We’ll make new puzzles! And have them made for us. Locally, those puzzles will be more rewarding because they’ll be carefully designed.
I think these sorts of worries sually aren’t totally taking seriously the potentials of uploading and having superintelligent help in creating new worlds with their own challenges and pleasures.
There will be something permanently lost when humanity isn’t collectively our own big real problems. But I don’t think it’s that large a part of the human experience for all that many people. I am quite proud of humans for coming as far as we have, and I think often of the noble sacrifices so many people have made to get us here. But I make a practice of enjoying that, and I enjoy many other marvels as well.
The fraction of people who meaningfully participate in solving the types of puzzles you mention is tiny.
However, there’s a more serious extension to this problem: not just a loss of some puzzles, but of much or most types of meaningful work. The elimination of involuntary suffering means no person will ever really help another person meaninfully again. Much of our sense of purpose and meaning is fairly hardwired to our social reward circuits. We will be able to impose constraints on our chosen worlds that make work “meaningful” in some senses. But we will have to accept meaningful suffering in order for anyone to meaningfully help us.
We coud rewire ourselves to not need this type of reward, but that would involve becoming something else.
This problem has only occurred to me after reading a ton of these types of worry posts. Many of them gesture in that direction, but none hit this fundamental problem. Spinning out my own postsingularity scenarios, mostly for relaxation, with Sonnett 4.5 led me to noice this problem.
I agree that we’ll make new puzzles that will be more rewarding. I don’t think that suffering need be involuntary to make its elimination meaningful. If I am voluntarily parched and struggling to climb a mountain with a heavy pack (something that I would plausibly reject ASI help with), I would nevertheless feel appreciation if some passerby offered me a drink or lightening my load. Given a guarantee of safety from permanent harm, I think I’d plausibly volunteer to play a role in some game that involved some degree of suffering that could be alleviated.
We’ll make new puzzles! And have them made for us. Locally, those puzzles will be more rewarding because they’ll be carefully designed.
I think these sorts of worries sually aren’t totally taking seriously the potentials of uploading and having superintelligent help in creating new worlds with their own challenges and pleasures.
There will be something permanently lost when humanity isn’t collectively our own big real problems. But I don’t think it’s that large a part of the human experience for all that many people. I am quite proud of humans for coming as far as we have, and I think often of the noble sacrifices so many people have made to get us here. But I make a practice of enjoying that, and I enjoy many other marvels as well.
The fraction of people who meaningfully participate in solving the types of puzzles you mention is tiny.
However, there’s a more serious extension to this problem: not just a loss of some puzzles, but of much or most types of meaningful work. The elimination of involuntary suffering means no person will ever really help another person meaninfully again. Much of our sense of purpose and meaning is fairly hardwired to our social reward circuits. We will be able to impose constraints on our chosen worlds that make work “meaningful” in some senses. But we will have to accept meaningful suffering in order for anyone to meaningfully help us.
We coud rewire ourselves to not need this type of reward, but that would involve becoming something else.
This problem has only occurred to me after reading a ton of these types of worry posts. Many of them gesture in that direction, but none hit this fundamental problem. Spinning out my own postsingularity scenarios, mostly for relaxation, with Sonnett 4.5 led me to noice this problem.
I agree that we’ll make new puzzles that will be more rewarding. I don’t think that suffering need be involuntary to make its elimination meaningful. If I am voluntarily parched and struggling to climb a mountain with a heavy pack (something that I would plausibly reject ASI help with), I would nevertheless feel appreciation if some passerby offered me a drink or lightening my load. Given a guarantee of safety from permanent harm, I think I’d plausibly volunteer to play a role in some game that involved some degree of suffering that could be alleviated.