Competitive pressure is unavoidable, but is also often balanced or harnessed by cooperation in complex systems.
I agree—that some degree of competitive pressure may be unavoidable is all I was trying to argue. Lots of people around here think this is likely false!
But you could just as easily get a scenario where the first ems are all copies of a single selfish trillionaire.
Fair point, I had in a mind a scenario where the ems selected were broadly representative of humanity. Although I also think even the selfish trillionaire scenario might be okay in expectation as they would have many millennia to reflect, alter and interact with copies of themselves etc. I’d give it decent odds that they either decide to upload other people out of altruism or end up self-modifying into a civilization similar to the one we’d end up with in a more equitable upload scenario.
By selfish I meant completely non-altruistic. Also uploading by itself isn’t sufficient, it also requires allocation of resources to uploads. In the selfish trillionaire scenario I was imagining the trillionaire creates many copies of themselves, perhaps some copies of a few people they find interesting, and then various new people/AGI, and those copies all branch and evolve, but there is little to zero allocation for uploading the rest of us, not to mention our dead ancestors.
I agree—that some degree of competitive pressure may be unavoidable is all I was trying to argue. Lots of people around here think this is likely false!
Fair point, I had in a mind a scenario where the ems selected were broadly representative of humanity. Although I also think even the selfish trillionaire scenario might be okay in expectation as they would have many millennia to reflect, alter and interact with copies of themselves etc. I’d give it decent odds that they either decide to upload other people out of altruism or end up self-modifying into a civilization similar to the one we’d end up with in a more equitable upload scenario.
By selfish I meant completely non-altruistic. Also uploading by itself isn’t sufficient, it also requires allocation of resources to uploads. In the selfish trillionaire scenario I was imagining the trillionaire creates many copies of themselves, perhaps some copies of a few people they find interesting, and then various new people/AGI, and those copies all branch and evolve, but there is little to zero allocation for uploading the rest of us, not to mention our dead ancestors.