If it is the possibility of large amounts of torture that bothers you, instead of large ratios of torture experience relative to other better experience, then any growing future should bother you, and you should just want to end civilization. But if it is ratios that concern you, then since torture isn’t usually profitable, most em experience won’t be torture. Even if some bad folks being rich means they could afford a lot of torture, that would still be a small fraction of total experience.
Thank you for your reply to this thought experiment professor!
I accept your assertion that the ratio of aggregate suffering to aggregate felicity has been trending in the right direction, and that this trend is likely to continue, even into the Age of Em. That said, the core argument here is that as humans convert into Ems, all present day humans who become Ems have a high probability of eventually subjectively experiencing hell. The fact that other versions of the self, or other Ems are experiencing euphoria will be cold comfort to one so confined.
Under this argument, the suffering of people in the world today can be effectively counterbalanced by offering wireheading to Americans with a lot of disposable income—it doesn’t matter if people are starving, because the number of wireheaded Americans is trending upwards!
An Age of Em is probably on balance a good thing, even though I see the possibility of intense devaluation of human life, and the possibility of some pretty horrific scenarios, I think that mitigating the latter is important, even if the proposed (controversial!) mechanism is inappropriate.
After all, if we didn’t use cars, nobody would be harmed in car accidents.
If it is the possibility of large amounts of torture that bothers you, instead of large ratios of torture experience relative to other better experience, then any growing future should bother you, and you should just want to end civilization. But if it is ratios that concern you, then since torture isn’t usually profitable, most em experience won’t be torture. Even if some bad folks being rich means they could afford a lot of torture, that would still be a small fraction of total experience.
Thank you for your reply to this thought experiment professor!
I accept your assertion that the ratio of aggregate suffering to aggregate felicity has been trending in the right direction, and that this trend is likely to continue, even into the Age of Em. That said, the core argument here is that as humans convert into Ems, all present day humans who become Ems have a high probability of eventually subjectively experiencing hell. The fact that other versions of the self, or other Ems are experiencing euphoria will be cold comfort to one so confined.
Under this argument, the suffering of people in the world today can be effectively counterbalanced by offering wireheading to Americans with a lot of disposable income—it doesn’t matter if people are starving, because the number of wireheaded Americans is trending upwards!
An Age of Em is probably on balance a good thing, even though I see the possibility of intense devaluation of human life, and the possibility of some pretty horrific scenarios, I think that mitigating the latter is important, even if the proposed (controversial!) mechanism is inappropriate.
After all, if we didn’t use cars, nobody would be harmed in car accidents.