Here’s a way to measure (a proxy of) relative value of different years I just thought (again?); answer the question:
For which income I would you prefer to live in perpetual-2020 over living in perpetual-2021 with a median income? (maybe income is measured by fraction of the world owned multiplied by population size, or some other way) Then you can either chain those answers to go back to older years, or just compare them directly.
There are probably years where even Owning Everything wouldn’t be enough. I prefer to live in perpetual-2021 with a median income over, say, living in perpetual-1900 while Owning Everything. And probably also perpetual-1900 over some other year. Maybe this repeats 1-5 times total in human history. And even over owning everything an infinite amount of times.
So in that sense, we’ve already experienced a few singularities.
Just meant as a fun thought!
Here’s another way to measure (a proxy of) relative value of different years which makes us look much advance (at least for my preferences).
For how many years would you be indifferent between living in perpetual-1900 over living 100 years in perpetual-2020? Here, my answer is much less; assuming finite lives have value in the first place, my answer would probably be less than 2x (so somewhere between 101 and 200 years old) (although I’ve never tried living in 1900).
Although from that perspective, I’ll never experience a singularity: I will never prefer a finite life over an infinite one, no matter how good the finite one and how bad the infinite one.
Here’s a way to measure (a proxy of) relative value of different years I just thought (again?); answer the question:
For which income I would you prefer to live in perpetual-2020 over living in perpetual-2021 with a median income? (maybe income is measured by fraction of the world owned multiplied by population size, or some other way) Then you can either chain those answers to go back to older years, or just compare them directly.
There are probably years where even Owning Everything wouldn’t be enough. I prefer to live in perpetual-2021 with a median income over, say, living in perpetual-1900 while Owning Everything. And probably also perpetual-1900 over some other year. Maybe this repeats 1-5 times total in human history. And even over owning everything an infinite amount of times.
So in that sense, we’ve already experienced a few singularities. Just meant as a fun thought!
Here’s another way to measure (a proxy of) relative value of different years which makes us look much advance (at least for my preferences).
For how many years would you be indifferent between living in perpetual-1900 over living 100 years in perpetual-2020? Here, my answer is much less; assuming finite lives have value in the first place, my answer would probably be less than 2x (so somewhere between 101 and 200 years old) (although I’ve never tried living in 1900).
Although from that perspective, I’ll never experience a singularity: I will never prefer a finite life over an infinite one, no matter how good the finite one and how bad the infinite one.
x-post: https://www.facebook.com/mati.roy.09/posts/10159848043774579