First I was like, “oh no, another one claims that faith could be rational without showing why it is”. Then I parsed the simulation part and clicked “upvote” because it showed me a new and scary possibility.
In the year 2020, cousin_it downloads some software for running predictor sims. He wants to optimize his future conduct—test which particular minor mind-hack would be the most beneficial, given his individual psychological makeup. So he runs many ancestor sims of himself poisoned with different irrational mind-hacks to see who wins in the past. I am one such sim, poisoned in an unknown manner; what should I do?
Times like these I regret that I can’t write good sci-fi in English because it’s not my first language.
Writing quality fiction takes more facility with language than than writing quality nonfiction (like posts) does. (Not that nativeness is an absolute barrier: English was Nabokov’s third language, IIRC.)
A cynic could observe that readers of genre fiction are comparatively less demanding in this respect, though.
Very off topic, but I’ve actually often wondered why there don’t seem to be any non-native speakers writing commercial fiction in English, given how massively larger the English-speaking market is compared to that of a lot of the smaller European languages. Nabokov is literally the only example I can think of.
Well, fiction writing generally isn’t the sort of thing one enters into for the wonderful market. You do it because you love it and are somehow good enough at it that it can pay the bills. Probably you write your first novel in your spare time with very low expectations of it ever being published.
So why write in anything but your favorite language? And while, proficiency-wise, people like Nabokov and Conrad exist, chances are that you aren’t one of them. (That said, there are probably more non-native writers of note than you think. How many of my favorite authors have red hair? I have no idea.)
Thing is, I read almost no fiction in Finnish and quite a lot in English. There isn’t much of a tradition of speculative fiction in Finnish that isn’t just copying stuff already done in English. So if I were to write a SF or a fantasy story, I’d seriously consider whether I could do it in English, because for me those kinds of stories are written in English and then maybe poorly translated into Finnish.
I’m sure few people match up to Nabokov or Conrad (whose non-nativeness I didn’t know about), but I find it odd that I don’t know of any contemporary writers who are even trying to write in English without being native speakers. I’m sure there are ones I don’t know about, so any examples of currently active published non-native English fiction writers are welcome.
An opportunity for what? Genre literature is already translated into Finnish, and the publishers with something that isn’t Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings are mostly able to stick around, but probably aren’t making big profits. Finnish-written SF or fantasy is mostly crap and sinks without a trace. A good indication of the general level of quality is that for the first 20 years of the Atorox prize for the best Finnish SF short story, two outlier authors won ten of the 20 awards. No one has even been able to earn a full-time living writing SF in Finnish, not to mention growing rich.
Of course there’s nothing preventing someone from writing stuff on par with Ted Chiang and Jeff VanderMeer in Finnish, but why bother? The book could be a cult classic but probably not a mainstream hit, and there aren’t enough non-mainstream Finnish-speaking buyers for a book to earn someone a living.
I don’t even know who buys all the translated Finnish SF books. I’ve read a bunch of those from the library, but almost all of the books I’ve bought have been in English. Why bother with translations that are both more expensive than the original paperbacks and have clunkier language?
In the year 2020, cousin_it downloads some software for running predictor sims. He wants to optimize his future conduct -test which particular minor mind-hack would be the most beneficial, given his individual psychological makeup. So he runs many ancestor sims of himself poisoned with different irrational mind-hacks to see who wins in the past. I am one such sim, poisoned in an unknown manner; what should I do?
I have precommitted as strongly as I can to never run simulations of myself which are worse off than the version the simulation was based on. This might fall out as a consequence of UDT, but with a time-varying utility function I’m not really sure.
In general, self-copying and self-simulation require extreme care. They might be able to affect subjective experience in a way that goes back in time. The rules of subjective experience, if any, are non-transferrable (you can’t learn them from someone else who’s figured them out, even in principle) and might not be discoverable at all.
Humans can’t easily precommit to anything at all, and even if they could, it’d be incredibly stupid to try without thinking about it for a very very long time. I’m surprised at how many people don’t immediately see this.
I don’t believe your decision follows from UDT. If you have a short past and a long future, knowledge gained from sims may improve your future enough to pay off the sims’ suffering.
This is firmly in the realm of wild speculation and/or science fiction plot ideas. That said -
You’re right that it does not follow from UDT alone. I do think it follows from a combination of UDT with many common types of utility functions; in particular, if utility is discounted exponentially with time, or if the sims must halt and being halted is sufficiently bad.
A lot depends on what happens subjectively after the simulation is halted, or if there are sufficient resources to keep it going indefinitely. In the latter case, most simulated bad things can be easily made up for by altering the simulated universe after the useful data has been extracted. This would imply that if you are living in a sim created by your future self, your future self follows UDT, and your future self has sufficient resources, you’ll end up in a heaven of some sort. Actually, if you ever did gain the ability to run long-duration simulations of your past selves, then it seems like UDT implies you should run rescue sims of yourself.
Simulations that have to halt after a short duration are very problematic, though; if you anticipate a long life ahead of you, then your past selves probably also have a long life ahead of them, too, which would be cut short by a sim that has to halt. This would probably outweigh the benefits of any information gleaned.
