is that future-me might be even less trustable to work towards my values
If whoever revives you deliberately modifies you, you’re powerless to stop it. And if you’re worried that future-you will be different from past-you, well, that’s how life works. A future-you in five years will be different from current-you who is different from the past-you of five years ago.
As to precommitment, I don’t think you have any power to precommit, and I don’t think it’s a good idea either. Imagine if a seven-year-old past-you somehow found a way to precommit the current-you to eating a pound of candy a day, every day...
If whoever revives you deliberately modifies you, you’re powerless to stop it.
True, which is why I’m assuming a certain minimal amount of good-will on the part of whoever revives me. However, just because the reviver has control over the technology allowing my revival doesn’t mean they’re actually technically competent in matters of computer security—I’ve seen too many stories in /r/talesfromtechsupport of computer-company executives being utterly stupid in fundamental ways for that. The main threat I’m trying to hold off is, roughly, “good-natured reviver leaves the default password in my uploaded self’s router unchanged, script-kiddie running automated attacks on the whole internet gains access, script turns me into a sapient bitcoin-miner-equivalent for that hacker’s benefit”. That’s just one example of a large class of threats. No hostile intent by the reviver is required, just a manager-level understanding of computer security.
A future-you in five years will be different from current-you who is different from the past-you of five years ago.
Yes, I know. This is one reason that I am trying not to specify /what/ it is I value in the request-doc, other than 1) instrumental goals that are good for achieving many terminal goals, and 2) valuing my own life both as an instrumental and a terminal goal, which I confidently expect to remain as one of my fundamental values for quite some time to come.
I don’t think you have any power to precommit
I’ll admit that I’m still thinking on this one. Socially, precommitting is mainly useful as a deterrence, and I’m working out whether trying to precommit to work against anyone who modifies my mind without my consent, or any other variation of the tactic, would be worthwhile even if I /can/ follow through.
leaves the default password in my uploaded self’s router unchanged
Imagine a Faerie Queen popping into existence near you and saying: Yo, I have a favour to ask. See, a few centuries ago a guy wished to live in the far future, so I thought why not? it’s gonna be fun! and I put him into stasis. It’s time for him to wake up, but I’m busy so can you please reanimate him? Here is the scroll which will do it, it comes with instructions. Oh, and the guy wrote a lengthy letter before I froze him—he seemed to have been very concerned about his soul being tricked by the Devil—here it is. Cheers, love, I owe you one! …and she pops out of existence again.
You look at the letter (which the Faerie Queen helpfully translated into more or less modern English) and it’s full of details about consecrated ground, and wards against evil eyes, and witch barriers, and holy water, and what kind of magic is allowed anywhere near his body, and whatnot.
Language is a many-splendored thing. Even a simple shopping list contains more information than a mere list of goods; a full letter is exponentially more valuable. As one fictional character once put it, it’s worth looking for the “underneath the underneath”; as another one put it, it’s possible to deduce much of modern civilization from a cigarette butt. If you need a specific reason to pay attention to such a letter spelled out for you, then it could be looked at for clues as to how likely the reanimated fellow would need to spend time in an asylum before being deemed competent to handle his own affairs and released into modern society, or if it’s safe to plan on just letting him crash on my couch for a few days.
And that’s without even touching the minor detail that, if a Faerie Queen is running around, then the Devil may not be far behind her, and the resurrectee’s concerns may, in fact, be completely justified. :)
PS: I like this scenario on multiple levels. Is there any chance I could convince you to submit it to /r/WritingPrompts, or otherwise do more with it on a fictional level? ;)
It looks like you’ve changed the subject a bit—from whether the letter should be taken seriously in the sense of doing what it requests, to whether it should be taken seriously in the sense of reading it carefully.
Oh, I’m sure the letter is interesting, but the question is whether you will actually set up wards and have a supply of holy water on hand before activating the scroll. Though the observation that the existence of the Faerie Queen changes things is a fair point :-)
I don’t know if the scenario is all that exciting, it’s a pretty standard trope, a bit tarted-up. If you want to grab it and run with it, be my guest.
