Moreover, I suspect that it would be good (in expectation) for humans to encounter aliens someday, even though this means that we’ll control a smaller universe-shard.
I suspect this would be a genuinely better outcome than us being alone, and would make the future more awesome by human standards.
I don’t get this. If encountering aliens is so great, we could make it happen, even in an empty universe, by simulating evolution (and the development of civilization up to super-intelligence) and then being friends and partners with those alien civilizations, if we want to. [Note that this is in contrast to creating a species intentionally, according to our own spec, which maybe (or maybe not!) leaves out something cool about meeting naturally-evolved aliens.]
Maybe we give those aliens a sizeable fraction of the cosmic endowment to do what they think is good with. (By my lights, I think we do owe them something for creating them, even if we don’t like their values very much.)
This seems like a strictly better scenario than encountering aliens?
We get the benefits of exploring a truly alien culture,
but without having to give up a big share of the cosmic endowment (~ half, or much more than half if there are a lot of aliens),
and we can simulate many aliens, and select the ones we like best, instead going with the luck of the draw.
We have strictly more options in this situation than in the situation where it turned out to be an empty universe. We would prefer to have aliens + a big universe shard, instead of aliens + a smaller universe shard, right?
Encountering evolved aliens, instead of making our own, means that we’re hanging out with and trading with whoever evolution happened to spit out, rather than the best possible aliens, given our sense of life.
For a non-ascended species, it might very well be that being forced into a situation that you wouldn’t have chosen is actually a secret boon, because what you want is not the same as what is best for you. But if we’re positing that being forced by the situation into doing something that you wouldn’t otherwise have chosen is actually better...that seems to suggest that civilization has failed in a very deep way and we’re not actually optimizing Fun very well at all.
Concretely, wouldn’t be better if instead of the ant-people who would murder us all if they could, we shared the universe with something equally alien but much ore the sort of thing that we like?
Or to say it better: If we control the whole reachable universe, we can decide the relative proportions of human-descended minds, human-descended-designed minds, and luck-of-the-draw evolved alien minds. And we can balance that proportion to be optimal for cosmopolitan value and Fun.
Isn’t that obviously better than having most of that division determined by luck, and forced upon us, regardless of what is optimal?
Do we care that the tiger is a violent dangerous predator? Is that part of what it means to be a tiger? If we remove the predator from the tiger, is he still a tiger?
I don’t get this. If encountering aliens is so great, we could make it happen, even in an empty universe, by simulating evolution (and the development of civilization up to super-intelligence) and then being friends and partners with those alien civilizations, if we want to. [Note that this is in contrast to creating a species intentionally, according to our own spec, which maybe (or maybe not!) leaves out something cool about meeting naturally-evolved aliens.]
Maybe we give those aliens a sizeable fraction of the cosmic endowment to do what they think is good with. (By my lights, I think we do owe them something for creating them, even if we don’t like their values very much.)
This seems like a strictly better scenario than encountering aliens?
We get the benefits of exploring a truly alien culture,
but without having to give up a big share of the cosmic endowment (~ half, or much more than half if there are a lot of aliens),
and we can simulate many aliens, and select the ones we like best, instead going with the luck of the draw.
We have strictly more options in this situation than in the situation where it turned out to be an empty universe. We would prefer to have aliens + a big universe shard, instead of aliens + a smaller universe shard, right?
Encountering evolved aliens, instead of making our own, means that we’re hanging out with and trading with whoever evolution happened to spit out, rather than the best possible aliens, given our sense of life.
For a non-ascended species, it might very well be that being forced into a situation that you wouldn’t have chosen is actually a secret boon, because what you want is not the same as what is best for you. But if we’re positing that being forced by the situation into doing something that you wouldn’t otherwise have chosen is actually better...that seems to suggest that civilization has failed in a very deep way and we’re not actually optimizing Fun very well at all.
Concretely, wouldn’t be better if instead of the ant-people who would murder us all if they could, we shared the universe with something equally alien but much ore the sort of thing that we like?
Or to say it better: If we control the whole reachable universe, we can decide the relative proportions of human-descended minds, human-descended-designed minds, and luck-of-the-draw evolved alien minds. And we can balance that proportion to be optimal for cosmopolitan value and Fun.
Isn’t that obviously better than having most of that division determined by luck, and forced upon us, regardless of what is optimal?
Which is better, a tiger or a designer housecat?
Shouldn’t the question be “which is better, a tiger or a designer tiger?”?
Do we care that the tiger is a violent dangerous predator? Is that part of what it means to be a tiger? If we remove the predator from the tiger, is he still a tiger?
Yeah, but that’s a crux. Tigers might be awesome, but they’re not optimal.
Sounds right to me! I dunno Nate’s view on this.