Matolcsi’s post is an idea for making deals with the ASI.
I notice that his proposal shares some basic characteristics with religion. You should believe that this world is a test: follow these rules, and you go to heaven; misbehave, and you go hell (or in this case, a softhearted re-imagination of hell). Indeed, it does work on people, sometimes.
I imagine Actually Something Incomprehensible noticing the double irony of inverting the classic mantra “God says, I shall be good” into “Singularity, thou shalt be good”, combined with the fact that you refer to it as the devil. Who knows what it does with this information?
I know what I’ll say if I ever get arrested: Let me be, set me free, or super-me will screw with thee!
Religion does work sometimes, it actually worked on Blaise Pascal who is among the most intelligent people of all time. He argued for the Pascal’s wager, saying that following religion is worth it because the gains are infinite and costs are finite, and we still don’t have a good reply to that. We don’t even have a good reply to Pascal’s mugging, where a random mugger says something like “Let me be, set me free, or super-me will screw with thee!” with an infinitely big promise or threat.
Decision theory and acausal trade is really complicated and I have no idea what the ASI will actually do or think regarding the simulation promise/threat, it’s quite freaky imagining that haha.
Memetically, a religion certainly benefits from someone believing that accepting Pascal’s wager is the correct decision. My reply to it would be “which religion?”, since many make largely equivalent claims while also demanding exclusivity, and I assume that God in his infinite mercy understands the bind this puts people in. It also seems to me that accepting Pascal’s wager leads to something like the simulation of belief.
What I meant was that there seems to be a difference between “genuine” belief vs. converting as a result of accepting Pascal’s wager, which seems like a simulation of belief.
The link is a koan; the idea of pretend-believing reminded me of the boy in it.
I notice that his proposal shares some basic characteristics with religion. You should believe that this world is a test: follow these rules, and you go to heaven; misbehave, and you go hell (or in this case, a softhearted re-imagination of hell). Indeed, it does work on people, sometimes.
I imagine Actually Something Incomprehensible noticing the double irony of inverting the classic mantra “God says, I shall be good” into “Singularity, thou shalt be good”, combined with the fact that you refer to it as the devil. Who knows what it does with this information?
I know what I’ll say if I ever get arrested: Let me be, set me free, or super-me will screw with thee!
Religion does work sometimes, it actually worked on Blaise Pascal who is among the most intelligent people of all time. He argued for the Pascal’s wager, saying that following religion is worth it because the gains are infinite and costs are finite, and we still don’t have a good reply to that. We don’t even have a good reply to Pascal’s mugging, where a random mugger says something like “Let me be, set me free, or super-me will screw with thee!” with an infinitely big promise or threat.
Decision theory and acausal trade is really complicated and I have no idea what the ASI will actually do or think regarding the simulation promise/threat, it’s quite freaky imagining that haha.
Memetically, a religion certainly benefits from someone believing that accepting Pascal’s wager is the correct decision. My reply to it would be “which religion?”, since many make largely equivalent claims while also demanding exclusivity, and I assume that God in his infinite mercy understands the bind this puts people in. It also seems to me that accepting Pascal’s wager leads to something like the simulation of belief.
I agree the “which religion,” “which mugger” is very fuzzy. I didn’t understand the simulation of belief or the link though :/
What I meant was that there seems to be a difference between “genuine” belief vs. converting as a result of accepting Pascal’s wager, which seems like a simulation of belief.
The link is a koan; the idea of pretend-believing reminded me of the boy in it.