Except that’s a false dichotomy (between spending energy to “uplift” them or dealing treacherously with them). All it takes to not be a monster who obtains a stranglehold over all the watering holes in the desert is a sense of ethics that holds you to the somewhat reasonably low bar of “don’t be a monster”. The scope sensitivity or lack thereof of the other party is in some sense irrelevant.
If you think you have a clean resolution to the problem, please spell it out more explicitly. We’re talking about a situation where a scope insensitive value system and scope sensitive value system make a free trade in which both sides gain by their own lights. Can you spell out why you classify this as treachery? What is the key property that this shares with more paradigm examples of treachery (e.g. stealing, lying, etc)?
The problem here is that you are dealing with survival necessities rather than trade goods. The outcome of this trade, if both sides honour the agreement, is that the scope insensitive humans die and their society is extinguished. The analogous situation here is that you know there will be a drought in say 10 years. The people of the nearby village are “scope insensitive”, they don’t know the drought is coming. Clearly the moral thing to do if you place any value on their lives is to talk to them, clear the information gap, and share access to resources. Failing that, you can prepare for the eventuality that they do realise the drought is happening and intervene to help them at that point.
Instead you propose exploiting their ignorance to buy up access to the local rivers and reservoirs. The implication here is that you are leaving them to die, or at least putting them at your mercy, by exploiting their lack of information. What’s more, the process by which you do this turns a common good (the stars, the water) into a private good, such that when they realise the trouble they have no way out. If your plan succeeds, when their stars run out they will curse you and die in the dark. It is a very slow but calculated form of murder.
By the way, the easy resolution is to not buy up all the stars. If they’re truly scope insensitive they won’t be competing until after the singularity/uplift anyways, and then you can equitably distribute the damn resources.
As a side note: I think I fell for rage bait. This feels calculated to make me angry, and I don’t like it.
the scope insensitive humans die and their society is extinguished
Ah, your reaction makes more sense given you think this is the proposal. But it’s not the proposal. The proposal is that the scope-insensitive values flourish on Earth, and the scope-sensitive values flourish in the remaining cosmos.
As a toy example, imagine a distant planet with two species of alien: paperclip-maximisers and teacup-protectors. If you offer a lottery to the paperclip-maximisers, they will choose the lottery with the highest expected number of paperclips. If you offer a lottery to the teacup-satisfiers, they will choose the lottery with the highest chance of preserving their holy relic, which is a particular teacup.
The paperclip-maximisers and the teacup-protectors both own property on the planet. They negotiate the following deal: the paperclip-maximisers will colonise the cosmos, but leave the teacup-protectors a small sphere around their home planet (e.g. 100 light-years across). Moreover, the paperclip-maximisers promise not to do anything that risks their teacup, e.g. choosing a lottery that doubles the size of the universe with 60% chance and destroys the universe with 40% chance.
Do you have intuitions that the paperclip-maximisers are exploiting the teacup-protectors in this deal?
Do you think instead that the paperclip-maximisers should fill the universe with half paperclips and half teacups?
I think this scenario is a better analogy than the scenario with the drought. In the drought scenario, there is an object fact which the nearby villagers are ignorant of, and they would act differently if they knew this fact. But I don’t think scope-sensitivity is a fact like “there will be a drought in 10 years”. Rather, scope-sensitivity is a property of a utility function (or a value system, more generally).
Except that’s a false dichotomy (between spending energy to “uplift” them or dealing treacherously with them). All it takes to not be a monster who obtains a stranglehold over all the watering holes in the desert is a sense of ethics that holds you to the somewhat reasonably low bar of “don’t be a monster”. The scope sensitivity or lack thereof of the other party is in some sense irrelevant.
From who’s perspective, exactly?
If you think you have a clean resolution to the problem, please spell it out more explicitly. We’re talking about a situation where a scope insensitive value system and scope sensitive value system make a free trade in which both sides gain by their own lights. Can you spell out why you classify this as treachery? What is the key property that this shares with more paradigm examples of treachery (e.g. stealing, lying, etc)?
The problem here is that you are dealing with survival necessities rather than trade goods. The outcome of this trade, if both sides honour the agreement, is that the scope insensitive humans die and their society is extinguished. The analogous situation here is that you know there will be a drought in say 10 years. The people of the nearby village are “scope insensitive”, they don’t know the drought is coming. Clearly the moral thing to do if you place any value on their lives is to talk to them, clear the information gap, and share access to resources. Failing that, you can prepare for the eventuality that they do realise the drought is happening and intervene to help them at that point.
Instead you propose exploiting their ignorance to buy up access to the local rivers and reservoirs. The implication here is that you are leaving them to die, or at least putting them at your mercy, by exploiting their lack of information. What’s more, the process by which you do this turns a common good (the stars, the water) into a private good, such that when they realise the trouble they have no way out. If your plan succeeds, when their stars run out they will curse you and die in the dark. It is a very slow but calculated form of murder.
By the way, the easy resolution is to not buy up all the stars. If they’re truly scope insensitive they won’t be competing until after the singularity/uplift anyways, and then you can equitably distribute the damn resources.
As a side note: I think I fell for rage bait. This feels calculated to make me angry, and I don’t like it.
Ah, your reaction makes more sense given you think this is the proposal. But it’s not the proposal. The proposal is that the scope-insensitive values flourish on Earth, and the scope-sensitive values flourish in the remaining cosmos.
As a toy example, imagine a distant planet with two species of alien: paperclip-maximisers and teacup-protectors. If you offer a lottery to the paperclip-maximisers, they will choose the lottery with the highest expected number of paperclips. If you offer a lottery to the teacup-satisfiers, they will choose the lottery with the highest chance of preserving their holy relic, which is a particular teacup.
The paperclip-maximisers and the teacup-protectors both own property on the planet. They negotiate the following deal: the paperclip-maximisers will colonise the cosmos, but leave the teacup-protectors a small sphere around their home planet (e.g. 100 light-years across). Moreover, the paperclip-maximisers promise not to do anything that risks their teacup, e.g. choosing a lottery that doubles the size of the universe with 60% chance and destroys the universe with 40% chance.
Do you have intuitions that the paperclip-maximisers are exploiting the teacup-protectors in this deal?
Do you think instead that the paperclip-maximisers should fill the universe with half paperclips and half teacups?
I think this scenario is a better analogy than the scenario with the drought. In the drought scenario, there is an object fact which the nearby villagers are ignorant of, and they would act differently if they knew this fact. But I don’t think scope-sensitivity is a fact like “there will be a drought in 10 years”. Rather, scope-sensitivity is a property of a utility function (or a value system, more generally).