Rob Wiblin: OK, so the argument is something like valuing is a process that requires information to be encoded, and information to be processed — and there are just maximum limits on how much information can be encoded and processed given a particular amount of mass and given a finite amount of mass and energy. So that ultimately is going to set the limit on how much valuing can be done physically in our universe. No matter what things we create, no matter what minds we generate, there’s going to be some finite limit there. That’s basically it?
Anders Sandberg: That’s it. In some sense, this is kind of trivial. I think some readers would no doubt feel almost cheated, because they wanted to know that metaphysical limit for value, and we can’t say anything about that. But it seems very likely that if value has to have to do with some entity that is doing the valuing, then there is always going to be this limit — especially since the universe is inconveniently organised in such a way that we can’t get hold of infinite computational power, as far as we know.
Sandberg’s recent 80K podcast interview transcript has this quote: