Responding to my saying: As long as enough people are free to choose their fertility … income per capital must fall over the long run, a fall whose only fundamental limit is subsistence. Peter McCluskey
Your making an unjustified assumtion of convergence.
Yes, in the long term there is an evolutionary pressure toward increased reproduction. However, our ability to affect both our own makeup and the world around us is also increasing at a drastic rate.
It's totally possible that the system doesn't have any nice limiting behavior. We might lurch from drastic attacks on reproductive instincts (cutting them out of our jeans) to warfare to periods of reproductive plenty.
Also it seems that as far as aggregate utility goes the amount contributed by some poor descendants will be small compared to the difference that we could make by building happy machines/brains and filling up giant mines with them. Even a small chance of following that plan probably outweighs the other consequences.
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Also here is a quick argument that aggregate utility isn't a useful measure.
Let's compare universe A which has reached a steady state with 100 billion people and universe B at a steady state of 200 billion people all having the same level of happiness. If you accept aggregate utility as the desierable end you have to prefer universe B to A (twice the utility!)
But presumably you retain this preference even if you learn that both universe A and B will persist forever in these steady states. Even though we can biject all the people who will live in universe A with those in universe B. Thus it must be the fact that at any particular time B has twice as much utility as A.
However, now suppose that both universe A and B lie inside some larger domain and god decides he is going to slow down the passage of time in universe B so that only one second passes in universe B for every one in universe A. Yet now A and B have the same utility per unit (absolute) time so no discounting of the future (should use absolute time) can give you reason to favor B over A. So what remains to make B better than A? Is it the fact that the B experiences are associated with more physical brains?
I could continue and make the situation even more troublesome but I think you get the argument.
I do not share your faith that the ultimate limits are far in the future. As far as I can tell, supporting Earth's current population produces quite a bit of stress on the ecosystem. It seems likely, even, that maintaining our current population requires a large amount of dis-saving of environmental assets, which will eventually become unsustainable.
As far as virtual humanity goes, I am also skeptical. It seems to me that a simulation of a human personality is not a person, in the same way that a simulation of an earthquake is not an earthquake.
Lives of continuous torture, where they’d rather be dead, were rare.
That's the wrong standard of comparison, surely. Instead, shouldn't you ask how many would prefer that they were never born in the first place, with full knowledge that the average standard of living of their siblings and (to a lesser extent) everyone else would be raised in that case?
(I'm applying my understanding of your ethical system here. This isn't necessarily the question that I would ask.)
This is heavily dependent on your priors/values, obviously. Some of would rather live in a world with far fewer people living much better lives than the reverse. Existence is not judged to automatically be better than nonexistence to all of us.
It is an accounting mechanism so yes a product of "distrust" sounds quite plausible.
Universal cooperation seems likely to dispense with it."
The keyword here is universal, just one selfish agent will out compete the "co-operators". Something is required to identify selfish agents as they emerge and swiftly deal with them.
In a world with any limits accounting is required. "Free market" accounting works quite well in a world of limited labor and abundant resources, we are seeing this being turned on its head. labor is getting abundant (increasing population and ultimately automation, increased productivity tech etc...) While resources exploitation constantly lags behind, creating constant crunches and bubbles... This situation is ripe for extracting massive rents. I don't see how this situation is optimal in any way.
A solution may be quota's on all natural resources, literally any resource that experiences a crunch is placed under the monopoly control of a single corp, everyone have an equal share they cannot trade that share but can trade the profit from that share.
I'm talking about real poor people now. I get that it would be better that those poor were rich. I don't get the idea that it would be better if those poor folks had never existed. The poor "suffer" relative to being rich, but they do not suffer overall relative to not existing - they on average overall have good lives.
Anytime someone enters a market that makes life worst for other competitors, but this effect is not an externality, because it does not make supply and demand fail to achieve an economically efficient outcome.
"So why are so many rich folks so horrified by a vast future of poor folk?"
In composing an answer to this question, I am torn between being passionate and being coolly objective. Robin, you must be aware that thousands of people starve to death every day, that hundreds of millions are malnourished, that poor people in the present day are the ones most vulnerable to disease, natural disaster, and civil disorder - ad infinitum. If "rich" people form a judgement about what a future with lots of poverty will be like, they're going to do so starting with the world we have right now, not from arcane arguments about nano-brains with value systems optimized to enjoy what little they've got. In objective mode, I would above all be trying to point out that your psychological guesswork simply fails to take into account a huge chunk of reality which obviously plays a part in how people think about poverty. In the other mode... You are not a bad person, you are not a stupid person, so how can you fail to see this? People who care about global poverty care about preventable infant deaths, economic arrangements which amount to slavery, growing populations living on a shrinking ecological base. And ironically, many such people would be sympathetic to the idea of happiness in poverty, though for rather different reasons than the ones you advance! Anyway, you are at best focusing on secondary matters and missing the basic fact that in reality, right now, poverty really does mean suffering, for very large numbers of people.
Yeah but what doesn't quite sit well my intution though is that the number of children changes the fraction of total production going to one family and it is endogenous.
So it seems as if there is a prisoner's dilemma problem. Suppose we all prefer a world in which all of our children would be able to earn above subsistance but given that everyone else is going to have a bunch of kids, then I should to.
How can this be true and there still be no social cost?
I was not suggesting evolution would make folks value virtual stuff more. Economists have standard ways to define "poor" relative to a subsistence standard.
I wrote some comments to this post at http://smigrodzki.blogspot....
Your making an unjustified assumtion of convergence.
Yes, in the long term there is an evolutionary pressure toward increased reproduction. However, our ability to affect both our own makeup and the world around us is also increasing at a drastic rate.
