Democracy is a political system used by meat-based, baseline humans, who are all fundamentally very similar. The greatest variation is that between Einstein and the village idiot, but 99% of people are far from either extreme.
One of the key ideas leading to democracy is equal rights. It makes sense to give all humans equal rights because their abilities, needs, and desires are really very similar. But ems inhabit a far greater class of possible behaviors, abilities, needs and desires. It’s not clear to me why it even makes sense to consider a democracy of ems.
Another problem is that, as you point out, a one instance-one vote system would create a huge artificial restriction on the creation of legal copies. Creating copies is probably very desirable for anyone rich enough to run them. So the only possible outcomes are either a huge majority of disenfranchised copies created without a license, or else a huge illegal underworld of copies that is brutally repressed by the government because, once a copy is created, they have to grant it full rights.
Just look at the state of modern copyright (and patents) - a huge artificial legal restriction on the proliferation of software. Then imagine copyright applied to sentient beings. Enforcing a system of government licensing of em copying would mean enforcing the non-existence of free software and open hardware, or any software or hardware free from government control.
I.. do not think there is any scenario in which allowing unrestricted copying of minds does not end in the apocalypse. It is an open invitation for a paperclipped solar system, only instead of paperclips, all available mass has been turned into instances of Sam Clado from alaska who just really likes himself. It sets off my “BAD IDEA” detectors really, really hard. And then, when I stop and consider it on a less reflexive level? It seems worse.
Backups—that is, copies in a frozen/not running state, could be permitted, but giving anyone permission to just manufacture more selves? No. Hell No. If the government wants to outlaw that on pain of pain, I am in favor.
giving anyone permission to just manufacture more selves? No. Hell No.
This seems like a 1000× faster version of one ethnic group reproducing faster than another ethnic group in their neighborhood. And the slow version already makes people kill each other.
Analogically, how about social state? Are we going to guarantee at least some minimum human rights to ems? Because if we do, and if someone is happy to live at the minimum level, what’s going to stop them from making as much copies as possible, and letting the government pay or collapse? (Or perhaps illegal copies don’t have the same right? Now we have slavery.)
I don’t disagree with your analysis. What I’m pointing out is that I haven’t seen any workable proposals to prevent this (or another very disagreeable scenario), except for 1) a singleton AI controlling the effective laws of physics in its light cone, or 2) somehow making sure nobody but a single player (“ruler”) has the ability to create computer hardware and/or software. In which case, the universe will probably be tiled with that ruler. The incentives to create copies and the resulting evolutionary pressures are too great.
And in the context of all this, ideas like democracy are completely unworkable unless one of these restrictions is implemented.
How does all available mass get turned into Sam Clado, unless there is some physical replicator? And if there’s a physical replicator, is it really all that important whether it’s replicating to create hardware for Sam Clado, or replicating just to replicate?
Sam’s the one who ordered it to replicate without bound. Others may have different ideas of how much ought to be mined, so it’s not a given that that is how things will end up.
Any world where I cannot make and interact with copies of myself and/or custom minds forever, is a hell as far as I’m concerned. It being as slow and dangerous as it is currently is bad enough.
An alternative might be to grant new copies votes after a some moderate period of time so that they’ve diverged from the original. This no doubt has its own problems, but it’s at least good enough for science fiction.
A requirement to have a percentage of divergence would be too easy to hack.
We can generalise votes to carry different weights. Starting today, everyone who currently has one vote continues to have one vote. When someone makes a copy (electronic or flesh), their voting power is divided between themselves and the copy. The total amount of voting power is conserved and, assuming that copies default to the political opinion of their prototypes, the political landscape only moves when someone changes their mind.
There are several modes by which that could fail. For example, if the beings have simply mastered a classifier indistinguishable from a typical population member in polynomial time under an adaptive interactive proof protocol (similar to the so-called “Turing Test”), while actually implementing a (source-code-uninspectable) program hostile to that value system.
Children already have high correlation with their parent’s politics (and more so with their parent’s religion, caste, etc.). And they tend to act together as families / clans. This will grow far stronger with ems who can design their diverged-copies more precisely than humans can raise their children, and who have much greater incentives to vote as family units (shorter generation time = stronger selection pressure to outbreed other families).
If the government mandates how the children must be different from the parent, with the goal that they vote differently from the parent, that doesn’t seem very different from the government just dispensing with voting and setting the policy itself.
I have an idea for how to deal with the creation of illegal mind clones that should not result in them cooperating in their own enslavement in and off itself. Create an illegal clone, and the clone gets legal rights. Specifically, yours. You loose them. Property, inherent rights and dignities, titles, ect? all transfer. Of course, that does not help with someone designing an inherently servile mind, but it should be deterrent with some teeth.
So what happens if I create 100 clones before I’m stopped? 1/100th of my property, of a vote, of a social guarantee of a minimal standard of living, may be too little to survive on.
Democracy is a political system used by meat-based, baseline humans, who are all fundamentally very similar. The greatest variation is that between Einstein and the village idiot, but 99% of people are far from either extreme.
One of the key ideas leading to democracy is equal rights. It makes sense to give all humans equal rights because their abilities, needs, and desires are really very similar. But ems inhabit a far greater class of possible behaviors, abilities, needs and desires. It’s not clear to me why it even makes sense to consider a democracy of ems.
