I think that the idea that some people would remain locked on earth because they sold their share of space parcels, in order to get more earthly possessions early is pretty ridiculous. This would perpetuate current inequality, and just seems off to me for a utopian future. I imagine a more ideal future would look like the AI owning the universe and temporarily granting parts of it different uses in a way that humans agree with, by voting or similar systems. In order to achieve this initially and avoid a future locked in this state, a rough idea could be that people should have access to personal forecaster AIs, that show how each distribution of futures would look like depending on which policy was chosen. I think the authors only chose this parcel-distribution method among the others in the supplement because it was easier to explain. Or possibly because the targeted readers would find it more acceptable?
I agree that the improvement you get from personally owning galaxies is probably small, and that the utopia is likely not really centered on that. But I don’t think that makes the distribution problem go away. Even if owning a galaxy barely improves your life, how the universe’s resources get used still has to be settled somehow, at least indirectly.
I also don’t think the answer is to settle disputes with games and trials. That feels like it’s just relabeling the same problem: instead of the resources given to who is richer nowadays/won the lottery/bought them early, it’s fixed by who wins the competitions, it still doesn’t smell to me like a welfare-maximizing process in some sense.
how the universe’s resources get used still has to be settled somehow, at least indirectly.
I also don’t think the answer is to settle disputes with games and trials.
The How is by getting superintelligent AI to resolve inter-human preference conflicts using the grown-up version of what current humans call good ethical principles. I just proposed games because I think it would be cool—the trick to making it ethical is that the game has to be designed so that all outcomes are okay (different high-weight ethical models rank all the outcomes pretty highly but disagree on the exact order, and controlling the outcome of the game itself has value to the humans).
I think that the idea that some people would remain locked on earth because they sold their share of space parcels, in order to get more earthly possessions early is pretty ridiculous. This would perpetuate current inequality, and just seems off to me for a utopian future. I imagine a more ideal future would look like the AI owning the universe and temporarily granting parts of it different uses in a way that humans agree with, by voting or similar systems. In order to achieve this initially and avoid a future locked in this state, a rough idea could be that people should have access to personal forecaster AIs, that show how each distribution of futures would look like depending on which policy was chosen. I think the authors only chose this parcel-distribution method among the others in the supplement because it was easier to explain. Or possibly because the targeted readers would find it more acceptable?
I agree that the improvement you get from personally owning galaxies is probably small, and that the utopia is likely not really centered on that. But I don’t think that makes the distribution problem go away. Even if owning a galaxy barely improves your life, how the universe’s resources get used still has to be settled somehow, at least indirectly.
I also don’t think the answer is to settle disputes with games and trials. That feels like it’s just relabeling the same problem: instead of the resources given to who is richer nowadays/won the lottery/bought them early, it’s fixed by who wins the competitions, it still doesn’t smell to me like a welfare-maximizing process in some sense.
The How is by getting superintelligent AI to resolve inter-human preference conflicts using the grown-up version of what current humans call good ethical principles. I just proposed games because I think it would be cool—the trick to making it ethical is that the game has to be designed so that all outcomes are okay (different high-weight ethical models rank all the outcomes pretty highly but disagree on the exact order, and controlling the outcome of the game itself has value to the humans).
It worked well as a premise of No Game, No Life.