A naive argument says the influence of our actions on the far future is ~infinity times as intrinsically important as the influence of our actions on the 21st century because the far future contains ~infinity times as much stuff. One limit to this argument is that if 1⁄1,000,000 of the far future stuff is isomorphic to the 21st century (e.g. simulations), then having an influence on the far future is “only” a million times as important as having the exact same influence on the 21st century. (Of course, the far future is a very different place so our influence will actually be of a very different nature.) Has anyone tried to get a better abstract understanding of this point or tried to quantify how much it matters in practice?
I haven’t thought about it much, but it seems like the fraction of far future stuff isomorphic to the 21st century is probably fairly negligible from a purely utilitarian viewpoint, because the universe is so big that even using 1⁄1,000,000 of it for simulations would be a lot of simulations, and why would the far future want that many simulations of the 21st century? It doesn’t seem like a good use of resources to do that many duplicate historical simulations in terms of either instrumental value or terminal value.
I guess I wasn’t necessarily thinking of them as exact duplicates. If there are 10^100 ways the 21st century can go, and for some reason each of the resulting civilizations wants to know how all the other civilizations came out when the dust settled, each civilization ends up having a lot of other civilizations to think about. In this scenario, an effect on the far future still seems to me to be “only” a million times as big as the same effect on the 21st century, only now the stuff isomorphic to the 21st century is spread out across many different far future civilizations instead of one.
Maybe 1⁄1,000,000 is still a lot, but I’m not sure how to deal with uncertainty here. If I just take the expectation of the fraction of the universe isomorphic to the 21st century, I might end up with some number like 1⁄10,000,000 (because I’m 10% sure of the 1⁄1,000,000 claim) and still conclude the relative importance of the far future is huge but hugely below infinity.
A naive argument says the influence of our actions on the far future is ~infinity times as intrinsically important as the influence of our actions on the 21st century because the far future contains ~infinity times as much stuff. One limit to this argument is that if 1⁄1,000,000 of the far future stuff is isomorphic to the 21st century (e.g. simulations), then having an influence on the far future is “only” a million times as important as having the exact same influence on the 21st century. (Of course, the far future is a very different place so our influence will actually be of a very different nature.) Has anyone tried to get a better abstract understanding of this point or tried to quantify how much it matters in practice?
I haven’t thought about it much, but it seems like the fraction of far future stuff isomorphic to the 21st century is probably fairly negligible from a purely utilitarian viewpoint, because the universe is so big that even using 1⁄1,000,000 of it for simulations would be a lot of simulations, and why would the far future want that many simulations of the 21st century? It doesn’t seem like a good use of resources to do that many duplicate historical simulations in terms of either instrumental value or terminal value.
I guess I wasn’t necessarily thinking of them as exact duplicates. If there are 10^100 ways the 21st century can go, and for some reason each of the resulting civilizations wants to know how all the other civilizations came out when the dust settled, each civilization ends up having a lot of other civilizations to think about. In this scenario, an effect on the far future still seems to me to be “only” a million times as big as the same effect on the 21st century, only now the stuff isomorphic to the 21st century is spread out across many different far future civilizations instead of one.
Maybe 1⁄1,000,000 is still a lot, but I’m not sure how to deal with uncertainty here. If I just take the expectation of the fraction of the universe isomorphic to the 21st century, I might end up with some number like 1⁄10,000,000 (because I’m 10% sure of the 1⁄1,000,000 claim) and still conclude the relative importance of the far future is huge but hugely below infinity.