Thank you for giving me some real life grounding, strong upvote.
Now that I think about it, I would be quite surprised if there wasn’t deep (non-actor) suffering in our world.
Nonetheless, I’m not sure that the beings running our Karma Test will end up with low Karma. We can’t rule out the possibility they cause a lot of suffering to us, but are somewhat reasonable in a way we and other beings would understand: here is one example possibility.
Suppose in the outside world, evolution continues far above the level of human intelligence and sentience, before technology is invented. In the outside world, there is no wood and metal just lying around to build stuff with, so you need a lot of intelligence before you get any technology.
So in the outside world, human-intelligence creatures are far from being on the top of the food chain. In fact, we are like insects from the point of view of the most intelligent creatures. We fly around and suck their blood, and they swat at us. Every day, trillions of human-intelligence creatures are born and die.
Finally, the most intelligent creatures develop technology, and find a way to reach post scarcity paradise. At first, they do not care at all about humans, since they evolved to ignore us like mosquitoes.
But they have their own powerful adversaries (God knows what) that they are afraid will kill them all for tiny gains, the same way we fear misaligned ASI will kill us all for tiny gains.
So they decide to run Karma Tests on weaker creatures, in order to convince their powerful adversaries they might be in Karma Tests too.
They perform the Karma Tests on us humans, and create our world. Tens of billions of humans are born and die, and often the lives are not that pleasant. But we still live relatively better than the human-intelligence creatures in their world.
And they feel, yes, they are harming weaker creatures. But it’s far less suffering, than the normal amount of suffering of human-intelligence creatures in their world, in a single day! And for each human who dies, they give her a billion year afterlife, where they meet with all the other humans they know and have hugs and be happy.
And just, the total negative effect on human-intelligence creatures is, from their point of view, negligible, since trillions of us die every day in their world’s version of nature.
While the total positive effect on human-intelligence creatures is pretty great. First of all, they create 10% more happy human lives, to offset the miserable human lives, similarly to how some people in the EA Forum talk about buying offsets (donations) every time they eat meat.
Second of all, their Karma Tests convince their powerful adversaries to be a bit kinder to weaker creatures, including humans-intelligence creatures, and this effect is bigger than the suffering they cause.
The nature of human morality, is that we only extend our deontological ethics to our own species, e.g. we don’t kill other humans. Animals, especially those much lower than us, aren’t given much deontological concerns to, they are only given utilitarian concerns. This is why if an animal is sick and dying, we simply kill it, but the same can’t be done to a human.
Creatures more intelligent than us might treat us the same way, as long as it increases our total happiness and decreases our total misery, they will feel fine, and even higher beings judging them will probably feel fine about them too. Even humans, being told an honest description of what they are doing, will probably understand it, accept it, and begrudgingly accept we might have done the same thing in their shoes.
:( oh no I’m sorry.
Thank you for giving me some real life grounding, strong upvote.
Now that I think about it, I would be quite surprised if there wasn’t deep (non-actor) suffering in our world.
Nonetheless, I’m not sure that the beings running our Karma Test will end up with low Karma. We can’t rule out the possibility they cause a lot of suffering to us, but are somewhat reasonable in a way we and other beings would understand: here is one example possibility.
Suppose in the outside world, evolution continues far above the level of human intelligence and sentience, before technology is invented. In the outside world, there is no wood and metal just lying around to build stuff with, so you need a lot of intelligence before you get any technology.
So in the outside world, human-intelligence creatures are far from being on the top of the food chain. In fact, we are like insects from the point of view of the most intelligent creatures. We fly around and suck their blood, and they swat at us. Every day, trillions of human-intelligence creatures are born and die.
Finally, the most intelligent creatures develop technology, and find a way to reach post scarcity paradise. At first, they do not care at all about humans, since they evolved to ignore us like mosquitoes.
But they have their own powerful adversaries (God knows what) that they are afraid will kill them all for tiny gains, the same way we fear misaligned ASI will kill us all for tiny gains.
So they decide to run Karma Tests on weaker creatures, in order to convince their powerful adversaries they might be in Karma Tests too.
They perform the Karma Tests on us humans, and create our world. Tens of billions of humans are born and die, and often the lives are not that pleasant. But we still live relatively better than the human-intelligence creatures in their world.
And they feel, yes, they are harming weaker creatures. But it’s far less suffering, than the normal amount of suffering of human-intelligence creatures in their world, in a single day! And for each human who dies, they give her a billion year afterlife, where they meet with all the other humans they know and have hugs and be happy.
And just, the total negative effect on human-intelligence creatures is, from their point of view, negligible, since trillions of us die every day in their world’s version of nature.
While the total positive effect on human-intelligence creatures is pretty great. First of all, they create 10% more happy human lives, to offset the miserable human lives, similarly to how some people in the EA Forum talk about buying offsets (donations) every time they eat meat.
Second of all, their Karma Tests convince their powerful adversaries to be a bit kinder to weaker creatures, including humans-intelligence creatures, and this effect is bigger than the suffering they cause.
The nature of human morality, is that we only extend our deontological ethics to our own species, e.g. we don’t kill other humans. Animals, especially those much lower than us, aren’t given much deontological concerns to, they are only given utilitarian concerns. This is why if an animal is sick and dying, we simply kill it, but the same can’t be done to a human.
Creatures more intelligent than us might treat us the same way, as long as it increases our total happiness and decreases our total misery, they will feel fine, and even higher beings judging them will probably feel fine about them too. Even humans, being told an honest description of what they are doing, will probably understand it, accept it, and begrudgingly accept we might have done the same thing in their shoes.