Though I enjoyed your commentary, I think I have failed on two accounts. First, I was not clear enough about MaxipEvo.
By MaxipEvo I mean the values that are likely to arise in any evolved system, regardless of its peculiarities like oxigen density, planet size and radiation intake. Things like what Nietzsche would call “will to power”, economists would call “homo economicus” and naive biologists would call “selfish individuals”. These are universal, as is symmetry. Anything that evolves would benefit from symmetry and from wanting to capture more resources.
Now let’s do the math here: If the entities outside our Hubble volume outnumber the entities inside it by near infinity to one, or infinity to one, then even a small preference they have about our world should be more important than strong preferences of ours. So if anything is in the intersection of “commonly evolvable in any complex system with valuable beings” and “whose intentionality is about something in our tiny corner of the Cosmos” then this should be a major priority for us. This would lead us to praise will to power, selfishness and symmetry.
I consider this to be a reductio ad absurdum, in that if those are the values we ought to preserve according to a line of reasoning, the line of reasoning is wrong.
The main paper to keep in mind here is “The Future of Human Evolution” for me the hallmark of Bostrom’s brilliance. One of the points he makes is that display, and flamboyant display (of the kind Robin Hanson frequently makes fun of) are both what most matters to us. Dance, ritual, culture, sui generis, personality, uniqueness etc…
If any ethical argument makes a case against these, and pro things that evolution carves into any self-replicating system with a brain, this argument seems to be flawed in my view.
If the entities outside our Hubble volume outnumber the entities inside it by near infinity to one, or infinity to one, then even a small preference they have about our world should be more important than strong preferences of ours.
This is what I mentioned in the “Tyranny of the aliens?” section. However, it’s not clear that human-style values are that rare. We should expect ourselves to be in a typical civilization, and certain “ethical” principles like not killing others, not causing needless suffering, reciprocal altruism, etc. should tend to emerge repeatedly. The fact that it happened on Earth seems to suggest the odds are not 1/infinity of it happening in general.
Very particular spandrels like dance and personality quirks are more rare, yes. But regarding the conclusion that these matter less than we thought, one man’s modus tollens is another’s modus ponens. After all, wouldn’t we prefer it if aliens valued what we cared about rather than being purely selfish to their own idiosyncrasies?
In any case, maybe it’s common for civilizations to value letting other civilizations do what they value. The situation is not really different from that of an individual within society from a utilitarian standpoint. We let people do their own weird artwork or creative endeavors even if nobody else cares.
The second account on which I was not clear is how much my points about fine-grainedness are related to Yuskowsky’s reflections about “reference class tennis”. There is arbitraryness in defining classes. And if you carve classes differently to find out which classes people care about, you find yourself with arbitrary options. When I care about the art in Far Venus, I’m not sure I care about “any art” “any art resembling ours” “any art not resembling hip hop and gore” or “only things that are isomorphic to symphonies”
Likewise I don’t know this about them, Venusians, and this makes a big difference on whether I should create more generic forms of art here, or more fine grained ones.
I wouldn’t use reference classes at all. I’d just ask, “How many other civilizations care about this particular proposed piece of artwork?” I personally don’t care intrinsically about art, but if you asked an art enthusiast, I bet she would say “I care about Venusian masterpiece X” for lots of specific values of X that they might create.
The idea of caring specifically about human quirks rather than alien quirks seems akin to ethnocentrism, though I can see the concern about becoming too broad such that what you care about becomes diluted. I expect people’s horizons will become more cosmopolitan on this question over time, just as has been the historical trend. The march of multiculturalism may one day go intergalactic.
Think about multiverse utilitarianism as a normative force. If it is to be taken seriously, it’s main consequence will be making things more normal. More evolvable. Less peculiar and unique.
I don’t mind human quirks in particular that much (including art) when I’m wearing the “thinking about multiverses hat”. My point is that an ethical MultiWorld should be such that when we value the difference between Burning Man, Buddhist Funerals, Godel’s theorems and Axl Rose’s temper are valued in their difference. What matters about those artifacts of cultural crafstsmanship is not that which a bumblebee or an equidna might have created (will to power, hunger, eagerness to reproduce, symmetry) What matters involves the difference itself.
One of the things that make those things awesome is their divergence.
If Far Venus has equivalent diversity, I’m happy for them. I don’t want to value what they share with us (being constrained by some physics, by logic, by evolution, and by the sine qua non conditions for intelligent life, whichever they are).
Ah, I see. The value of diversity is plausibly convergent, because most organisms will need boredom and novelty-seeking. If many civilizations value diversity, they would each be happy to let each other do their own diverse artwork. So this “force” might not lead to homogenization.
