I disagree it’s that easy. It’s not a long trajectory of inevitability; like with evolution, there are constraints. Each step generally has to be on its own aligned with economic incentives at the time. See how for example steam power was first developed to fuel pumps removing water from coal mines; the engines were so inefficient that it was only cost effective if you didn’t also need to transport the coal. Now we’ve used up all surface coal and oil, not to mention screwed up the climate quite a bit for the next few millennia, conditions are different. I think technology is less uniform progression and more a mix of “easy” and “hard” events (as in the grabby aliens paper, if you’ve read it), and by exhausting those resources we’ve made things harder. I don’t think climbing back up would be guaranteed.
(One specific path is to use low-tech animal husbandry to produce smarter humans. This might even solve AI x-risk by making humanity saner.)
This IMO even if it was possible would solve nothing while potentually causing an inordinate amount of suffering. And it’s also one of those super long term investments that don’t align with almost any incentive on the short term. I say it solves nothing because intelligence wouldn’t be the bottleneck; if they had any books left lying around they’d have a road map to tech, and I really don’t think we’ve missed some obvious low tech trick that would be relevant to them. The problem is having the materials to do those things and having immediate returns.
Intelligence is also a thing that enables perceiving returns that are not immediate, as well as maintenance of more complicated institutions that align current incentives towards long term goals.
This isn’t a simple marshmallow challenge scenario. If you have a society that has needs and limited resources, it’s not inherently “smart” to sacrifice those significantly for the sake of a long term project that might e.g. not benefit anyone who’s currently living. It’s a difference in values at that point; even if you’re smart enough you can still not believe it right.
For example, suppose in 1860 everyone knew and accepted global warming as a risk. Should they, or would they, have stopped using coal and natural gas in order to save us this problem? Even if it meant lesser living standards for themselves, and possibly more death?
it’s not inherently “smart” to sacrifice those significantly for the sake of a long term project
Your argument was that this hopeless trap might happen after a catastrophe and it’s so terrible that maybe it’s as bad or worse as everyone dying quickly. If it’s so terrible, in any decision-relevant sense, then it’s also smart to plot towards projects that dig humanity out of the trap.
No, sorry, I may have conveyed that wrong and mixed up two arguments. I don’t think stasis is straight up worse than extinction. For good or bad, people lived in the Middle Ages too. My point was more that if your guiding principle is “can we recover”, then there are more things than extinction to worry about. If you aspire at some kind of future in which humans grow exponentially then you won’t get it if we’re knocked back to preindustrial levels and can’t recover.
I don’t personally think that’s a great metric or goal to adopt, just following the logic to its endpoint. And I also expect that many smart people in the stasis wouldn’t plot with only that sort of long term benefit in mind. They’d seek relatively short term returns.
I see. Referring back to your argument was more an illustration of existence for this motivation. If a society forms around the motivation, at any one time in the billion years, and selects for intelligence to enable nontrivial long term institution design, that seems sufficient to escape stasis.
I disagree it’s that easy. It’s not a long trajectory of inevitability; like with evolution, there are constraints. Each step generally has to be on its own aligned with economic incentives at the time. See how for example steam power was first developed to fuel pumps removing water from coal mines; the engines were so inefficient that it was only cost effective if you didn’t also need to transport the coal. Now we’ve used up all surface coal and oil, not to mention screwed up the climate quite a bit for the next few millennia, conditions are different. I think technology is less uniform progression and more a mix of “easy” and “hard” events (as in the grabby aliens paper, if you’ve read it), and by exhausting those resources we’ve made things harder. I don’t think climbing back up would be guaranteed.
This IMO even if it was possible would solve nothing while potentually causing an inordinate amount of suffering. And it’s also one of those super long term investments that don’t align with almost any incentive on the short term. I say it solves nothing because intelligence wouldn’t be the bottleneck; if they had any books left lying around they’d have a road map to tech, and I really don’t think we’ve missed some obvious low tech trick that would be relevant to them. The problem is having the materials to do those things and having immediate returns.
Intelligence is also a thing that enables perceiving returns that are not immediate, as well as maintenance of more complicated institutions that align current incentives towards long term goals.
This isn’t a simple marshmallow challenge scenario. If you have a society that has needs and limited resources, it’s not inherently “smart” to sacrifice those significantly for the sake of a long term project that might e.g. not benefit anyone who’s currently living. It’s a difference in values at that point; even if you’re smart enough you can still not believe it right.
For example, suppose in 1860 everyone knew and accepted global warming as a risk. Should they, or would they, have stopped using coal and natural gas in order to save us this problem? Even if it meant lesser living standards for themselves, and possibly more death?
Your argument was that this hopeless trap might happen after a catastrophe and it’s so terrible that maybe it’s as bad or worse as everyone dying quickly. If it’s so terrible, in any decision-relevant sense, then it’s also smart to plot towards projects that dig humanity out of the trap.
No, sorry, I may have conveyed that wrong and mixed up two arguments. I don’t think stasis is straight up worse than extinction. For good or bad, people lived in the Middle Ages too. My point was more that if your guiding principle is “can we recover”, then there are more things than extinction to worry about. If you aspire at some kind of future in which humans grow exponentially then you won’t get it if we’re knocked back to preindustrial levels and can’t recover.
I don’t personally think that’s a great metric or goal to adopt, just following the logic to its endpoint. And I also expect that many smart people in the stasis wouldn’t plot with only that sort of long term benefit in mind. They’d seek relatively short term returns.
I see. Referring back to your argument was more an illustration of existence for this motivation. If a society forms around the motivation, at any one time in the billion years, and selects for intelligence to enable nontrivial long term institution design, that seems sufficient to escape stasis.