Humanity has also run a large number of simulations of how alien worlds evolve. It has determined that of those civilizations which reach the same level of advancement—that know their own utility function and have a strategy for optimizing it—there is an equal probability that they will end up with each of 10 possible utility functions.
No, humanity isn’t going to do that. We’d be exposing ourselves to blackmail from any simulated world whose utility function had certain properties—it’d be summoning a basilisk. For humanity’s utility function in particular, there is an asymmetry such that the potential losses from acausal trade dramatically outweigh the potential gains.
No, humanity isn’t going to do that. We’d be exposing ourselves to blackmail from any simulated world whose utility function had certain properties—it’d be summoning a basilisk. For humanity’s utility function in particular, there is an asymmetry such that the potential losses from acausal trade dramatically outweigh the potential gains.