I’m still working out various aspects, details, and suchlike, but so you can at least see what direction my thoughts are going (before I’ve hammered these into good enough shape to include in the revival-request doc), here’s a few paragraphs I’ve been working on:
Sometimes, people will, with the best of intentions, perform acts that turn out to be morally reprehensible. As one historical example in my home country, with the stated justification of improving their lives, a number of First Nations children were sent to residential schools where the efforts to eliminate their culture ranged from corporal punishment for speaking the wrong language to instilling lessons that led the children to believe that Indians were worthless. While there is little I, as an individual, can do to make up for those actions, I can at least try to learn from them, to try to reduce the odds of more tragedies being done with the claim of “it was for their own good”. To that end, I am going to attempt a strategy called “precommitment”. Specifically, I am going to do two things: I am going to precommit to work against the interests of anyone who alters my mind without my consent, even if, after the alteration, I agree with it; and I am going to give my consent in advance to certain sharply-limited alterations, in much the way that a doctor can be given permission to do things to a body that would be criminal without that permission.
I value future states of the universe in which I am pursuing things I value more than I value futures in which I pursue other things. I do not want my mind to be altered in ways that would change what I value, and the least hypocritical way to do that is to discourage all forms of non-consensual mind-alteration. I am willing to agree, that I, myself, should be subject to such forms of discouragement, if I were to attempt such an act. I have been able to think of one, single moral justification for such acts—if there is clear evidence that doing so will reduce the odds of all sapience going permanently extinct—but given how easily people are able to fool themselves, if non-consensually altering someone’s mind is what is required to do that, then accepting responsibility for doing that, including whatever punishments result, would be a small price to pay, and so I am willing to accept such punishments even in this extreme case, in order to discourage the frivolous use of this justification.
While a rigid stance against non-consensual mind-alteration may be morally required in order to allow a peaceful society, there are also certain benefits to allow consensual mind-alteration, in certain cases. Most relevantly, it could be argued that scanning a brain and creating a software emulation of it could be counted as altering it, and it is obviously in my own self-interest to allow that as an option to help me be revived to resume pursuing my values. Thus, I am going to give my consent in advance to “alter” my mind to allow me to continue to exist, with the minimal amount of alteration possible, in two specific circumstances: 1) If such alterations are absolutely required to allow my mind to continue to exist at all, and 2) As part of my volunteering to be a subject for experimental mind-uploading procedures.
Well, if you don’t mind my tweaking your simple and absolute “unable” into something more like “unable, at least without suffering significant negative effects, such as a loss of wealth”, then I am aware of this, yes. Precommitment for something on this scale is a big step, and I’m taking a bit of time to think the idea over, so that I can become reasonably confident that I want to precommit in the first place. If I do decide to do so, then one of the simpler options could be to, say, pre-authorize whatever third-party agents have been nominated to act in my interests and/or on my behalf to use some portion of edited-me’s resources to fund the development of a version of me without the editing.
If you’re unable to protect yourself from being edited, what makes you think your authorizations will have any force or that you will have any resources? And if you actually can “fund the development of a version of me without the editing”, don’t you just want to do it unconditionally?
I think we’re bumping up against some conflicting assumptions. At least at this stage of the drafting process, I’m focusing on scenarios where at least some of the population of the future has at least some reason to pay at least minimal attention to whatever requests I make in the letter. If things are so bad that someone is going to take my frozen brain and use it to create an edited version of my mind without my consent, and there isn’t a neutral third-party around with a duty to try to act in my best interests… then, in such a future, I’m reasonably confident that it doesn’t matter what I put in this request-doc, so I might as well focus my writing on other futures, such as ones in which a neutral third-party advocate might be persuadable to set up a legal instrument funneling some portion of my edited-self’s basic-guaranteed-income towards keeping a copy of the original brain-scan safely archived until a non-edited version of myself can be created from it.
