I’ll take this as a prompt to finish and publish my draft “Utopias”.
Utopia doesn’t need to be one-size-fits-all. If someone needs challenge and struggle, we’ll give them what they need. In a world of plenty with few problems to solve, the most common occupation will be figure-out-what-this-person’s-problem-is-and-fix-it. That’s if superintelligence hasn’t already done that better than we can.
Think virtual fight club, but magnified by the power of human and/or ASI creativity and motivation. Or virtual challenges scaling up to the most crushing, grinding, struggle for survival and dominance. We will have as much struggle and challenge as people want to take on. There will be bragging rights for proving oneself the toughest, smartest, etc. See Yudkowsky’s “fun theory” work for some aspects of this; but I want to note that “fun” can be blindingly painful in the moment for some people. I don’t know if that personality type will persist after generations of trauma-free upbringing, but if they are around, they’ll get the struggle they need.
The idea that we’d get material abundance but remain emotional morons strikes me as wildly unlikely. I think the persistance of trauma is probably largely a byproduct of scarcity, (compeitition for resources creates harmful behaviors that cause trauma) and that human ingenuity would have already largely solved psychology if we weren’t so busy struggling to survive. Even if that’s wrong, a superintelligence that provides material abundance but completely neglects helping us psychologically (if we want it) would have to be a moron by most theories of successful alignment.
I’ll also note, along with the others, that even in your scenario only one person was unhappy; everyone else felt that utopia was quite nice indeed.
I’ll take this as a prompt to finish and publish my draft “Utopias”.
Utopia doesn’t need to be one-size-fits-all. If someone needs challenge and struggle, we’ll give them what they need. In a world of plenty with few problems to solve, the most common occupation will be figure-out-what-this-person’s-problem-is-and-fix-it. That’s if superintelligence hasn’t already done that better than we can.
Think virtual fight club, but magnified by the power of human and/or ASI creativity and motivation. Or virtual challenges scaling up to the most crushing, grinding, struggle for survival and dominance. We will have as much struggle and challenge as people want to take on. There will be bragging rights for proving oneself the toughest, smartest, etc. See Yudkowsky’s “fun theory” work for some aspects of this; but I want to note that “fun” can be blindingly painful in the moment for some people. I don’t know if that personality type will persist after generations of trauma-free upbringing, but if they are around, they’ll get the struggle they need.
The idea that we’d get material abundance but remain emotional morons strikes me as wildly unlikely. I think the persistance of trauma is probably largely a byproduct of scarcity, (compeitition for resources creates harmful behaviors that cause trauma) and that human ingenuity would have already largely solved psychology if we weren’t so busy struggling to survive. Even if that’s wrong, a superintelligence that provides material abundance but completely neglects helping us psychologically (if we want it) would have to be a moron by most theories of successful alignment.
I’ll also note, along with the others, that even in your scenario only one person was unhappy; everyone else felt that utopia was quite nice indeed.