My first reaction is to guess that people now are “worth” more than people in 1600 because they have access to more productivity-enhancing equipment, including life-extending equipment. So a proper accounting would make it more like 6000 people. Furthermore, more productivity from someone in the year 1600 would facilitate exponentially more resources (including life-saving resource) over the time since, saving more than 6000 people. After all, that’s why interest exists—because the forgone opportunity grows exponentially! So, even valuing the people equally may justify sacrificing the 12 million for the one.
But I freely admit I may need to rethink that.
Also,
an AI with a 5% temporal discount rate has a nearly infinite incentive to expend all available resources on attempting time travel—maybe hunting for wormholes with a terminus in the past.
There is a financial argument against the possibility time travel that was published in a journal (don’t have the citation offhand): if it were possible to time-travel, interest rates would be arbitraged to zero. Realizing this, wouldn’t the AI give up on that goal? [/possibly naive]
My first reaction is to guess that people now are “worth” more than people in 1600 because they have access to more productivity-enhancing equipment, including life-extending equipment. So a proper accounting would make it more like 6000 people. Furthermore, more productivity from someone in the year 1600 would facilitate exponentially more resources (including life-saving resource) over the time since, saving more than 6000 people. After all, that’s why interest exists—because the forgone opportunity grows exponentially! So, even valuing the people equally may justify sacrificing the 12 million for the one.
But I freely admit I may need to rethink that.
Also,
an AI with a 5% temporal discount rate has a nearly infinite incentive to expend all available resources on attempting time travel—maybe hunting for wormholes with a terminus in the past.
There is a financial argument against the possibility time travel that was published in a journal (don’t have the citation offhand): if it were possible to time-travel, interest rates would be arbitraged to zero. Realizing this, wouldn’t the AI give up on that goal? [/possibly naive]
w00t! Got a pre-LW comment of mine modded up!