Another problem is that, as you point out, a one instance-one vote system would create a huge artificial restriction on the creation of legal copies. Creating copies is probably very desirable for anyone rich enough to run them. So the only possible outcomes are either a huge majority of disenfranchised copies created without a license, or else a huge illegal underworld of copies that is brutally repressed by the government because, once a copy is created, they have to grant it full rights.
Just look at the state of modern copyright (and patents) - a huge artificial legal restriction on the proliferation of software. Then imagine copyright applied to sentient beings. Enforcing a system of government licensing of em copying would mean enforcing the non-existence of free software and open hardware, or any software or hardware free from government control.
I.. do not think there is any scenario in which allowing unrestricted copying of minds does not end in the apocalypse. It is an open invitation for a paperclipped solar system, only instead of paperclips, all available mass has been turned into instances of Sam Clado from alaska who just really likes himself. It sets off my “BAD IDEA” detectors really, really hard. And then, when I stop and consider it on a less reflexive level? It seems worse. Backups—that is, copies in a frozen/not running state, could be permitted, but giving anyone permission to just manufacture more selves? No. Hell No. If the government wants to outlaw that on pain of pain, I am in favor.
This seems like a 1000× faster version of one ethnic group reproducing faster than another ethnic group in their neighborhood. And the slow version already makes people kill each other.
Analogically, how about social state? Are we going to guarantee at least some minimum human rights to ems? Because if we do, and if someone is happy to live at the minimum level, what’s going to stop them from making as much copies as possible, and letting the government pay or collapse? (Or perhaps illegal copies don’t have the same right? Now we have slavery.)
I don’t disagree with your analysis. What I’m pointing out is that I haven’t seen any workable proposals to prevent this (or another very disagreeable scenario), except for 1) a singleton AI controlling the effective laws of physics in its light cone, or 2) somehow making sure nobody but a single player (“ruler”) has the ability to create computer hardware and/or software. In which case, the universe will probably be tiled with that ruler. The incentives to create copies and the resulting evolutionary pressures are too great.
And in the context of all this, ideas like democracy are completely unworkable unless one of these restrictions is implemented.
I’m all for (1). I’ve yet to see a plausible scenario not involving a singleton AI that isn’t, on some level, horrifying.
How does all available mass get turned into Sam Clado, unless there is some physical replicator? And if there’s a physical replicator, is it really all that important whether it’s replicating to create hardware for Sam Clado, or replicating just to replicate?
Sam’s the one who ordered it to replicate without bound. Others may have different ideas of how much ought to be mined, so it’s not a given that that is how things will end up.
Any world where I cannot make and interact with copies of myself and/or custom minds forever, is a hell as far as I’m concerned. It being as slow and dangerous as it is currently is bad enough.
I agree with your estimation. But there may be equilibriums that don’t end so badly, and are more implementable than total restriction...
Preventing the copying of minds strikes me as a bad idea. You can only make seven billion people so happy.
Any idea on how to figure out how many copies to allow?
An alternative might be to grant new copies votes after a some moderate period of time so that they’ve diverged from the original. This no doubt has its own problems, but it’s at least good enough for science fiction.
A requirement to have a percentage of divergence would be too easy to hack.
In a sense, we do that now. You’re free to have children and teach them your values, but they can’t vote for 18 years.
Do you think this idea can be generalised to Ems?
We can generalise votes to carry different weights. Starting today, everyone who currently has one vote continues to have one vote. When someone makes a copy (electronic or flesh), their voting power is divided between themselves and the copy. The total amount of voting power is conserved and, assuming that copies default to the political opinion of their prototypes, the political landscape only moves when someone changes their mind.
Dubious at best. Ems could be designed to not diverge, and there’s evolutionary pressure towards doing so.
It would at least keep people from just multiplying themselves right before an election and then merging them again right after.
Or maybe when they’ve been demonstrated to have assimilated the values of the rest of the population.
No way THAT could go wrong...
There are several modes by which that could fail. For example, if the beings have simply mastered a classifier indistinguishable from a typical population member in polynomial time under an adaptive interactive proof protocol (similar to the so-called “Turing Test”), while actually implementing a (source-code-uninspectable) program hostile to that value system.
Children already have high correlation with their parent’s politics (and more so with their parent’s religion, caste, etc.). And they tend to act together as families / clans. This will grow far stronger with ems who can design their diverged-copies more precisely than humans can raise their children, and who have much greater incentives to vote as family units (shorter generation time = stronger selection pressure to outbreed other families).
If the government mandates how the children must be different from the parent, with the goal that they vote differently from the parent, that doesn’t seem very different from the government just dispensing with voting and setting the policy itself.
I have an idea for how to deal with the creation of illegal mind clones that should not result in them cooperating in their own enslavement in and off itself. Create an illegal clone, and the clone gets legal rights. Specifically, yours. You loose them. Property, inherent rights and dignities, titles, ect? all transfer. Of course, that does not help with someone designing an inherently servile mind, but it should be deterrent with some teeth.
There is no difference between “copy” and “original” for EMs, or any reason for the pre-copying Em to care about one more than the other.
So what happens if I create 100 clones before I’m stopped? 1/100th of my property, of a vote, of a social guarantee of a minimal standard of living, may be too little to survive on.