If you are part of a group that wants to grow slowly and there are even two intelligences out there who are not on board with your program, your group will have to have a CEV which kills off the dissenters. Otherwise, “compound interest” growth rates of the dissenters will turn your slow-growers into a footnote, a vanishingly small “also-ran” in the evolution of transhumanists.
Sure, alternatives to murder. But are there alternatives to “kill off?” How do you beat a population which consistently out-reproduces your population? Either you make their growth rate < their reproduction rate, or you lose. As much smarter as an FAI might be than is a UNI (Unfriendly Natural Intelligence), the laws of compound interest would apply to both.
How do you beat a population which has all the capabilities of your population, EXCEPT they out-reproduce your population?
“Confine them in a finite space. Wait.” You assume here that your population has advantages over the population you are combining. Your population has the power, the additional intellect, the grandfathered-in control of more resources, perhaps a persistent AND ENFORCED information advantage over the other population.
Without a significant asymmetry in your population’s favor, when you combine them in a finite space, their population grows beyond yours, they now have the motivation and the ability to beat your population, to resolve whatever resource or information asymmetry in their favor that has previously allowed your population to dominate them.
We are not talking about humans vs cockroaches here. Or even if we are, the answer is the same. If humans became threatened by cockroach populations, we would (and do) simply kill them. We also come up with more clever ways of controlling their population, we introduce things into their environment which bring their population growth rate way down, even negative (i.e. we kill them?).
But transhumans A vs transhumans B, where A has decided to reproduce slowly? Unless B makes some correspondingly self-limiting decision, all other things being equal, population A will eventually dominate.
As I write this I do realize my claim that population A would need to be willing to kill defectors, to kill people who were obviously population B. I was also assuming an asymmetry: that population A would be willing to kill B and B not willing, or able, to kill A. The scenario I was thinking of was that the slow-reproducers at least for now have the population advantage and therefore the power advantage.
My underlying idea then would be that IF you propose a slow-growth policy for Transhumans, AND you wish to have this proposal survive for a long time, THEN you must PREVENT a significant population of transhumans who are just like you, EXCEPT they are fine with fast growth. You cannot allow a population which has the same fundamental capabilities as you do EXCEPT they have a higher population growth rate, to grow to a population size as big as yours, because if you do, you will soon pass a point where your own survival as a group is beyond your control.
If having the fast reproducers eventually “win,” eventually dominate your group, is OK with you, then what is the point of the slow growth prescription in the first place?
If not having the fast reproduers eventually win is not OK with you, then what must you assume to even think that your population can produce an asymmetry which will cause the fast reproducers to either 1) stop reproducing even though they want to, and/or 2) die at a rate which counters their reproduction rate?
Either you crush them while you have some temporary advantage, or they eventually beat your population out. There is no third way, is there?
If you are part of a group that wants to grow slowly and there are even two intelligences out there who are not on board with your program, your group will have to have a CEV which kills off the dissenters. Otherwise, “compound interest” growth rates of the dissenters will turn your slow-growers into a footnote, a vanishingly small “also-ran” in the evolution of transhumanists.
This is why we need FAI… There are much better solutions to group disagreements than murder.
Sure, alternatives to murder. But are there alternatives to “kill off?” How do you beat a population which consistently out-reproduces your population? Either you make their growth rate < their reproduction rate, or you lose. As much smarter as an FAI might be than is a UNI (Unfriendly Natural Intelligence), the laws of compound interest would apply to both.
Confine them in a finite space. Wait.
How do you beat a population which has all the capabilities of your population, EXCEPT they out-reproduce your population?
“Confine them in a finite space. Wait.” You assume here that your population has advantages over the population you are combining. Your population has the power, the additional intellect, the grandfathered-in control of more resources, perhaps a persistent AND ENFORCED information advantage over the other population.
Without a significant asymmetry in your population’s favor, when you combine them in a finite space, their population grows beyond yours, they now have the motivation and the ability to beat your population, to resolve whatever resource or information asymmetry in their favor that has previously allowed your population to dominate them.
We are not talking about humans vs cockroaches here. Or even if we are, the answer is the same. If humans became threatened by cockroach populations, we would (and do) simply kill them. We also come up with more clever ways of controlling their population, we introduce things into their environment which bring their population growth rate way down, even negative (i.e. we kill them?).
But transhumans A vs transhumans B, where A has decided to reproduce slowly? Unless B makes some correspondingly self-limiting decision, all other things being equal, population A will eventually dominate.
As I write this I do realize my claim that population A would need to be willing to kill defectors, to kill people who were obviously population B. I was also assuming an asymmetry: that population A would be willing to kill B and B not willing, or able, to kill A. The scenario I was thinking of was that the slow-reproducers at least for now have the population advantage and therefore the power advantage.
My underlying idea then would be that IF you propose a slow-growth policy for Transhumans, AND you wish to have this proposal survive for a long time, THEN you must PREVENT a significant population of transhumans who are just like you, EXCEPT they are fine with fast growth. You cannot allow a population which has the same fundamental capabilities as you do EXCEPT they have a higher population growth rate, to grow to a population size as big as yours, because if you do, you will soon pass a point where your own survival as a group is beyond your control.
If having the fast reproducers eventually “win,” eventually dominate your group, is OK with you, then what is the point of the slow growth prescription in the first place?
If not having the fast reproduers eventually win is not OK with you, then what must you assume to even think that your population can produce an asymmetry which will cause the fast reproducers to either 1) stop reproducing even though they want to, and/or 2) die at a rate which counters their reproduction rate?
Either you crush them while you have some temporary advantage, or they eventually beat your population out. There is no third way, is there?
This is just a version of “kill them” isn’t it?