It's totally possible that the system doesn't have any nice limiting behavior. We might lurch from drastic attacks on reproductive instincts (cutting them out of our jeans) to warfare to periods of reproductive plenty.
Also it seems that as far as aggregate utility goes the amount contributed by some poor descendants will be small compared to the difference that we could make by building happy machines/brains and filling up giant mines with them. Even a small chance of following that plan probably outweighs the other consequences.
---
Also here is a quick argument that aggregate utility isn't a useful measure.
Let's compare universe A which has reached a steady state with 100 billion people and universe B at a steady state of 200 billion people all having the same level of happiness. If you accept aggregate utility as the desierable end you have to prefer universe B to A (twice the utility!)
But presumably you retain this preference even if you learn that both universe A and B will persist forever in these steady states. Even though we can biject all the people who will live in universe A with those in universe B. Thus it must be the fact that at any particular time B has twice as much utility as A.
However, now suppose that both universe A and B lie inside some larger domain and god decides he is going to slow down the passage of time in universe B so that only one second passes in universe B for every one in universe A. Yet now A and B have the same utility per unit (absolute) time so no discounting of the future (should use absolute time) can give you reason to favor B over A. So what remains to make B better than A? Is it the fact that the B experiences are associated with more physical brains?
I could continue and make the situation even more troublesome but I think you get the argument.
I do not share your faith that the ultimate limits are far in the future. As far as I can tell, supporting Earth's current population produces quite a bit of stress on the ecosystem. It seems likely, even, that maintaining our current population requires a large amount of dis-saving of environmental assets, which will eventually become unsustainable.
As far as virtual humanity goes, I am also skeptical. It seems to me that a simulation of a human personality is not a person, in the same way that a simulation of an earthquake is not an earthquake.
Lives of continuous torture, where they’d rather be dead, were rare.
That's the wrong standard of comparison, surely. Instead, shouldn't you ask how many would prefer that they were never born in the first place, with full knowledge that the average standard of living of their siblings and (to a lesser extent) everyone else would be raised in that case?
(I'm applying my understanding of your ethical system here. This isn't necessarily the question that I would ask.)
So why are so many rich folks so horrified by a vast future of poor folk?
Because they are closer to average utilitarianism than total?
This is heavily dependent on your priors/values, obviously. Some of would rather live in a world with far fewer people living much better lives than the reverse. Existence is not judged to automatically be better than nonexistence to all of us.
It is an accounting mechanism so yes a product of "distrust" sounds quite plausible.
Universal cooperation seems likely to dispense with it."
The keyword here is universal, just one selfish agent will out compete the "co-operators". Something is required to identify selfish agents as they emerge and swiftly deal with them.
In a world with any limits accounting is required. "Free market" accounting works quite well in a world of limited labor and abundant resources, we are seeing this being turned on its head. labor is getting abundant (increasing population and ultimately automation, increased productivity tech etc...) While resources exploitation constantly lags behind, creating constant crunches and bubbles... This situation is ripe for extracting massive rents. I don't see how this situation is optimal in any way.
A solution may be quota's on all natural resources, literally any resource that experiences a crunch is placed under the monopoly control of a single corp, everyone have an equal share they cannot trade that share but can trade the profit from that share.
I'm talking about real poor people now. I get that it would be better that those poor were rich. I don't get the idea that it would be better if those poor folks had never existed. The poor "suffer" relative to being rich, but they do not suffer overall relative to not existing - they on average overall have good lives.
Anytime someone enters a market that makes life worst for other competitors, but this effect is not an externality, because it does not make supply and demand fail to achieve an economically efficient outcome.
"So why are so many rich folks so horrified by a vast future of poor folk?"
In composing an answer to this question, I am torn between being passionate and being coolly objective. Robin, you must be aware that thousands of people starve to death every day, that hundreds of millions are malnourished, that poor people in the present day are the ones most vulnerable to disease, natural disaster, and civil disorder - ad infinitum. If "rich" people form a judgement about what a future with lots of poverty will be like, they're going to do so starting with the world we have right now, not from arcane arguments about nano-brains with value systems optimized to enjoy what little they've got. In objective mode, I would above all be trying to point out that your psychological guesswork simply fails to take into account a huge chunk of reality which obviously plays a part in how people think about poverty. In the other mode... You are not a bad person, you are not a stupid person, so how can you fail to see this? People who care about global poverty care about preventable infant deaths, economic arrangements which amount to slavery, growing populations living on a shrinking ecological base. And ironically, many such people would be sympathetic to the idea of happiness in poverty, though for rather different reasons than the ones you advance! Anyway, you are at best focusing on secondary matters and missing the basic fact that in reality, right now, poverty really does mean suffering, for very large numbers of people.
Yeah but what doesn't quite sit well my intution though is that the number of children changes the fraction of total production going to one family and it is endogenous.
So it seems as if there is a prisoner's dilemma problem. Suppose we all prefer a world in which all of our children would be able to earn above subsistance but given that everyone else is going to have a bunch of kids, then I should to.
How can this be true and there still be no social cost?
Once individuals are absorbed into the collective, is it going to make much sense to discuss how wealthy they are? Probably not.
Money is essentially a product of distrust. Universal cooperation seems likely to dispense with it.
I expect you are right about assuming that one would exist no matter what.
The fact that if I have more money your money buys less is not an externality in economic terms.
I was not suggesting evolution would make folks value virtual stuff more. Economists have standard ways to define "poor" relative to a subsistence standard.
Edit: Actually, my math is wrong. In the latter case you don't go all the way up to that point, but you still do go above subsistence level.