Regarding Robin Hanson’s proposed hypercompetitive Malthusian world:
Hanson imagines lots of small ems—on the grounds that coordination is hard. I am much more inclined to expect large scale structure and governance—in which case the level of competition between the agents can be configured to be whatever the government decrees.
It is certainly true that there will be rapid reproduction of some heritable elements in the future. Today we have artificial reproducing systems of various kinds. One type is memes. Another type is companies. They are both potentially long lived and often not too many people mourn their passing. We will probably be able to set things up so that the things that we care about are not the same things as the ones that must die. Today are dark ages in that respect—because dead brains are like burned libraries. In the future, minds will be able to be backed up—so geniunely valuable things are less likely to get lost.
Regarding Robin Hanson’s proposed hypercompetitive Malthusian world:
Hanson imagines lots of small ems—on the grounds that coordination is hard. I am much more inclined to expect large scale structure and governance—in which case the level of competition between the agents can be configured to be whatever the government decrees.
It is certainly true that there will be rapid reproduction of some heritable elements in the future. Today we have artificial reproducing systems of various kinds. One type is memes. Another type is companies. They are both potentially long lived and often not too many people mourn their passing. We will probably be able to set things up so that the things that we care about are not the same things as the ones that must die. Today are dark ages in that respect—because dead brains are like burned libraries. In the future, minds will be able to be backed up—so geniunely valuable things are less likely to get lost.
I don’t often agree with you, but you just convinced me we’re on the same side.