I noticed that you wrote “not soon” for the likelihood of Value Drift. I think Value Drift is a very real possibility, maybe an inevitability.
Look back a couple of hundred years from the present; you’ll find that the values of the people at that time were incomprehensibly, unmistakably different. Religion was of paramount importance; it was considered acceptable or obvious that some races were superior to others; people accepted the notion of hereditary aristocracy, and so on.
Based on the historical record, I predict that the values of humans and human civilization 300 years from now will be unrecognizably different from modern Western 21st century values. The question is: is that a problem? I personally don’t care that much, but I’m unlike most other LWers in that I’m not very interested in optimizing the region of spacetime outside of my own small bubble.
I think that natural evolution of values is part of what is to be human (and that is why I am against CEV). But here I mean some kind of disruptive revolutions in values in shorter time period, like in 20 years. And I think it will not in happen in 20 years as humans have some kind of values inertia.
But on loner time horizon new technologies could help to spread new “memes-values” quicker, and they will be like computer viruses for human brains, may be disseminating through brain implants. It could be quick and catastrophic.
Cool chart.
I noticed that you wrote “not soon” for the likelihood of Value Drift. I think Value Drift is a very real possibility, maybe an inevitability.
Look back a couple of hundred years from the present; you’ll find that the values of the people at that time were incomprehensibly, unmistakably different. Religion was of paramount importance; it was considered acceptable or obvious that some races were superior to others; people accepted the notion of hereditary aristocracy, and so on.
Based on the historical record, I predict that the values of humans and human civilization 300 years from now will be unrecognizably different from modern Western 21st century values. The question is: is that a problem? I personally don’t care that much, but I’m unlike most other LWers in that I’m not very interested in optimizing the region of spacetime outside of my own small bubble.
I think that natural evolution of values is part of what is to be human (and that is why I am against CEV). But here I mean some kind of disruptive revolutions in values in shorter time period, like in 20 years. And I think it will not in happen in 20 years as humans have some kind of values inertia.
But on loner time horizon new technologies could help to spread new “memes-values” quicker, and they will be like computer viruses for human brains, may be disseminating through brain implants. It could be quick and catastrophic.