If whoever revives you deliberately modifies you, you’re powerless to stop it. And if you’re worried that future-you will be different from past-you, well, that’s how life works. A future-you in five years will be different from current-you who is different from the past-you of five years ago.
As to precommitment, I don’t think you have any power to precommit, and I don’t think it’s a good idea either. Imagine if a seven-year-old past-you somehow found a way to precommit the current-you to eating a pound of candy a day, every day...
True, which is why I’m assuming a certain minimal amount of good-will on the part of whoever revives me. However, just because the reviver has control over the technology allowing my revival doesn’t mean they’re actually technically competent in matters of computer security—I’ve seen too many stories in /r/talesfromtechsupport of computer-company executives being utterly stupid in fundamental ways for that. The main threat I’m trying to hold off is, roughly, “good-natured reviver leaves the default password in my uploaded self’s router unchanged, script-kiddie running automated attacks on the whole internet gains access, script turns me into a sapient bitcoin-miner-equivalent for that hacker’s benefit”. That’s just one example of a large class of threats. No hostile intent by the reviver is required, just a manager-level understanding of computer security.
Yes, I know. This is one reason that I am trying not to specify /what/ it is I value in the request-doc, other than 1) instrumental goals that are good for achieving many terminal goals, and 2) valuing my own life both as an instrumental and a terminal goal, which I confidently expect to remain as one of my fundamental values for quite some time to come.
I’ll admit that I’m still thinking on this one. Socially, precommitting is mainly useful as a deterrence, and I’m working out whether trying to precommit to work against anyone who modifies my mind without my consent, or any other variation of the tactic, would be worthwhile even if I /can/ follow through.
Imagine a Faerie Queen popping into existence near you and saying: Yo, I have a favour to ask. See, a few centuries ago a guy wished to live in the far future, so I thought why not? it’s gonna be fun! and I put him into stasis. It’s time for him to wake up, but I’m busy so can you please reanimate him? Here is the scroll which will do it, it comes with instructions. Oh, and the guy wrote a lengthy letter before I froze him—he seemed to have been very concerned about his soul being tricked by the Devil—here it is. Cheers, love, I owe you one! …and she pops out of existence again.
You look at the letter (which the Faerie Queen helpfully translated into more or less modern English) and it’s full of details about consecrated ground, and wards against evil eyes, and witch barriers, and holy water, and what kind of magic is allowed anywhere near his body, and whatnot.
How seriously are going to take this letter?
Language is a many-splendored thing. Even a simple shopping list contains more information than a mere list of goods; a full letter is exponentially more valuable. As one fictional character once put it, it’s worth looking for the “underneath the underneath”; as another one put it, it’s possible to deduce much of modern civilization from a cigarette butt. If you need a specific reason to pay attention to such a letter spelled out for you, then it could be looked at for clues as to how likely the reanimated fellow would need to spend time in an asylum before being deemed competent to handle his own affairs and released into modern society, or if it’s safe to plan on just letting him crash on my couch for a few days.
And that’s without even touching the minor detail that, if a Faerie Queen is running around, then the Devil may not be far behind her, and the resurrectee’s concerns may, in fact, be completely justified. :)
PS: I like this scenario on multiple levels. Is there any chance I could convince you to submit it to /r/WritingPrompts, or otherwise do more with it on a fictional level? ;)
It looks like you’ve changed the subject a bit—from whether the letter should be taken seriously in the sense of doing what it requests, to whether it should be taken seriously in the sense of reading it carefully.
Why can’t we have both?
Oh, I’m sure the letter is interesting, but the question is whether you will actually set up wards and have a supply of holy water on hand before activating the scroll. Though the observation that the existence of the Faerie Queen changes things is a fair point :-)
I don’t know if the scenario is all that exciting, it’s a pretty standard trope, a bit tarted-up. If you want to grab it and run with it, be my guest.
