I somewhat agree, or at least, I agree more with this than I agree with the assumption that the risk of Hanson’s Malthusian upload scenario is worth more than a passing thought. Consider the conditions that have to exist during the technological window in which it is fast and cheap to reproduce and run uploaded humans but it is impossible to build a strongly superhuman AI which outcompetes any number of human uploads.
Anyway, the concept of “wealth” has already morphed beyond Hanson’s definitions since the advent of mere online games. I’m not sure why this scenario keeps getting brought up as a real thing.
I don’t believe I said that online games invalidate the concept of wealth. What I was getting at is that online games hit the human motivational system in such a way that work and entertainment become the same thing, while simultaneously replacing physical goods with assets that are only real in the most gerrymandered sense of the word. This may not “invalidate the concept” but it sure causes people to act in ways that don’t follow old-fashioned economic models.
Of course you can patch the models in light of this new data, but then they are new models, and you have surreptitiously modified the concept of wealth.
I would argue that the behavior of people who play online games certainly does contradict the folk conception of what wealth is and what it means and what it does.
(There’s the side issue that I could point to literally any social/economic arrangement existing between human beings and an economist could explain to me why the concept of wealth still exists in that society. This is because the concept is sufficiently vague as to be inescapable. This does not necessarily mean that the concept has corresponding predictive power. Other concepts might be more appropriate. Other models might be more predictive.)
I somewhat agree, or at least, I agree more with this than I agree with the assumption that the risk of Hanson’s Malthusian upload scenario is worth more than a passing thought. Consider the conditions that have to exist during the technological window in which it is fast and cheap to reproduce and run uploaded humans but it is impossible to build a strongly superhuman AI which outcompetes any number of human uploads.
Anyway, the concept of “wealth” has already morphed beyond Hanson’s definitions since the advent of mere online games. I’m not sure why this scenario keeps getting brought up as a real thing.
Online games do not invalidate the usual concept of wealth.
I don’t believe I said that online games invalidate the concept of wealth. What I was getting at is that online games hit the human motivational system in such a way that work and entertainment become the same thing, while simultaneously replacing physical goods with assets that are only real in the most gerrymandered sense of the word. This may not “invalidate the concept” but it sure causes people to act in ways that don’t follow old-fashioned economic models.
Of course you can patch the models in light of this new data, but then they are new models, and you have surreptitiously modified the concept of wealth.
I would argue that the behavior of people who play online games certainly does contradict the folk conception of what wealth is and what it means and what it does.
(There’s the side issue that I could point to literally any social/economic arrangement existing between human beings and an economist could explain to me why the concept of wealth still exists in that society. This is because the concept is sufficiently vague as to be inescapable. This does not necessarily mean that the concept has corresponding predictive power. Other concepts might be more appropriate. Other models might be more predictive.)