we still want to get as good a bargaining position as we possibly can, or to coordinate with the watchers as well as we possibly can, or in a more fundamental sense we want to not waste any of our potential, which I think is the real driving intuition here
It seems that we have more morally important potential in some possible worlds than others, and although we don’t want our language to commit us to the view that we only have morally important potential in possible worlds where we can prevent astronomical waste, neither do we want to suggest (as I think “not waste any of our potential” does) the view that we have the same morally important potential everywhere and that we should just minimize the expected fraction of our potential that is wasted. A more neutral way of framing things could be “minimize wasted potential, especially if the potential is astronomical”, leaving the strength of the “especially” to be specified by theories of how much one can affect the world from base reality vs simulations and zoos, theories of how to deal with moral uncertainty, and so on.
I completely understand your intuition but don’t entirely agree; this comment might seem like quibbling: Having access to astronomical resources is one way to have a huge good impact, but I’m not sure we know enough about moral philosophy or even about what an acausal economy/ecology might look like to be sure that the difference between a non-astronomical possible world and an astronomical possible world is a huge difference. (For what it’s worth, my primary intuition here is “the multiverse is more good-decision-theory-limited/insight-limited than resource-limited”. I’d like to expand on this in a blog post or something later.) Obviously we should provisionally assume that the difference is huge, but I can see non-fuzzy lines of reasoning that suggest that the difference might not be much.
Because we might be wrong about the relative utility of non-astronomical possible worlds it seems like when describing our fundamental driving motivations we should choose language that is as agnostic as possible, in order to have a strong conceptual foundation that isn’t too contingent on our provisional best guess models. E.g., take the principle of decision theory that says we should focus more on worlds that plausibly seem much larger even if it might be less probable that we’re in those worlds: the underlying, non-conclusion-contingent reasons that drive us to take considerations and perspectives such as that one into account are the things we should be putting effort into explaining to others and making clear to ourselves.
It seems that we have more morally important potential in some possible worlds than others, and although we don’t want our language to commit us to the view that we only have morally important potential in possible worlds where we can prevent astronomical waste, neither do we want to suggest (as I think “not waste any of our potential” does) the view that we have the same morally important potential everywhere and that we should just minimize the expected fraction of our potential that is wasted. A more neutral way of framing things could be “minimize wasted potential, especially if the potential is astronomical”, leaving the strength of the “especially” to be specified by theories of how much one can affect the world from base reality vs simulations and zoos, theories of how to deal with moral uncertainty, and so on.
I completely understand your intuition but don’t entirely agree; this comment might seem like quibbling: Having access to astronomical resources is one way to have a huge good impact, but I’m not sure we know enough about moral philosophy or even about what an acausal economy/ecology might look like to be sure that the difference between a non-astronomical possible world and an astronomical possible world is a huge difference. (For what it’s worth, my primary intuition here is “the multiverse is more good-decision-theory-limited/insight-limited than resource-limited”. I’d like to expand on this in a blog post or something later.) Obviously we should provisionally assume that the difference is huge, but I can see non-fuzzy lines of reasoning that suggest that the difference might not be much.
Because we might be wrong about the relative utility of non-astronomical possible worlds it seems like when describing our fundamental driving motivations we should choose language that is as agnostic as possible, in order to have a strong conceptual foundation that isn’t too contingent on our provisional best guess models. E.g., take the principle of decision theory that says we should focus more on worlds that plausibly seem much larger even if it might be less probable that we’re in those worlds: the underlying, non-conclusion-contingent reasons that drive us to take considerations and perspectives such as that one into account are the things we should be putting effort into explaining to others and making clear to ourselves.