So, now I’m curious… if tomorrow you discovered some new thing X you’d never previously experienced, and it turned out that seeing X made you feel happier than anything else (including seeing happy things and intricate works of culture), would you immediately prefer to fill Universes with X?
I should clarify that by “fill” I don’t mean “tile.” I’m operating from the point of view where my species’ preferences, let alone my preferences, fill less than 1 part in 100,000 of the resource-rich volume of known space, let alone theoretically available space. if that ever changed, I’d have to think carefully about what things were worth doing on a galactic scale. It’s like the difference between decorating your bedroom and laying out the city streets for downtown—if you like puce, that’s a good enough reason to paint your bedroom puce, but you should probably think carefully before you go influencing large or public areas.
I would also wonder if some new thing made me incredibly happy if perhaps it was designed to do that by someone or something that isn’t very friendly toward me. I would suspect a trap. I’d want to take appropriate precautions to rule out that possibility.
With those two disclaimers, though, yes. If I discovered fnord tomorrow and fnord made me indescribably happy, then I’d suddenly want to put a few billion fnords in the Sirius Sector.
I’m operating from the point of view where my species’ preferences, let alone my preferences, fill less than 1 part in 100,000 of the resource-rich volume of known space, let alone theoretically available space.
Do you think the preferences of your species matter more than preferences of some other species, e.g. intelligent aliens? I think that couldn’t be justified. I’m currently working on a LW article about that.
I haven’t thought much about it! I look forward to reading your article.
My point above was simply that even if my whole species acted like me, there would still be plenty of room left in the Universe for a diversity of goods. Barring a truly epic FOOM, the things humans do in the near future aren’t going to directly starve other civilizations out of a chance to get the things they want. That makes me feel better about going after the things I want.
(nods) Makes sense. If I offered to, and had the ability to, alter your brain so that something that already existed in vast quantities—say, hydrogen atoms—made you indescribably happy, and you had taken appropriate precautions to rule out the possibility that I wasn’t very friendly towards you and that this wasn’t a trap, would you agree?
So, now I’m curious… if tomorrow you discovered some new thing X you’d never previously experienced, and it turned out that seeing X made you feel happier than anything else (including seeing happy things and intricate works of culture), would you immediately prefer to fill Universes with X?
I should clarify that by “fill” I don’t mean “tile.” I’m operating from the point of view where my species’ preferences, let alone my preferences, fill less than 1 part in 100,000 of the resource-rich volume of known space, let alone theoretically available space. if that ever changed, I’d have to think carefully about what things were worth doing on a galactic scale. It’s like the difference between decorating your bedroom and laying out the city streets for downtown—if you like puce, that’s a good enough reason to paint your bedroom puce, but you should probably think carefully before you go influencing large or public areas.
I would also wonder if some new thing made me incredibly happy if perhaps it was designed to do that by someone or something that isn’t very friendly toward me. I would suspect a trap. I’d want to take appropriate precautions to rule out that possibility.
With those two disclaimers, though, yes. If I discovered fnord tomorrow and fnord made me indescribably happy, then I’d suddenly want to put a few billion fnords in the Sirius Sector.
Do you think the preferences of your species matter more than preferences of some other species, e.g. intelligent aliens? I think that couldn’t be justified. I’m currently working on a LW article about that.
I haven’t thought much about it! I look forward to reading your article.
My point above was simply that even if my whole species acted like me, there would still be plenty of room left in the Universe for a diversity of goods. Barring a truly epic FOOM, the things humans do in the near future aren’t going to directly starve other civilizations out of a chance to get the things they want. That makes me feel better about going after the things I want.
(nods) Makes sense.
If I offered to, and had the ability to, alter your brain so that something that already existed in vast quantities—say, hydrogen atoms—made you indescribably happy, and you had taken appropriate precautions to rule out the possibility that I wasn’t very friendly towards you and that this wasn’t a trap, would you agree?
Sure! That sounds great. Thank you. :-)