In theory, competition looks very bad. Fighting with each other can’t possibly be efficient. Almost always, battles should be done under simulation—so the winner can be determined early—without the damage and waste of a real fight. There’s a huge drive towards cooperation—as explained by Robert Wright.
We’re talking about competition between optimization processes. What would it mean to be a simulation of a computation? I don’t think there is any such distinction. Subjectivity belongs to these processes; and they are the things which must compete. If the winner could be determined by a simpler computation, you would be running that computation instead; and the hypothetical consciousness that we were talking about would be that computation instead.
Phil_Goetz comments on Beyond the Reach of God