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Notes -
My goal is to reproduce while maximizing happiness AUC. Maximizing happiness means:
a. The people I love continue to love me back.
b. I get to do cool things for as long as possible
c. The absence of extreme suffering (for me and those I care about).
From there, this is an iterated Pascal's matrix:
a. Either AGI happens within my lifetime or not
b. Either the AGI is "good" or "bad"
c. Either fundamental social contracts (i.e. the concept of "property", murder is rare) break down within my lifetime or not
(A) If AGI does NOT happen within my lifetime and social contracts persist: accumulate a reasonable amount of capital quickly, reproduce, and do what I want to do
(B) If AGI does NOT happen within my lifetime and social contracts collapse: move myself + family somewhere remote, be able to sustain ourselves, and own some guns
(C) If AGI DOES happen, it's GOOD, and social contracts persist:
(D) If AGI DOES happen, it's GOOD, and social contracts collapse:
(E) If AGI DOES happen, it's BAD, and social contracts persist:
Presumably this is a scenario where AGI can do anything it wants to do in the virtual world (e.g. win the stock market), but has limited ability to reach into the physical (e.g. build physical robots to carry out its plans) because the physical world still involves humans coordinating with each other.
Best course of action: move somewhere remote, be able to sustain oneself, and own some guns
(F) If AGI DOES happen, it's BAD, and social contracts collapse:
Taken in total: I think I have a pathway towards generating enough capital (e.g. $10M or so) in the next two years. After that I plan to buy a remote farm and lots of guns, some equity in the major AI companies (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple), and an apartment in the city (I can travel to / live in for enjoyment if things are going well).
I presume it will take me at least five years to learn how to farm properly. So all in all, this is a reasonable course of action if social contract breakdown is > 10 years away.
I'm assuming for AGI = BAD, that the AGI just doesn't care about us. Society breaks down, supply chain collapses, it builds whatever it wants to build, but we're not actively being hunted down. If it's actively wanting to hunt us down nothing I do will matter -- but in the "farm + guns" plan there's the side-benefit that maybe I can blow my brains out and entropy will make it exceedingly annoying to re-create a virtual version of me to be tortured for all eternity.
Sounds good to me. What would you spend it on?
You already live in Mayfair, how much further can you improve it?
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With $10m cash you can probably buy people to do the farming for you. Hell, I'm trying to save a 1/10th of that for retirement, and would happily be a sharecropper for him.
Maybe if the social contract collapses...
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Funny, this is actually what I find really appealing.
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