I think the proposed solution presented here is suboptimal and would lead to a race to the bottom, or alternatively lead to most people being excluded from the potential to ever do anything that they get to feel matters (and I think a much better solution exists):
If people can enhance themselves then it becomes impossible to earn any real status except via luck. Essentially it’s like a modified version of that Syndrome quote “When everyone is exceptional and talented, then no one will be”.
Alternatively if you restrict people’s ability to self modify then you just get a de-facto caste system (like the Star Trek Federation), where only the people who already won the genetic luck of the draw get to ever be impressive, with everyone else permanently forced to live in their shadow. Alternatively maybe the people who get bored and have to increase their intelligence the soonest (at the eudaimonic rate) end up being the only ones who get to be exceptional in the long term. Either way the people who are forced to take longer increasing their intelligence get kind of screwed here.
The fundamental problem here is that humans instinct for meaning/purpose is zero sum and socially mediated. Almost everyone wants to be exceptional in at least some niche area, yet this is inherently zero sum. This is especially obvious when you consider say fame: Only a very small fraction of any given community can be famous within that community just as a brute mathematical fact given human psychology.
There would seem to be only one real solution to this which involves doing the following:
Have people self select into communities that don’t interact too much with the broader civilization (so people aren’t competing with too many others for them to ever hope to stand out).
Create a bunch of new minds that just don’t care about status very much and don’t compare themselves to others in the way most baseline humans do. So that they never feel any temptation to enhance themselves in order to stand out, and aren’t missing out on anything. These newly made people are just as fulfilled as most of the original humans if not more so, but they’re way easier to satisfy.
Specifically this would probably involve simulations with the following qualities (though you could do everything non-digitally in megastructures like a non-dystopian Westworld, it’d just be inefficient)
Have AI’s DM simulated adventures with mostly NPC’s the AI enjoys acting out (or alternatively it’s non-sentient). This way people can play out adventures where they get to be the hero and maximally fulfill all their psychological instincts for purpose, in addition to all the lower level Maslow stuff. You need fake NPC’s because it’s hard to do good adventures without villains, and creating evil minds would be an insane thing to allow.
Have superintelligence within obvious ethical limitations predict in advance which NPC’s you will become friends with, and then create them as real digital minds who don’t necessarily know they’re in a simulation until you complete the adventure together.
Ensure these new digital minds are created with preferences such that they will never feel resentment once they find out the nature of their existence, and will be glad to have been created the way they were. They’ll even be glad they didn’t know it was a simulation at the time, since they got to believe they were say saving the world along with their best friends for instance!
There’s also some more interesting complexities to do with population ethics in a world with finite resources unlike The Culture: Since by default population growth will always grow at an exponential rate, however even at near lightspeed you can never expand to gather resources at faster than a geometric (spherical) rate that merely fills your future light cone. So it’s easy to show that if you don’t restrict population growth somehow, you reach a Malthusian state within a few thousand years. If anyone’s interested I know of at least one good solution to this problem however that avoids making any real sacrifices. I can also show pretty easily the very simple math of why this is unavoidable to anyone interested.
I think the proposed solution presented here is suboptimal and would lead to a race to the bottom, or alternatively lead to most people being excluded from the potential to ever do anything that they get to feel matters (and I think a much better solution exists):
If people can enhance themselves then it becomes impossible to earn any real status except via luck. Essentially it’s like a modified version of that Syndrome quote “When everyone is exceptional and talented, then no one will be”.
Alternatively if you restrict people’s ability to self modify then you just get a de-facto caste system (like the Star Trek Federation), where only the people who already won the genetic luck of the draw get to ever be impressive, with everyone else permanently forced to live in their shadow. Alternatively maybe the people who get bored and have to increase their intelligence the soonest (at the eudaimonic rate) end up being the only ones who get to be exceptional in the long term. Either way the people who are forced to take longer increasing their intelligence get kind of screwed here.
The fundamental problem here is that humans instinct for meaning/purpose is zero sum and socially mediated. Almost everyone wants to be exceptional in at least some niche area, yet this is inherently zero sum. This is especially obvious when you consider say fame: Only a very small fraction of any given community can be famous within that community just as a brute mathematical fact given human psychology.
There would seem to be only one real solution to this which involves doing the following:
Have people self select into communities that don’t interact too much with the broader civilization (so people aren’t competing with too many others for them to ever hope to stand out).
Create a bunch of new minds that just don’t care about status very much and don’t compare themselves to others in the way most baseline humans do. So that they never feel any temptation to enhance themselves in order to stand out, and aren’t missing out on anything. These newly made people are just as fulfilled as most of the original humans if not more so, but they’re way easier to satisfy.
Specifically this would probably involve simulations with the following qualities (though you could do everything non-digitally in megastructures like a non-dystopian Westworld, it’d just be inefficient)
Have AI’s DM simulated adventures with mostly NPC’s the AI enjoys acting out (or alternatively it’s non-sentient). This way people can play out adventures where they get to be the hero and maximally fulfill all their psychological instincts for purpose, in addition to all the lower level Maslow stuff. You need fake NPC’s because it’s hard to do good adventures without villains, and creating evil minds would be an insane thing to allow.
Have superintelligence within obvious ethical limitations predict in advance which NPC’s you will become friends with, and then create them as real digital minds who don’t necessarily know they’re in a simulation until you complete the adventure together.
Ensure these new digital minds are created with preferences such that they will never feel resentment once they find out the nature of their existence, and will be glad to have been created the way they were. They’ll even be glad they didn’t know it was a simulation at the time, since they got to believe they were say saving the world along with their best friends for instance!
There’s also some more interesting complexities to do with population ethics in a world with finite resources unlike The Culture: Since by default population growth will always grow at an exponential rate, however even at near lightspeed you can never expand to gather resources at faster than a geometric (spherical) rate that merely fills your future light cone. So it’s easy to show that if you don’t restrict population growth somehow, you reach a Malthusian state within a few thousand years. If anyone’s interested I know of at least one good solution to this problem however that avoids making any real sacrifices. I can also show pretty easily the very simple math of why this is unavoidable to anyone interested.