By “defense dominant”, I meant “the person who gets to resources first can defend them from other actors who want these resources cheaply” (or something roughly like this). Vacuum decay gets no one any resources, so it feels natural to pull out into a separate category. I agree that value systems which want vacuum decay cause problems and you can imagine locust like value systems which also want vacuum decay.
Separately, I think that something like vacuum decay is maybe around 40% likely to be doable for agents in our universe (based on reports from the best informed people I’ve heard from), so I wouldn’t exactly say I believe in vacuum decay (though I certainly think it is an important possibility which is very plausible).
I can imagine scenarios where you could end up with more resources from causing vacuum decay without extortion. Like if you care about doing something with resources quickly and other agents want to use resources slowly, then if you cause vacuum decay inside your region, the non collapsed shell of your region becomes more valuable to you relative to other agents because it only exists for a short duration, and maybe that makes other agents fight over it less. Or maybe you can vacuum decay into a state that still supports life and you value that
Sure, I agree this is possible in principle. (And if many uncaring actors can cause vacuum decay then it makes sense that at least one of them might have a slight incentive to do this.)
By “defense dominant”, I meant “the person who gets to resources first can defend them from other actors who want these resources cheaply” (or something roughly like this). Vacuum decay gets no one any resources, so it feels natural to pull out into a separate category. I agree that value systems which want vacuum decay cause problems and you can imagine locust like value systems which also want vacuum decay.
Separately, I think that something like vacuum decay is maybe around 40% likely to be doable for agents in our universe (based on reports from the best informed people I’ve heard from), so I wouldn’t exactly say I believe in vacuum decay (though I certainly think it is an important possibility which is very plausible).
I can imagine scenarios where you could end up with more resources from causing vacuum decay without extortion. Like if you care about doing something with resources quickly and other agents want to use resources slowly, then if you cause vacuum decay inside your region, the non collapsed shell of your region becomes more valuable to you relative to other agents because it only exists for a short duration, and maybe that makes other agents fight over it less. Or maybe you can vacuum decay into a state that still supports life and you value that
Sure, I agree this is possible in principle. (And if many uncaring actors can cause vacuum decay then it makes sense that at least one of them might have a slight incentive to do this.)