Not exactly / only sci-fi, but Rational Reads is a good place to look if you liked HPMOR.
plex
Karma: 580
hm, that intuition seems plausible.
The other point that comes to mind is that if you have a classical simulation running on a quantum world, maybe that counts as branching for the purposes of where we expect to find ourselves? I’m still somewhat confused about whether exact duplicates ‘count’, but if they do then maybe the branching factor of the underlying reality carries over to sims running further down the stack?
As someone who mostly expects to be in a simulation, this is the clearest and most plausible anti-simulation-hypothesis argument I’ve seen, thanks.
How does it hold up against the point that the universe looks large enough to support a large number of even fully-quantum single-world simulations (with a low-resolution approximation of the rest of reality), even if it costs many orders of magnitude more resources to run them?
Perhaps would-be simulators would tend not to value the extra information from full-quantum simulations enough to build many or even any of them? My guess is that many purposes for simulations would want to explore a bunch of the possibility tree, but depending on how costly very large quantum computers are to mature civilizations maybe they’d just get by with a bunch of low-branching factor simulations instead?
Maybe something about the collapse of sensemaking and the ability of people to build a shared understanding of what’s going on, partly due to rapid changes in communications technology transforming the memetic landscape?
We’ve duped EVERYONE.
At age 5 I am told that every single morning as we drove to school I said to my mother that it was a waste of time. Shockingly, she listened, and after a year of this she had found out about home education and made arrangements for me to be released.
I am beyond glad to have avoided most of formal education, despite having been put back into it twice during my teenage years for several years each time. The difference between my motivation to learn, social fulfilment, and general wellbeing was dramatic.I am curious about what alternatives could be built with modern technology, and whether a message like this could spread enough to shift a notable fraction of children to freedom.
I’ve read a lot of books in the self-help/therapy/psychology cluster, but this is the first which gives a clear and plausible model of why the mental structure they’re all working with (IFS exiles, EMDR unprocessed memories, trauma) has enough fitness-enhancing value to evolve despite the obvious costs.
A couple of months ago I did some research into the impact of quantum computing on cryptocurrencies, seems maybe significant, and a decent number of LWers hold cryptocurrency. I’m not sure if this is the kind of content that’s wanted, but I could write up a post on it.
Should most of Inadequate Equilibria be tagged with this?
This seems important to me too. I have some hope that it’s at least possibly deferrable until post-singularity, e.g. have the AI let everyone know it exists and will provide for everyone’s basic needs for a year while they think about what they want the future to look like. Stuart Armstrong’s fiction Just another day in utopia and The Adventure: a new Utopia story are examples of exploring possible answers to what we want.
After reading the Arbital page on Mild Optimization, it seems like a distinct cluster so I’m going ahead and making a new tag. And adding a link to that page from the Mild Optimization tag.
I’m not sure whether to create a new tag “Satisficer” or add “Mild Optimization” to the following posts (or do something else entirely):
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/edCNSXLi3tWok4WEg/creating-a-satisficer
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9LpCaXwqzt43GachP/defining-a-limited-satisficer
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2qCxguXuZERZNKcNi/satisficers-want-to-become-maximisers (already tagged Mild Optimization + Optimization)
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FBSYN2fRPppzmoxF5/anti-pascaline-satisficer
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tb9KnFvPEoFSkQTX2/satisficers-undefined-behaviour
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Z9JXaABGkQcWyvLKB/is-satificing-optimisation
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5MW3DWbvcrztvKnMS/in-praise-of-maximizing-with-some-caveats
The only model which I’ve come across which seems like it handles this type of thought experiment without breaking is UDASSA.
Consider a computer which is 2 atoms thick running a simulation of you. Suppose this computer can be divided down the middle into two 1 atom thick computers which would both run the same simulation independently. We are faced with an unfortunate dichotomy: either the 2 atom thick simulation has the same weight as two 1 atom thick simulations put together, or it doesn’t.
In the first case, we have to accept that some computer simulations count for more, even if they are running the same simulation (or we have to de-duplicate the set of all experiences, which leads to serious problems with Boltzmann machines). In this case, we are faced with the problem of comparing different substrates, and it seems impossible not to make arbitrary choices.
In the second case, we have to accept that the operation of dividing the 2 atom thick computer has moral value, which is even worse. Where exactly does the transition occur? What if each layer of the 2 atom thick computer can run independently before splitting? Is physical contact really significant? What about computers that aren’t physically coherent? What two 1 atom thick computers periodically synchronize themselves and self-destruct if they aren’t synchronized: does this synchronization effectively destroy one of the copies? I know of no way to accept this possibility without extremely counter-intuitive consequences.
UDASSA implies that simulations on the 2 atom thick computer count for twice as much as simulations on the 1 atom thick computer, because they are easier to specify. Given a description of one of the 1 atom thick computers, then there are two descriptions of equal complexity that point to the simulation running on the 2 atom thick computer: one description pointing to each layer of the 2 atom thick computer. When a 2 atom thick computer splits, the total number of descriptions pointing to the experience it is simulating doesn’t change.
The Cost of Communication covers a very similar argument in a lot more detail, particularly with stronger grounding in memetic theory:
The basic argument of this post has 4 main components:
Memetic Immune Systems: Just like there is a biological immune system for viruses, there may be a memetic immune system that decides which ideas, a.k.a. memes, are adopted by the individual. This memetic immune system would not select for “good” or true ideas. It would select for ideas that are beneficial to the carrier’s germline.
Increased Memetic Competition Selects for Attention-Grabbing Memes: Memes spread via attention; it is a resource they require and compete for (Chielens, 2002). Increasing our ability to communicate with each other means that memes can spread more easily, by definition. Increasing the ability of memes to propagate means they have to compete with a wider range of memes for the same attention budget. This selects for more and more competitive and attention-capturing memes. The selection for competitive memes can produce very dangerous ideas that are successful in spreading despite being negatively correlated with humanity’s well-being. Also discussed in this sub-section is the effect increased communication bandwidth seems to have had on social media addiction and local news organisations: not good.
Memetic Kin Selection and the Emergence of Groups: Memes are unlike biological genes in that they can rapidly signal their presence in a carrier. Therefore, they can take moment-to-moment advantage of relative levels of perceived memes in the local population to adopt their spreading strategy. This leads to some interesting behaviours, e.g. in-group/out-group dynamics, preference falsification, mobs of non-genetically-related individuals, etc.
The Problem of Critical Density and the Evil Triad: Some memes are detrimental to the well-being of the general population. In other words, they are “bad” ideas, negatively correlated with humanity’s well-being. For a subset of those memes, it takes time to figure out why they are bad and for competing memes to emerge. However, because of the ability of memes to coordinate with copies of themselves (Point 3), memes can reach a critical density in a population. At that point, arguing against them becomes very difficult, e.g. you are arguing against a mob, against dogma, etc. As such, in the case of dangerous memes reaching critical density, the speed at which memes can spread may pose a public health risk. Additionally, if these memes spread via polarization, then arguing against them can be ineffective. To combat these kinds of “Evil Triad” memes, it may be that memetic social distancing, i.e. reduced communication between individuals, would be a successful strategy.
Great Founder Theory looks like a detailed (and lengthy) attempt to answer something close to this.
What drives social change throughout history and the present? What are the origins of institutional health or sclerosis? My answer is that a small number of functional institutions founded by exceptional individuals form the core of society. These institutions are imperfectly imitated by the rest of society, multiplying their effect. The original versions outperform their imitators, and are responsible for the creation and renewal of society and all the good things that come with it—whether we think of technology, wealth, or the preservation of a society’s values. Over time, functional institutions decay. As the landscape of founders and institutions changes, so does the landscape of society.
This answer forms the basis of the lens through which I analyze current and historical events, affairs, and figures. But though it may be intuitively compelling, fully substantiating such a framework is no small task. This manuscript, titled Great Founder Theory, is my substantiation. It explains all of the models that are key to understanding how great founders shape society through the generations, covering such topics as strategy, power, knowledge, social technology, and more.
Thinking about some things I may write. If any of them sound interesting to you let me know and I’ll probably be much more motivated to create it. If you’re up for reviewing drafts and/or having a video call to test ideas that would be even better.
