I find your desire to leave the universe “untouched” puzzling. Are you saying that you have a terminal goal to prevent most of the universe from being influenced by human actions, or is it an instrumental value of some sort (for example you want to know what would happen if the universe is allowed to develop naturally)?
Well, it’s not a very strong desire, I suspect that many other people have much stronger “naturalistic” urges than me. But since you ask, I’ll try to introspect anyway:
Curiosity doesn’t seem to be the reason, because I want to leave the universe untouched even after I die. It feels more like altruism. Sometime ago Eliezer wrote about the desire not to be optimized too hard by an outside agent. If I can desire that for myself, then I can also desire it for aliens, give them a chance to not be optimized by us… Of course if there are aliens, we might need to defend ourselves. But something in me doesn’t like the idea of taking over the universe in preemptive self-defense. I’d prefer to find some other way to stay safe...
Sorry if this sounds confusing, I’m confused about it too.
That helps me to understand your position, but it seems unlikely that enough people would desire it strongly enough for CEV to conclude we should give up colonizing the universe altogether. Perhaps some sort of compromised would be reached, for example the FAI would colonize the universe but bypass any solar systems that contain or may evolve intelligent life. Would that be sufficient to satisfy (or mostly satisfy) your desire to not optimize aliens?
Would you like it if aliens colonized the whole universe except our system, or would you prefer if they cared about our wishes and didn’t put us in that situation?
I find your desire to leave the universe “untouched” puzzling. Are you saying that you have a terminal goal to prevent most of the universe from being influenced by human actions, or is it an instrumental value of some sort (for example you want to know what would happen if the universe is allowed to develop naturally)?
Well, it’s not a very strong desire, I suspect that many other people have much stronger “naturalistic” urges than me. But since you ask, I’ll try to introspect anyway:
Curiosity doesn’t seem to be the reason, because I want to leave the universe untouched even after I die. It feels more like altruism. Sometime ago Eliezer wrote about the desire not to be optimized too hard by an outside agent. If I can desire that for myself, then I can also desire it for aliens, give them a chance to not be optimized by us… Of course if there are aliens, we might need to defend ourselves. But something in me doesn’t like the idea of taking over the universe in preemptive self-defense. I’d prefer to find some other way to stay safe...
Sorry if this sounds confusing, I’m confused about it too.
That helps me to understand your position, but it seems unlikely that enough people would desire it strongly enough for CEV to conclude we should give up colonizing the universe altogether. Perhaps some sort of compromised would be reached, for example the FAI would colonize the universe but bypass any solar systems that contain or may evolve intelligent life. Would that be sufficient to satisfy (or mostly satisfy) your desire to not optimize aliens?
Would you like it if aliens colonized the whole universe except our system, or would you prefer if they cared about our wishes and didn’t put us in that situation?