In my opinion, we are going to need digital people in the long term in order for humanity to survive. Otherwise, we will be overtaken by AI, because substrate-independence and the self-improvement it enables are too powerful of boons to do without. But I definitely agree that it’s something we shouldn’t rush into, and should approach with great caution in order to avoid creating an imbalance of suffering.
Relating to @Toby_Ord ’s comment on this post, I personally weight happiness and an interesting diversity of experiences and accomplishments a lot higher than I negatively weight suffering. I think worrying about suffering is overblown. If many people must suffer in order to strive for some great accomplishment, even if they don’t know that they’re contributing and won’t live to see it come about, I still think their lives have not been in vain. Sure, I’d like to reduce suffering if there isn’t a negative side-effect, like loss of ambition or creativity or meaningful diverse experiences, but I wouldn’t elevate that to anywhere near the same importance as increasing interestingly diverse positive experiences.
I wrote a post expressing my own opinions related to this, and citing a number of further posts also related to this. Hopefully those interested in the subject will find this a helpful resource for further reading: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NRZfxAJztvx2ES5LG/a-path-to-human-autonomy
In my opinion, we are going to need digital people in the long term in order for humanity to survive. Otherwise, we will be overtaken by AI, because substrate-independence and the self-improvement it enables are too powerful of boons to do without. But I definitely agree that it’s something we shouldn’t rush into, and should approach with great caution in order to avoid creating an imbalance of suffering.
Relating to @Toby_Ord ’s comment on this post, I personally weight happiness and an interesting diversity of experiences and accomplishments a lot higher than I negatively weight suffering. I think worrying about suffering is overblown. If many people must suffer in order to strive for some great accomplishment, even if they don’t know that they’re contributing and won’t live to see it come about, I still think their lives have not been in vain. Sure, I’d like to reduce suffering if there isn’t a negative side-effect, like loss of ambition or creativity or meaningful diverse experiences, but I wouldn’t elevate that to anywhere near the same importance as increasing interestingly diverse positive experiences.