Though I enjoyed your commentary, I think I have failed on two accounts. First, I was not clear enough about MaxipEvo.
By MaxipEvo I mean the values that are likely to arise in any evolved system, regardless of its peculiarities like oxigen density, planet size and radiation intake. Things like what Nietzsche would call “will to power”, economists would call “homo economicus” and naive biologists would call “selfish individuals”.
These are universal, as is symmetry. Anything that evolves would benefit from symmetry and from wanting to capture more resources.
Now let’s do the math here: If the entities outside our Hubble volume outnumber the entities inside it by near infinity to one, or infinity to one, then even a small preference they have about our world should be more important than strong preferences of ours. So if anything is in the intersection of “commonly evolvable in any complex system with valuable beings” and “whose intentionality is about something in our tiny corner of the Cosmos” then this should be a major priority for us. This would lead us to praise will to power, selfishness and symmetry.
I consider this to be a reductio ad absurdum, in that if those are the values we ought to preserve according to a line of reasoning, the line of reasoning is wrong.
The main paper to keep in mind here is “The Future of Human Evolution” for me the hallmark of Bostrom’s brilliance. One of the points he makes is that display, and flamboyant display (of the kind Robin Hanson frequently makes fun of) are both what most matters to us. Dance, ritual, culture, sui generis, personality, uniqueness etc…
If any ethical argument makes a case against these, and pro things that evolution carves into any self-replicating system with a brain, this argument seems to be flawed in my view.
This is what I mentioned in the “Tyranny of the aliens?” section. However, it’s not clear that human-style values are that rare. We should expect ourselves to be in a typical civilization, and certain “ethical” principles like not killing others, not causing needless suffering, reciprocal altruism, etc. should tend to emerge repeatedly. The fact that it happened on Earth seems to suggest the odds are not 1/infinity of it happening in general.
Very particular spandrels like dance and personality quirks are more rare, yes. But regarding the conclusion that these matter less than we thought, one man’s modus tollens is another’s modus ponens. After all, wouldn’t we prefer it if aliens valued what we cared about rather than being purely selfish to their own idiosyncrasies?
In any case, maybe it’s common for civilizations to value letting other civilizations do what they value. The situation is not really different from that of an individual within society from a utilitarian standpoint. We let people do their own weird artwork or creative endeavors even if nobody else cares.
The second account on which I was not clear is how much my points about fine-grainedness are related to Yuskowsky’s reflections about “reference class tennis”. There is arbitraryness in defining classes. And if you carve classes differently to find out which classes people care about, you find yourself with arbitrary options. When I care about the art in Far Venus, I’m not sure I care about “any art” “any art resembling ours” “any art not resembling hip hop and gore” or “only things that are isomorphic to symphonies”
Likewise I don’t know this about them, Venusians, and this makes a big difference on whether I should create more generic forms of art here, or more fine grained ones.
I wouldn’t use reference classes at all. I’d just ask, “How many other civilizations care about this particular proposed piece of artwork?” I personally don’t care intrinsically about art, but if you asked an art enthusiast, I bet she would say “I care about Venusian masterpiece X” for lots of specific values of X that they might create.
The idea of caring specifically about human quirks rather than alien quirks seems akin to ethnocentrism, though I can see the concern about becoming too broad such that what you care about becomes diluted. I expect people’s horizons will become more cosmopolitan on this question over time, just as has been the historical trend. The march of multiculturalism may one day go intergalactic.
Think about multiverse utilitarianism as a normative force. If it is to be taken seriously, it’s main consequence will be making things more normal. More evolvable. Less peculiar and unique.
I don’t mind human quirks in particular that much (including art) when I’m wearing the “thinking about multiverses hat”. My point is that an ethical MultiWorld should be such that when we value the difference between Burning Man, Buddhist Funerals, Godel’s theorems and Axl Rose’s temper are valued in their difference. What matters about those artifacts of cultural crafstsmanship is not that which a bumblebee or an equidna might have created (will to power, hunger, eagerness to reproduce, symmetry) What matters involves the difference itself. One of the things that make those things awesome is their divergence.
If Far Venus has equivalent diversity, I’m happy for them. I don’t want to value what they share with us (being constrained by some physics, by logic, by evolution, and by the sine qua non conditions for intelligent life, whichever they are).
Ah, I see. The value of diversity is plausibly convergent, because most organisms will need boredom and novelty-seeking. If many civilizations value diversity, they would each be happy to let each other do their own diverse artwork. So this “force” might not lead to homogenization.