17 Comments

Eh. I don't buy that. Much of Robin's argument is that a world of free competition just isn't nearly as bad as many people seem to think: the parts of our minds that we like, the parts of our lives we think make them worth living, aren't just some weird aberration that have appeared in spite of competition, but are actual functional useful features, and so can mostly be expected to continue into the future, at least in some form or other, even if changed in many ways.

This might not mean that doing nothing to shift the future from its natural course is the best possible choice to make. But it does certainly make that choice vastly better than it looks under the alternative worldview, where unless we slay the demon of free competition, sentient conscious beings will be outcompeted and consumed by homogeneous mind-slush, the natural conclusion of efficiency left unchecked.

Robin has said a number of times that he does consider the em world pretty good - better than our world, even. And actually I think that, assuming his positive claims are true, that's a very reasonable stance, probably the same one that most people would come to, if they similarly believed his positive claims.

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"Are you sure ... you would still prefer the same future?"

Robin isn't writing about a future that he "prefers". He's writing about a future he views as somewhat likely, given our current state of knowledge. He's not advocating that people attempt to achieve this scenario, especially at the exclusion of other possible scenarios.

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Although he doesn't note it here, Robin before has said that he likes playing a lot, in ways such as board games. I think he gets in his fair share of good play =)

http://www.overcomingbias.c...http://www.overcomingbias.c...

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But I already think that, for similar reasons.

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Read it. You will find that play is a necessary part of the learning architecture, which I believe to be closer to the evolved human one than most synthetic AI approaches.

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Curious, how much do you play? I know quite many professors and they already seem like robots in terms of work. I have previously worked as much as them for shorter periods of time, and it felt horrible. There's an implicit status-game here. If you prefer work, you will come up with reasons to prefer a work-future as it will raise your status. Are you sure if you were born in another time with other genes, you would still prefer the same future? This kind of philosophical question of ultimate value feels like we ought to put our best effort to get right answers.

Obviously I think what matter quite much is how much effort is required. Someone with higher IQ will go quickly through work that takes someone with less IQ to go pass. I do enjoy work but I also enjoy play.

By the way, people feel motivated to work a lot more when the work feels meaningful. Think war-time efforts. I wonder if such motivation could be created in EM scenario?

Have you actually calculated how much play time would be competitive in EM scenario? And how much work would be within their skillset (eg. satisfying) ?

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*for some time on most days of the year*

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They may have played for some most days of the year but in total they played significantly less than foragers. At least I don't consider building monuments, repairing homes, weaving clothes and being called on for military duty during the off-season as "play".

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And yet farmers played for most of the year.

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But humans have neoteny because things that are functional for other animals when young are also functional for us as adults.

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Play is functional in juvenile animals but adult animals play much less. The function of play seems to be education - if you don't need to learn new things, you don't need play.

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Farming work is very seasonal in many areas. You have periods of time that require intense, constant labor and others in which the only thing you can do is wait. Ancient Egypt, farmer society par excellence, had so much surplus labor that they were able to build and maintain giant pyramids. It took industry to make year-round work productive for the masses.

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"that's crazy as a description of most animals"

No it's not, they stretch the carrying capacity of the land and it takes them less than their whole day to do so. If there's only going to be one prey animal in your territory per day and that's enough to keep your belly filled you would waste energy by searching for more prey, even if you could find something small it might not be worth your energy. And that's why tigers spend most of their time being just as lazy as a domestic cat. It was same with human foragers: they had no refrigerators and they could only trade excess stuff for the same stuff because every tribe was more or less the same.

Farmers could increase the land's carrying capacity at the expense of more work hours, foragers and most animals cannot do this, Maybe some species like ants are exceptions, and ants indeed do not seem to have leisure time.

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Seems you don't think play is functional - its just an accident that has lasted for 100 million years. "More time foraging/hunting wouldn't gain them anything they could use" that's crazy as a description of most animals. And for farmers how is it that all religions everywhere just happened to accidentally create leisure that wouldn't exist without them?

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Animals and foragers have play because a) play is indeed useful and b) spending more time foraging/hunting wouldn't gain them anything they could use, it would just deplete their energy and the land. They don't really live at subsistence level when you consider leisure time a form of wealth (which any serious economist should): there are just enough resources to sustain them but they can acquire all these resources with a fraction of their time and effort. This is comparable to someone who chooses to work part time, to just be able to get by, and spends the rest of their time on fun things. Farmers could spend their entire waking day on work, but they were protected against merciless competition by religious institutions (the holy Sunday, for example) and frankly it would've been hard for a lord to find an army that would enforce a no-leisure society. In the industrial era there were still some religious protections and there were central governments that relied on the people's cooperation and who could be petitioned by labor unions, even so there were many workers (including children) who did not have any leisure time outside of Sundays.

Fast forward to an em society with no real government, almost unlimited potential economic growth, high population growth, no religious authorities, no taboo against killing "lazy" individuals and where new individuals already come with skills (so no playful childhood required). I think leisure time would rapidly disappear, save for forced, work related "play", and as a luxury for the richest individuals.

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Your chapter 13 seems to be speculation about the future design of AIs. What is the connection between that subject, and Robin's Em scenario, which involves minds that are merely copied from humans, not designed?

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