I’m still working out various aspects, details, and suchlike, but so you can at least see what direction my thoughts are going (before I’ve hammered these into good enough shape to include in the revival-request doc), here’s a few paragraphs I’ve been working on:
Sometimes, people will, with the best of intentions, perform acts that turn out to be morally reprehensible. As one historical example in my home country, with the stated justification of improving their lives, a number of First Nations children were sent to residential schools where the efforts to eliminate their culture ranged from corporal punishment for speaking the wrong language to instilling lessons that led the children to believe that Indians were worthless. While there is little I, as an individual, can do to make up for those actions, I can at least try to learn from them, to try to reduce the odds of more tragedies being done with the claim of “it was for their own good”. To that end, I am going to attempt a strategy called “precommitment”. Specifically, I am going to do two things: I am going to precommit to work against the interests of anyone who alters my mind without my consent, even if, after the alteration, I agree with it; and I am going to give my consent in advance to certain sharply-limited alterations, in much the way that a doctor can be given permission to do things to a body that would be criminal without that permission.
I value future states of the universe in which I am pursuing things I value more than I value futures in which I pursue other things. I do not want my mind to be altered in ways that would change what I value, and the least hypocritical way to do that is to discourage all forms of non-consensual mind-alteration. I am willing to agree, that I, myself, should be subject to such forms of discouragement, if I were to attempt such an act. I have been able to think of one, single moral justification for such acts—if there is clear evidence that doing so will reduce the odds of all sapience going permanently extinct—but given how easily people are able to fool themselves, if non-consensually altering someone’s mind is what is required to do that, then accepting responsibility for doing that, including whatever punishments result, would be a small price to pay, and so I am willing to accept such punishments even in this extreme case, in order to discourage the frivolous use of this justification.
While a rigid stance against non-consensual mind-alteration may be morally required in order to allow a peaceful society, there are also certain benefits to allow consensual mind-alteration, in certain cases. Most relevantly, it could be argued that scanning a brain and creating a software emulation of it could be counted as altering it, and it is obviously in my own self-interest to allow that as an option to help me be revived to resume pursuing my values. Thus, I am going to give my consent in advance to “alter” my mind to allow me to continue to exist, with the minimal amount of alteration possible, in two specific circumstances: 1) If such alterations are absolutely required to allow my mind to continue to exist at all, and 2) As part of my volunteering to be a subject for experimental mind-uploading procedures.
And how are you going to do this? Precommitment is not a promise, it’s making it so that you are unable to choose in the future.
Well, if you don’t mind my tweaking your simple and absolute “unable” into something more like “unable, at least without suffering significant negative effects, such as a loss of wealth”, then I am aware of this, yes. Precommitment for something on this scale is a big step, and I’m taking a bit of time to think the idea over, so that I can become reasonably confident that I want to precommit in the first place. If I do decide to do so, then one of the simpler options could be to, say, pre-authorize whatever third-party agents have been nominated to act in my interests and/or on my behalf to use some portion of edited-me’s resources to fund the development of a version of me without the editing.
If you’re unable to protect yourself from being edited, what makes you think your authorizations will have any force or that you will have any resources? And if you actually can “fund the development of a version of me without the editing”, don’t you just want to do it unconditionally?
I think we’re bumping up against some conflicting assumptions. At least at this stage of the drafting process, I’m focusing on scenarios where at least some of the population of the future has at least some reason to pay at least minimal attention to whatever requests I make in the letter. If things are so bad that someone is going to take my frozen brain and use it to create an edited version of my mind without my consent, and there isn’t a neutral third-party around with a duty to try to act in my best interests… then, in such a future, I’m reasonably confident that it doesn’t matter what I put in this request-doc, so I might as well focus my writing on other futures, such as ones in which a neutral third-party advocate might be persuadable to set up a legal instrument funneling some portion of my edited-self’s basic-guaranteed-income towards keeping a copy of the original brain-scan safely archived until a non-edited version of myself can be created from it.