One of my issues with arguments about digital people is that I think that at the point at which we have EM’s, we’ve essentially hit the singularity and civilization will look so completely different to what it is now that it’s hard to speculate or meaningfully impact what will happen. To coin a concept label, its beyond the technological event horizon.
A world with EM’s is a world where a small sect with a sufficient desire for expansion could conceivably increase it’s population a thousand fold every hour. It’s a world where you can run ten thousand copies of the top weapons scientist at ten thousand times baseline speed. It’s a world where you can backup a person, play their mind for a bit and then restore from the backup until you know exactly what you need to say/do to get them to act a certain way.
I imagine that all of these possibilities and many more besides them are likely to so radically change political incentives and the relative strengths of various forms of social organization that that a world of EM’s will be so different from modern nations states just as modern states are from chimps.
Still 100% worth thinking about and potentially thinking of ways to influence in a positive direction, but I’m highly sceptical that the world of EM’s is something we have meaningful influence over other than delaying it a bit.
I broadly agree with this. The point of my post was to convey intuitions for why “a world of [digital people] will be so different from modern nations states just as modern states are from chimps,” not to claim that the long-run future will be just as described in Age of Em. I do think despite the likely radical unfamiliarity of such a world, there are properties we can say today it’s pretty likely to have, such as the potential for lock-in and space colonization.
Thanks for the post.
One of my issues with arguments about digital people is that I think that at the point at which we have EM’s, we’ve essentially hit the singularity and civilization will look so completely different to what it is now that it’s hard to speculate or meaningfully impact what will happen. To coin a concept label, its beyond the technological event horizon.
A world with EM’s is a world where a small sect with a sufficient desire for expansion could conceivably increase it’s population a thousand fold every hour. It’s a world where you can run ten thousand copies of the top weapons scientist at ten thousand times baseline speed. It’s a world where you can backup a person, play their mind for a bit and then restore from the backup until you know exactly what you need to say/do to get them to act a certain way.
I imagine that all of these possibilities and many more besides them are likely to so radically change political incentives and the relative strengths of various forms of social organization that that a world of EM’s will be so different from modern nations states just as modern states are from chimps.
Still 100% worth thinking about and potentially thinking of ways to influence in a positive direction, but I’m highly sceptical that the world of EM’s is something we have meaningful influence over other than delaying it a bit.
I broadly agree with this. The point of my post was to convey intuitions for why “a world of [digital people] will be so different from modern nations states just as modern states are from chimps,” not to claim that the long-run future will be just as described in Age of Em. I do think despite the likely radical unfamiliarity of such a world, there are properties we can say today it’s pretty likely to have, such as the potential for lock-in and space colonization.