Memetics mini-sequence (https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/memetics has a few good things, but no introduction to what seems like a very useful set of concepts for world-modelling)
Book Review: The Meme Machine (focused on general principles and memetic pressures toward altruism)
Meme-Gene and Meme-Meme co-evolution (focused on memeplexes and memetic defences/filters, could be just a part of the first post if both end up shortish)
The Memetic Tower of Generate and Test (a set of ideas about the specific memetic processes not present in genetic evolution, inspired by Dennet’s tower of generate and test)
(?) Moloch in the Memes (even if we have an omnibenevolent AI god looking out for sentient well-being, things maybe get weird in the long term as ideas become more competent replicators/persisters if the overseer is focusing on the good and freedom of individuals rather than memes. I probably won’t actually write this, because I don’t have much more than some handwavey ideas about a situation that is really hard to think about.)
Unusual Artefacts of Communication (some rare and possibly good ways of sharing ideas, e.g. Conversation Menu, CYOA, Arbital Paths, call for ideas. Maybe best as a question with a few pre-written answers?)
plex’s Shortform
Here’s a take on why it’s gotten harder to form and maintain beneficial institutions and social structures, using my favourite lens: Memetics.
(I mentioned this briefly on the group call, but I missed part of the model before, and can expose it to more people here)
Enough people have a preference for hosting memes which are broadly prosocial, build a legacy, etc, and for co-operating with others who have this kind of preference to create self-sustaining cultures, so long as you get founding right and people can generally distinguish prosocial memes from others
People over time have a roughly stable personal ability to distinguish memes that have good effects from ones more optimised for spreading at the cost of important norms
Technologies have progressively lowered barriers to communication, allowing
More rapid evolution of memes which are better at fooling the distinguishing mechanisms while actually being hyper-optimised for self-promotion and disabling parts of the social environment’s memetic immune system (e.g. fear of call-out/cancel culture reducing the ability of subcultures to reject it and related memes, even when there would normally be antibodies reacting to a meme’s effects).
These highly optimised memes to be more rapidly spread into local cultures. A stable system need a certain dose of a virus or memeplex to become infected rather than petering out against the local background culture. A system gets a founding dose of alien memes much more often when new members maintain stronger connections to their old tribe (reinforce old memetic patterns), is broadly more exposed to flows of memes, and when likeminded people can more easily find each other to form a locally reinforcing group.
This means that on an individual level people end up less able to sort valuable thought patterns like old NYT’s culture from viral patterns, and on a cultural level are less able to maintain “cell walls” against memeplexes competing for space in their substrate’s brains.
I also think there some stuff around having hyper-optimised memes delivered by a hyper-optimised Out to Get You attention economy cutting into the free mindspace which is important for distinguishing prosocial from self-promoting memes, so maybe we’re also getting worse at that at the same time as the job gets harder in several ways.
Problem #1 is that it is almost entirely focused on electricity which is only roughly 25% of the problem.
What is the other 75% of the problem which can’t be solved with electricity?
#2 <infrastructure>
Can see this raising the cost substantially, but given that only 8-9% of GDP is spent on energy, we can maybe eat that and survive?
#3 <pumped hydro for seasonal>
That does sound like a bad assumption, and lowers my opinion of any paper which makes it.
I have done a ppt but I am revising it over the next weeks in response to comments. I will post it here when done.
Looking forward to it.
For a renewable solution you need to expend large amounts of energy removing the CO2 from the air and finding a way to store it.
If the point of renewables is to stop climate change, yes. If the point is to keep civilisation running at all, no, you can just eat the CO2.
I do not see how you are going to stop the locked in population growth. and economic growth in LDCs is proceeding apace.
Population growth, agreed. But, if energy costs start seriously rising, economic growth will naturally slow or reverse, no?
I agree that if technological development productivity was held at a low level indefinitely that could be fatal, but that is a fairly different claim from the one waveman is making—which is that in the nearish term we will be unable to maintain our civilisation.
I am also hopeful that we can reach technological escape velocity with current or even fewer people with reasonable economic wellbeing.
Raw size feels like part of the story, yeah, but my guess is increased communications leading to more rapid selection for memes which are sticky is also a notable factor.