycles devoted to remembering/anticipating torture, and also of productive compute cycles. I propose every em would have a 'trauma point' beyond which the added compute cycles devoted to torture exceed the added productivity cycles, thus *reducing* productivity. Even supposing torture occurred, it seems much more efficient to produce many copies of ems who are at the trauma point already, eliminating the need for further torture.

When the labor supply is functionally infinite and the cost of firing and hiring both approach zero, why even bother finding out how productive torture would be?

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