We could survive by preserving data about humanity (on the Moon or other places), which will be found by the next civilisation on Earth, and they will recreate humans (based on our DNA) and our culture.
Thanks for your comment, I found that paper really interesting and it was definitely an idea I’d not considered before.
My main two questions would be:
1) What is the main value of humanity being resurrected? - We could inherently value the preservation of humanity and it’s culture. However, my intuition would be that humanity would be resurrected in small numbers and these humans might not even have very pleasant lives if they’re being analysed or experimented on. Furthermore the resurrected humans are likely to have very little agency, being controlled by technologically superior beings. Therefore it would seem unlikely that the resurrected humans could create much value, much less achieve a grand future.
2) How valuable would information on humanity be to a civilisation that had technologically surpassed it? - The civilisation that resurrected humanity would probably be much more technologically advanced than humanity, and might even have it’s own AI as mentioned in the paper. It would then seem that it must have overcome many of the technological x-risks to reach that point, so information on humanity succumbing to one may not be that useful. It may not be prepared for certain natural x-risks that could have caused human extinction, but these seem much less likely than manmade x-risks.
The article may reflect my immoralist view point that in almost all circumstances it is better to be alive than not.
Future torture is useless and thus unlikely. Let’s look on humanity: as we mature, we tend to care more about other species that lived on Earth and of minority cultures. Torture for fun or for experiment is only for those who don’t know how to get information or pleasure in other ways. It is unlikely that advance civilization will deliberately torture humans. Even if resurrected humans will not have full agency, they may have much better live than most people on Earth have now.
Reconstruction of the past is universally interesting. We have a mammoth resurrection project, a lot of archeological studies, Sentinel uncontacted tribe preservation program, etc—so we find a lot of value in studying past, preserving and reconstructing it, and I think it is natural for advanced civilizations.
The x-risks information will be vital for them before they get superintelligence (but humans could be resurrected after it). Imagine that Apollo program would find some data storage on the Moon: it will be one of the biggest scientific discoveries of all times. Some information could be useful for end-of-20th-century humanity, like estimation of the probability of natural pandemics or nuclear wars.
Past data is useful. Future civilization on Earth will get a lot of scientific data from other fields of knowledge: biology, geology, even some math problems may be solved by us which they still not solved. Moreover, they will get access to enormous amount of art, which may have fun value (or not).
The resurrection (on good conditions) here is a part of an acasual deal from our side, similar to Parfit’s hitchhiker. They may not take their side of the deal, so there is a risk. Or they may do it much later, after they advance to interstellar civilization and will know that there is a minimal risk and cost for them. For example, if they give 0.0001 of all their resources to us, but colonise a whole galaxy, it is still 10 million stars under human control, or bilion bilions of human beings: much better than extinction.
TL;DR: if there is any value at human existence, it is reasonable to desire resurrection of humanity (under no-torture conditions) + they will get x-risks useful information on earlier stage (end-20th-century equivalent) than they will actually resurrect us (they may do it much later, only if this information was useful, thus closing the deal).
I definitely see your point on the value of information to the future civilisation. The technology required to reach the moon and find the cache is likely quite different to the level required to resurrect humanity from the cache so the information could still be very valuable.
An interesting consideration may be how we value a planet being under human control vs control of this new civilisation. We may think we cannot assume that the new civilisation would be doing valuable things but that a human planet would be quite valuable. This consideration would depend a lot on your moral beliefs. If we don’t extrapolate the value of humanity to the value of this new civilisation, we could then ask whether we can extrapolate from how humanity would respond to finding the cache on the moon to how the new civilisation would respond.
If they evolve, say, from cats, they will share the same type-values: power, sex, love to children as all mammals. By token-values will be different as they will like not human children but kittens etc. An advance non-human civilization may be more similar to ours than we-now to Ancient Egyptian, as it would have more rational world models.
We could survive by preserving data about humanity (on the Moon or other places), which will be found by the next civilisation on Earth, and they will recreate humans (based on our DNA) and our culture.
Thanks for your comment, I found that paper really interesting and it was definitely an idea I’d not considered before.
My main two questions would be:
1) What is the main value of humanity being resurrected? - We could inherently value the preservation of humanity and it’s culture. However, my intuition would be that humanity would be resurrected in small numbers and these humans might not even have very pleasant lives if they’re being analysed or experimented on. Furthermore the resurrected humans are likely to have very little agency, being controlled by technologically superior beings. Therefore it would seem unlikely that the resurrected humans could create much value, much less achieve a grand future.
2) How valuable would information on humanity be to a civilisation that had technologically surpassed it? - The civilisation that resurrected humanity would probably be much more technologically advanced than humanity, and might even have it’s own AI as mentioned in the paper. It would then seem that it must have overcome many of the technological x-risks to reach that point, so information on humanity succumbing to one may not be that useful. It may not be prepared for certain natural x-risks that could have caused human extinction, but these seem much less likely than manmade x-risks.
Thanks again for such an interesting paper!
The article may reflect my immoralist view point that in almost all circumstances it is better to be alive than not.
Future torture is useless and thus unlikely. Let’s look on humanity: as we mature, we tend to care more about other species that lived on Earth and of minority cultures. Torture for fun or for experiment is only for those who don’t know how to get information or pleasure in other ways. It is unlikely that advance civilization will deliberately torture humans. Even if resurrected humans will not have full agency, they may have much better live than most people on Earth have now.
Reconstruction of the past is universally interesting. We have a mammoth resurrection project, a lot of archeological studies, Sentinel uncontacted tribe preservation program, etc—so we find a lot of value in studying past, preserving and reconstructing it, and I think it is natural for advanced civilizations.
The x-risks information will be vital for them before they get superintelligence (but humans could be resurrected after it). Imagine that Apollo program would find some data storage on the Moon: it will be one of the biggest scientific discoveries of all times. Some information could be useful for end-of-20th-century humanity, like estimation of the probability of natural pandemics or nuclear wars.
Past data is useful. Future civilization on Earth will get a lot of scientific data from other fields of knowledge: biology, geology, even some math problems may be solved by us which they still not solved. Moreover, they will get access to enormous amount of art, which may have fun value (or not).
The resurrection (on good conditions) here is a part of an acasual deal from our side, similar to Parfit’s hitchhiker. They may not take their side of the deal, so there is a risk. Or they may do it much later, after they advance to interstellar civilization and will know that there is a minimal risk and cost for them. For example, if they give 0.0001 of all their resources to us, but colonise a whole galaxy, it is still 10 million stars under human control, or bilion bilions of human beings: much better than extinction.
TL;DR: if there is any value at human existence, it is reasonable to desire resurrection of humanity (under no-torture conditions) + they will get x-risks useful information on earlier stage (end-20th-century equivalent) than they will actually resurrect us (they may do it much later, only if this information was useful, thus closing the deal).
Thanks for your response!
I definitely see your point on the value of information to the future civilisation. The technology required to reach the moon and find the cache is likely quite different to the level required to resurrect humanity from the cache so the information could still be very valuable.
An interesting consideration may be how we value a planet being under human control vs control of this new civilisation. We may think we cannot assume that the new civilisation would be doing valuable things but that a human planet would be quite valuable. This consideration would depend a lot on your moral beliefs. If we don’t extrapolate the value of humanity to the value of this new civilisation, we could then ask whether we can extrapolate from how humanity would respond to finding the cache on the moon to how the new civilisation would respond.
If they evolve, say, from cats, they will share the same type-values: power, sex, love to children as all mammals. By token-values will be different as they will like not human children but kittens etc. An advance non-human civilization may be more similar to ours than we-now to Ancient Egyptian, as it would have more rational world models.