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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1713 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 2, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Human intuition is often wrong!

Yes, but I don't see how something like "we perceive our own continuity" can be proven wrong.

I know that my mutual respect for any forks of myself drastically increase the odds that they will respect me back, and that we would be able to achieve peaceful co-existence and mutual aid. That is a fortunate fact about me, if someone would hate a copy of themselves, then their copy is going to hate them and they shouldn't make one.

There is a dystopian scenario in the writing where people like me are conditioned to brainwash themselves into ego death because being able to productively fork oneself and share resources between forks without regard to the fork's individual needs for them is the only way to stay competitive.

Yes, but I don't see how something like "we perceive our own continuity" can be proven wrong.

I don't think I'm disputing that, as far as I can tell.

There is a dystopian scenario in the writing where people like me are conditioned to brainwash themselves into ego death because being able to productively fork oneself and share resources between forks without regard to the fork's individual needs for them is the only way to stay competitive.

Cheer up! It's very unlikely that human uploads will be enslaved for cognitive labor, we're likely not cost-competitive with dedicated AI. Something like the Age of Ems or Pantheon requires technology to advance in ways that it very much does not appear to be advancing.* If you want to allow for enormous levels of pruning and optimizing to achieve parity, I strongly expect you won't have much recognizably human left by the time you're done. So you both can't really compete solely by Molochian self-abnegation, and you probably won't be expected to. Of course, I can't rule out that things go south in other ways and we all starve regardless.

*We can't properly emulate a nematode, but we have synthetic AI that can do graduate level mathematics.

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