There is some fact-of-the-matter about “which ontologies are possible to run on real physics [in this universe] or in hypothetical physics [somewhere off in mathematical Tegmark IV land].”
Sticking to ‘real physics as we understand it’, for now, I think it is possible to grade ontologies on how well they perform in the domains that they care about. (where some ontologies get good scores by not caring about as much, and others get good scores by being robust)
There is some fact of the matter about what the actual laws of physics and game theory are, even if no one can compute them.
Meta-ontologies are still ontologies. I think ontologies that are flexible will (longterm) outcompete ontologies that are not.
There are multiple ways to be flexible, which include:
“I have lots of tools available with some hard to pin down heuristics for which tools to use”
“I want to understand the laws of the universe as deeply as possible, and since I have bounded compute, I want to cache those laws into heuristics that are as simple as possible while cleaving as accurately as possible to the true underlying law, with varying tools specifically to tell me when to zoom into the map.”
I expect that in the next 10-100 years, the first set frame will outcompete the second frame in terms of “number of people using that frame to be reasonably successful.” But in the long run and deep future, I expect the second frame to outcompete the first. I’d *might* expect this whether or not we switch from human hardware to silicon uploads. But I definitely expect it once uploads exist.
I have a few different answers for this:
There is some fact-of-the-matter about “which ontologies are possible to run on real physics [in this universe] or in hypothetical physics [somewhere off in mathematical Tegmark IV land].”
Sticking to ‘real physics as we understand it’, for now, I think it is possible to grade ontologies on how well they perform in the domains that they care about. (where some ontologies get good scores by not caring about as much, and others get good scores by being robust)
There is some fact of the matter about what the actual laws of physics and game theory are, even if no one can compute them.
Meta-ontologies are still ontologies. I think ontologies that are flexible will (longterm) outcompete ontologies that are not.
There are multiple ways to be flexible, which include:
“I have lots of tools available with some hard to pin down heuristics for which tools to use”
“I want to understand the laws of the universe as deeply as possible, and since I have bounded compute, I want to cache those laws into heuristics that are as simple as possible while cleaving as accurately as possible to the true underlying law, with varying tools specifically to tell me when to zoom into the map.”
I expect that in the next 10-100 years, the first set frame will outcompete the second frame in terms of “number of people using that frame to be reasonably successful.” But in the long run and deep future, I expect the second frame to outcompete the first. I’d *might* expect this whether or not we switch from human hardware to silicon uploads. But I definitely expect it once uploads exist.