“Most human minds won’t find that argument convincing.”
If this discussion occured in Europe 600 years ago, you could use that as a reply to any argument that Genesis is wrong or that the God of the Old Testament does not exist. I would have no good reply more accessible than a very long and tedious textbook on such topics as celestial mechanics, geology, natural selection and the Big Bang, which of course most human minds in Europe 600 years ago would not have had the patience to try to understand.
So, in a matter of this import, I suggest not being satisfied with an appeal to what most human minds think.
Remember that we live under a political system in which anyone whose career is enhanced by evidence that he or she can influence voters has an incentive to promote the central tenent of America’s civic religion (now established or influential over the entire globe): that decisions or judgements arrived at by majorities are often or always correct. The incentive exists because the more entrenched the central tenet becomes, the more people will try to use their “political rights” (to vote, to lobby the government) to solve their problems, which increases the importance of and the demand for those who can influence voters. Your awareness of that constant chorus from people who are pursuing their own self-interest (aided by people whose motivation is the essentially that of religious zealots) should cause you to decrease your confidence in arguments that begin with “most human minds”.
Now let us consider why most human minds won’t find my argument convincing. It is because of their tendency to approach everything from an attitude of “What is in it for me?” A good example is Robin Hanson’s paper on the possibility that we are living in a simulation. If you think you are living in a simulation, writes Robin, then make your behavior more interesting so that the simulator will devote more computational resources to simulating you. That is the sort of answer you get when you ask, “What is in it for me?” If instead you ask, “What is my responsibility in this situation?” you get a different answer—at least I do—namely, I would try to help the simulator. Absent any other information about the simulator or the simulation besides a suspicion I am living in a simulation, I would go about my life as if the suspicion that I am living in a simulation had not occurred to me because that is the course of action that maximizes the predictive power the simulator derives from the simulation—prediction being the most important purpose I can imagine for running a simulation.
When we ask of the prospect of an engineered explosion of intelligence, “What is in it for me?” then the answer naturally tends towards things like living a billion years and all the fun we could have. But I try to avoid asking that question because it might distract me from what I consider the important question, which is, “How can I help?”
Note that we all have a natural human desire to help another human—in certain situations—because that helped our ancestors to win friends and maximize reproductive fitness. When I ask, “How can I help?” my interest is not in helping the humans—the humans will probably be obsoleted by the explosion of engineered intelligence—but rather in helping along the most important process I can identify. I believe that importance entails persisting indefinitely, which leads to my interest in indefinitely long chains of cause and effect.
But in this time before the intelligence explosion, when humans are not yet obsolete, helping other humans is a very potent means of maximizing the “creativity” (the ability to get things done) of the parts of reality under my control, which in my way of thinking is the purpose of life. So for now I try to help other humans, particularly those whose creative potential is high.
“Most human minds won’t find that argument convincing.”
If this discussion occured in Europe 600 years ago, you could use that as a reply to any argument that Genesis is wrong or that the God of the Old Testament does not exist. I would have no good reply more accessible than a very long and tedious textbook on such topics as celestial mechanics, geology, natural selection and the Big Bang, which of course most human minds in Europe 600 years ago would not have had the patience to try to understand.
So, in a matter of this import, I suggest not being satisfied with an appeal to what most human minds think.
Remember that we live under a political system in which anyone whose career is enhanced by evidence that he or she can influence voters has an incentive to promote the central tenent of America’s civic religion (now established or influential over the entire globe): that decisions or judgements arrived at by majorities are often or always correct. The incentive exists because the more entrenched the central tenet becomes, the more people will try to use their “political rights” (to vote, to lobby the government) to solve their problems, which increases the importance of and the demand for those who can influence voters. Your awareness of that constant chorus from people who are pursuing their own self-interest (aided by people whose motivation is the essentially that of religious zealots) should cause you to decrease your confidence in arguments that begin with “most human minds”.
Now let us consider why most human minds won’t find my argument convincing. It is because of their tendency to approach everything from an attitude of “What is in it for me?” A good example is Robin Hanson’s paper on the possibility that we are living in a simulation. If you think you are living in a simulation, writes Robin, then make your behavior more interesting so that the simulator will devote more computational resources to simulating you. That is the sort of answer you get when you ask, “What is in it for me?” If instead you ask, “What is my responsibility in this situation?” you get a different answer—at least I do—namely, I would try to help the simulator. Absent any other information about the simulator or the simulation besides a suspicion I am living in a simulation, I would go about my life as if the suspicion that I am living in a simulation had not occurred to me because that is the course of action that maximizes the predictive power the simulator derives from the simulation—prediction being the most important purpose I can imagine for running a simulation.
When we ask of the prospect of an engineered explosion of intelligence, “What is in it for me?” then the answer naturally tends towards things like living a billion years and all the fun we could have. But I try to avoid asking that question because it might distract me from what I consider the important question, which is, “How can I help?”
Note that we all have a natural human desire to help another human—in certain situations—because that helped our ancestors to win friends and maximize reproductive fitness. When I ask, “How can I help?” my interest is not in helping the humans—the humans will probably be obsoleted by the explosion of engineered intelligence—but rather in helping along the most important process I can identify. I believe that importance entails persisting indefinitely, which leads to my interest in indefinitely long chains of cause and effect.
But in this time before the intelligence explosion, when humans are not yet obsolete, helping other humans is a very potent means of maximizing the “creativity” (the ability to get things done) of the parts of reality under my control, which in my way of thinking is the purpose of life. So for now I try to help other humans, particularly those whose creative potential is high.