I believe this echos out my thoughts perfectly, I might quote it in full if I ever do get around to reviving that draft.
The bit about “perfect” as not giving slack for development, I think, could be used even in the single individual scenario if you assume any given “ideal” action as lower chance of discovering something potential useful than a “mistake”. I.e. adding:
Actions have unintended and unknown consequences that reveal an unknown landscape of possibilities
Actions have some % chance of being “optimal”, but one can never be 100% certain they are so, just weigh them as having a higher or lower chance of being so
“optimal” is a shifting goal-post and every action will potentially shift it
I think the “tinkerer” example is interesting, but even that assumes “optimal” to be goals dictates by natural-selection, and as per the sperm bank example, nobody care about those goals per-say, their subconscious machinery and the society they live in “cares”. So maybe a complementary individual-focused example would be a world in which inactivity is equivalent to the happiest state possible (i.e. optimal for the individual) or at least some form of action that does not lend to itself or something similar to it’s host being propagated through time.
I believe this echos out my thoughts perfectly, I might quote it in full if I ever do get around to reviving that draft.
The bit about “perfect” as not giving slack for development, I think, could be used even in the single individual scenario if you assume any given “ideal” action as lower chance of discovering something potential useful than a “mistake”. I.e. adding:
Actions have unintended and unknown consequences that reveal an unknown landscape of possibilities
Actions have some % chance of being “optimal”, but one can never be 100% certain they are so, just weigh them as having a higher or lower chance of being so
“optimal” is a shifting goal-post and every action will potentially shift it
I think the “tinkerer” example is interesting, but even that assumes “optimal” to be goals dictates by natural-selection, and as per the sperm bank example, nobody care about those goals per-say, their subconscious machinery and the society they live in “cares”. So maybe a complementary individual-focused example would be a world in which inactivity is equivalent to the happiest state possible (i.e. optimal for the individual) or at least some form of action that does not lend to itself or something similar to it’s host being propagated through time.