I’m pretty sure we just need one resimulation to save everyone; once we have located an exact copy of our history, it’s cheap to pluck out anyone (including people dead 100 or 1000 years ago). It’s a one-time cost.
Lossy resurrection is better than nothing but it doesn’t feel as “real” to me. If you resurrect a dead me, I expect that she says “I’m glad I exist! But — at least as per my ontology and values — you shouldn’t quite think of me as the same person as the original. We’re probly quite different, internally, and thus behaviorally as well, when ran over some time.”
Like, the full-history resimulation will surely still not allow you to narrow things down to one branch. You’d get an equivalence class of them, each of them consistent with all available information. Which, in turn, would correspond to a probability distribution over the rescuee’s mind; not a unique pick.
I feel like I’m not quite sure about this? It depends on what quantum mechanics entails, exactly, I think. For example: if BQP = P, then there’s “only a polynomial amount” of timeline-information (whatever that means!), and then my intuition tells me that the “our world serves as a checksum for the one true (macro-)timeline” idea is more likely to be a thing. But this reasoning is still quite heuristical. Plausibly, yeah, the best we get is a polynomially large or even exponentially large distribution.
That said, to get back to my original point, I feel like there’s enough unknowns making this scenario plausible here, that some people who really want to get reunited with their loved ones might totally pursue aligned superintelligence just for a potential shot at this, whether their idea of reuniting requires lossless resurrection or not.
I feel like there’s enough unknowns making this scenario plausible here
No argument on that.
I don’t find it particularly surprising that {have lost a loved one they wanna resurrect} ∩ {take the singularity and the possibility of resurrection seriously} ∩ {would mention this} is empty, though:
“Resurrection is information-theoretically possible” is a longer leap than “believes an unconditional pro-humanity utopia is possible”, which is itself a bigger leap than just “takes singularity seriously”. E. g., there’s a standard-ish counter-argument to “resurrection is possible” which naively assumes a combinatorial explosion of possible human minds consistent with a given behavior. Thinking past it requires some additional less-common insights.
“Would mention this” is downgraded by it being an extremely weakness/vulnerability-revealing motivation. Much more so than just “I want an awesome future”.
“Would mention this” is downgraded by… You know how people who want immortality get bombarded with pop-culture platitudes about accepting death? Well, as per above, immortality is dramatically more plausible-sounding than resurrection, and it’s not as vulnerable-to-mention a motivation. Yet talking about it is still not a great idea in a “respectable” company. Goes double for resurrection.
I’m pretty sure we just need one resimulation to save everyone; once we have located an exact copy of our history, it’s cheap to pluck out anyone (including people dead 100 or 1000 years ago). It’s a one-time cost.
Lossy resurrection is better than nothing but it doesn’t feel as “real” to me. If you resurrect a dead me, I expect that she says “I’m glad I exist! But — at least as per my ontology and values — you shouldn’t quite think of me as the same person as the original. We’re probly quite different, internally, and thus behaviorally as well, when ran over some time.”
I feel like I’m not quite sure about this? It depends on what quantum mechanics entails, exactly, I think. For example: if BQP = P, then there’s “only a polynomial amount” of timeline-information (whatever that means!), and then my intuition tells me that the “our world serves as a checksum for the one true (macro-)timeline” idea is more likely to be a thing. But this reasoning is still quite heuristical. Plausibly, yeah, the best we get is a polynomially large or even exponentially large distribution.
That said, to get back to my original point, I feel like there’s enough unknowns making this scenario plausible here, that some people who really want to get reunited with their loved ones might totally pursue aligned superintelligence just for a potential shot at this, whether their idea of reuniting requires lossless resurrection or not.
No argument on that.
I don’t find it particularly surprising that {have lost a loved one they wanna resurrect} ∩ {take the singularity and the possibility of resurrection seriously} ∩ {would mention this} is empty, though:
“Resurrection is information-theoretically possible” is a longer leap than “believes an unconditional pro-humanity utopia is possible”, which is itself a bigger leap than just “takes singularity seriously”. E. g., there’s a standard-ish counter-argument to “resurrection is possible” which naively assumes a combinatorial explosion of possible human minds consistent with a given behavior. Thinking past it requires some additional less-common insights.
“Would mention this” is downgraded by it being an extremely weakness/vulnerability-revealing motivation. Much more so than just “I want an awesome future”.
“Would mention this” is downgraded by… You know how people who want immortality get bombarded with pop-culture platitudes about accepting death? Well, as per above, immortality is dramatically more plausible-sounding than resurrection, and it’s not as vulnerable-to-mention a motivation. Yet talking about it is still not a great idea in a “respectable” company. Goes double for resurrection.