First I was like, “oh no, another one claims that faith could be rational without showing why it is”. Then I parsed the simulation part and clicked “upvote” because it showed me a new and scary possibility.
In the year 2020, cousin_it downloads some software for running predictor sims. He wants to optimize his future conduct—test which particular minor mind-hack would be the most beneficial, given his individual psychological makeup. So he runs many ancestor sims of himself poisoned with different irrational mind-hacks to see who wins in the past. I am one such sim, poisoned in an unknown manner; what should I do?
Times like these I regret that I can’t write good sci-fi in English because it’s not my first language.
I find that hard to believe; your non-native-speaker status is not apparent from your comments.
Clarification: I find it hard to believe that’s a limitation on writing good sci-fi, not that English is not your first language.
Writing quality fiction takes more facility with language than than writing quality nonfiction (like posts) does. (Not that nativeness is an absolute barrier: English was Nabokov’s third language, IIRC.)
A cynic could observe that readers of genre fiction are comparatively less demanding in this respect, though.
Very off topic, but I’ve actually often wondered why there don’t seem to be any non-native speakers writing commercial fiction in English, given how massively larger the English-speaking market is compared to that of a lot of the smaller European languages. Nabokov is literally the only example I can think of.
Well, fiction writing generally isn’t the sort of thing one enters into for the wonderful market. You do it because you love it and are somehow good enough at it that it can pay the bills. Probably you write your first novel in your spare time with very low expectations of it ever being published.
So why write in anything but your favorite language? And while, proficiency-wise, people like Nabokov and Conrad exist, chances are that you aren’t one of them. (That said, there are probably more non-native writers of note than you think. How many of my favorite authors have red hair? I have no idea.)
Thing is, I read almost no fiction in Finnish and quite a lot in English. There isn’t much of a tradition of speculative fiction in Finnish that isn’t just copying stuff already done in English. So if I were to write a SF or a fantasy story, I’d seriously consider whether I could do it in English, because for me those kinds of stories are written in English and then maybe poorly translated into Finnish.
I’m sure few people match up to Nabokov or Conrad (whose non-nativeness I didn’t know about), but I find it odd that I don’t know of any contemporary writers who are even trying to write in English without being native speakers. I’m sure there are ones I don’t know about, so any examples of currently active published non-native English fiction writers are welcome.
Sounds like an opportunity! I wonder if it would be more valuable to translate (with the royalties that implies) or to just rip off?
An opportunity for what? Genre literature is already translated into Finnish, and the publishers with something that isn’t Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings are mostly able to stick around, but probably aren’t making big profits. Finnish-written SF or fantasy is mostly crap and sinks without a trace. A good indication of the general level of quality is that for the first 20 years of the Atorox prize for the best Finnish SF short story, two outlier authors won ten of the 20 awards. No one has even been able to earn a full-time living writing SF in Finnish, not to mention growing rich.
Of course there’s nothing preventing someone from writing stuff on par with Ted Chiang and Jeff VanderMeer in Finnish, but why bother? The book could be a cult classic but probably not a mainstream hit, and there aren’t enough non-mainstream Finnish-speaking buyers for a book to earn someone a living.
I don’t even know who buys all the translated Finnish SF books. I’ve read a bunch of those from the library, but almost all of the books I’ve bought have been in English. Why bother with translations that are both more expensive than the original paperbacks and have clunkier language?
Why do you have to write it in English?
I have precommitted as strongly as I can to never run simulations of myself which are worse off than the version the simulation was based on. This might fall out as a consequence of UDT, but with a time-varying utility function I’m not really sure.
In general, self-copying and self-simulation require extreme care. They might be able to affect subjective experience in a way that goes back in time. The rules of subjective experience, if any, are non-transferrable (you can’t learn them from someone else who’s figured them out, even in principle) and might not be discoverable at all.
Humans can’t easily precommit to anything at all, and even if they could, it’d be incredibly stupid to try without thinking about it for a very very long time. I’m surprised at how many people don’t immediately see this.
I don’t believe your decision follows from UDT. If you have a short past and a long future, knowledge gained from sims may improve your future enough to pay off the sims’ suffering.
This is firmly in the realm of wild speculation and/or science fiction plot ideas. That said -
You’re right that it does not follow from UDT alone. I do think it follows from a combination of UDT with many common types of utility functions; in particular, if utility is discounted exponentially with time, or if the sims must halt and being halted is sufficiently bad.
A lot depends on what happens subjectively after the simulation is halted, or if there are sufficient resources to keep it going indefinitely. In the latter case, most simulated bad things can be easily made up for by altering the simulated universe after the useful data has been extracted. This would imply that if you are living in a sim created by your future self, your future self follows UDT, and your future self has sufficient resources, you’ll end up in a heaven of some sort. Actually, if you ever did gain the ability to run long-duration simulations of your past selves, then it seems like UDT implies you should run rescue sims of yourself.
Simulations that have to halt after a short duration are very problematic, though; if you anticipate a long life ahead of you, then your past selves probably also have a long life ahead of them, too, which would be cut short by a sim that has to halt. This would probably outweigh the benefits of any information gleaned.