Most decisions are not made democratically, and pointing out that a majoritarian vote is against a decision is no argument that they will not happen nor should not happen. This is true of the vast majority of resource allocation decisions such as how to divvy up physical materials.
I think it is an argument that they should not happen, but a very weak one, especially for things like this where the current public really hasn’t thought much about.
Also, I think David is just wildly wrong here about what realistically would happen in 10,000 years for a society that could actually start using all of the suns energy. This would involve hundreds of generations of people each deciding to not grow, to not expand into the rest of the solar system, to pass up on enormous opportunities for joy and greatness and creation, out of sentimentality for a specific kind of attachment for the specific arrangement of our planet and solar system at this moment in time. This attachment is very much real, and worth something, but IMO obviously will not remotely outweigh the preferences and actions of the trillions of people who will all want to do more things and have more things (and since we are talking about gradual expansion, very much present in the conversation).
I concede that I was mistaken in saying it was no argument; I will agree with the position that it is a very weak one and is often outweighed by other arguments.
Majority vote is useful specifically in determining who has power because of the extremely high level of adversarial dynamics, but in contexts that are not as wildly adversarial (including most specific decisions that an institution makes) generally other decision-making algorithms are better.
You mean that people on Earth and the solar system colonies will have enough biological children, and space travel to other stars for biological people will be hard enough that they will want the resources from dismantling the Sun? I suppose that’s possible, though I expect they will put some kind of population control for biological people in place before that happens. I agree that also feels aversive, but at some point it needs to be done anyway, otherwise exponential population growth just brings us back to the Malthusian limit a few ten thousand years from now even if we use up the whole Universe. (See Tim Underwood’s excellent rationalist sci-fi novel on the topic.)
If you are talking about ems and digital beings, not biological humans, I don’t think they will and should have have decision rights over what happens with the solar system, as they can simply move to other stars.
Someone will live on old earth in your scenario. Unless those people are selected for extreme levels of attachment to specific celestial bodies, as opposed to the function and benefit of those celestial bodies, I don’t see why those people would decide to not replace the sun with a better sun, and also get orders of magnitude richer by doing so.
It seems to me that the majority of those inhabitants of old earth would simply be people who don’t want to be uploaded (which is a much more common preference I expect than maintaining the literal sun in the sky) and so have much more limited ability to travel to other solar systems. I don’t see why I would want to condemn most people who don’t want be uploaded to relative cosmic poverty just because a very small minority of people want to keep burning away most of the usable energy in the solar system for historical reasons.
Are you arguing that if technologically possible, the Sun should be dismantled in the first few decades after the Singularity, as it is implied in the Great Transhumanist Future song, the main thing I’m complaining about here? In that case, I don’t know of any remotely just and reasonable (democratic, market-based or other) governance structure that would allow that to happen given how the majority of people feel.
If you are talking about population dynamics, ownership and voting shifting over millennia to the point that they decide to dismantle the Sun, then sure, that’s possible, though that’s not what I expect to happen, see my other comment on market trades and my reply to Habryka on population dynamics.
I think that the coder looking up and saying that the Sun burning is distasteful but the Great Transhumanist Future will come in 20 years, along with a later mention of “the Sun is a battery”, together implies that the Sun is getting dismantled in the near future. I guess you can debate in how strong the implication is, maybe they just want to dismantle the Sun in the long term, and currently only using the Sun as a battery in some benign way, but I think that’s not the most natural interpretation.
Most decisions are not made democratically, and pointing out that a majoritarian vote is against a decision is no argument that they will not happen nor should not happen. This is true of the vast majority of resource allocation decisions such as how to divvy up physical materials.
I think it is an argument that they should not happen, but a very weak one, especially for things like this where the current public really hasn’t thought much about.
Also, I think David is just wildly wrong here about what realistically would happen in 10,000 years for a society that could actually start using all of the suns energy. This would involve hundreds of generations of people each deciding to not grow, to not expand into the rest of the solar system, to pass up on enormous opportunities for joy and greatness and creation, out of sentimentality for a specific kind of attachment for the specific arrangement of our planet and solar system at this moment in time. This attachment is very much real, and worth something, but IMO obviously will not remotely outweigh the preferences and actions of the trillions of people who will all want to do more things and have more things (and since we are talking about gradual expansion, very much present in the conversation).
I concede that I was mistaken in saying it was no argument; I will agree with the position that it is a very weak one and is often outweighed by other arguments.
Majority vote is useful specifically in determining who has power because of the extremely high level of adversarial dynamics, but in contexts that are not as wildly adversarial (including most specific decisions that an institution makes) generally other decision-making algorithms are better.
You mean that people on Earth and the solar system colonies will have enough biological children, and space travel to other stars for biological people will be hard enough that they will want the resources from dismantling the Sun? I suppose that’s possible, though I expect they will put some kind of population control for biological people in place before that happens. I agree that also feels aversive, but at some point it needs to be done anyway, otherwise exponential population growth just brings us back to the Malthusian limit a few ten thousand years from now even if we use up the whole Universe. (See Tim Underwood’s excellent rationalist sci-fi novel on the topic.)
If you are talking about ems and digital beings, not biological humans, I don’t think they will and should have have decision rights over what happens with the solar system, as they can simply move to other stars.
Someone will live on old earth in your scenario. Unless those people are selected for extreme levels of attachment to specific celestial bodies, as opposed to the function and benefit of those celestial bodies, I don’t see why those people would decide to not replace the sun with a better sun, and also get orders of magnitude richer by doing so.
It seems to me that the majority of those inhabitants of old earth would simply be people who don’t want to be uploaded (which is a much more common preference I expect than maintaining the literal sun in the sky) and so have much more limited ability to travel to other solar systems. I don’t see why I would want to condemn most people who don’t want be uploaded to relative cosmic poverty just because a very small minority of people want to keep burning away most of the usable energy in the solar system for historical reasons.
Are you arguing that if technologically possible, the Sun should be dismantled in the first few decades after the Singularity, as it is implied in the Great Transhumanist Future song, the main thing I’m complaining about here? In that case, I don’t know of any remotely just and reasonable (democratic, market-based or other) governance structure that would allow that to happen given how the majority of people feel.
If you are talking about population dynamics, ownership and voting shifting over millennia to the point that they decide to dismantle the Sun, then sure, that’s possible, though that’s not what I expect to happen, see my other comment on market trades and my reply to Habryka on population dynamics.
(It is not implied in the song, to be clear, you seem to have a reading of the lyrics I do not understand.
The song talks about there being a singularity in ~20 years, and separately that the sun is wasteful, but I don’t see any reference to the sun being dismantled in 20 years. For reference, lyrics are here: https://luminousalicorn.tumblr.com/post/175855775830/a-filk-of-big-rock-candy-mountain-one-evening-as)
I think that the coder looking up and saying that the Sun burning is distasteful but the Great Transhumanist Future will come in 20 years, along with a later mention of “the Sun is a battery”, together implies that the Sun is getting dismantled in the near future. I guess you can debate in how strong the implication is, maybe they just want to dismantle the Sun in the long term, and currently only using the Sun as a battery in some benign way, but I think that’s not the most natural interpretation.