In looking at longest-term scenarios, I suspect there might be useful structure&constraints available if we take seriously the idea that consciousness is a likely optimization target of sufficiently intelligent civilizations. I offered the following on Robin Hanson’s blog:
Premise 1: Eventually, civilizations progress until they can engage in megascale engineering: Dyson spheres, etc.
Premise 2: Consciousness is the home of value: Disneyland with no children is valueless. Premise 2.1: Over the long term we should expect at least some civilizations to fall into the attractor of treating consciousness as their intrinsic optimization target.
Premise 3: There will be convergence that some qualia are intrinsically valuable, and what sorts of qualia are such.
Conjecture: A key piece of evidence for discerning the presence of advanced alien civilizations will be megascale objects which optimize for the production of intrinsically valuable qualia.
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Essentially: I think formal consciousness research could generate a new heuristic for both how to parse cosmological data for intelligent civilizations, and what longest-term future humanity may choose for itself.
Physicalism seems plausible, and the formulation of physicalism I most believe in (dual-aspect monism) has physics and phenomenology as two sides of the same coin. As Tegmark notes, “humans … aren’t the optimal solution to any well-defined physics problem.” Similarly, humans aren’t the optimal solution to any well-defined phenomenological problem.
I can’t say I know for sure we’ll settle on filling the universe with such an “optimal solution”, nor would I advocate anything at this point, but if we’re looking for starting threads for how to conceptualize the longest-term optimization targets of humanity, a little consciousness research might go a long way.
I like this theme a lot!
In looking at longest-term scenarios, I suspect there might be useful structure&constraints available if we take seriously the idea that consciousness is a likely optimization target of sufficiently intelligent civilizations. I offered the following on Robin Hanson’s blog:
Premise 1: Eventually, civilizations progress until they can engage in megascale engineering: Dyson spheres, etc.
Premise 2: Consciousness is the home of value: Disneyland with no children is valueless.
Premise 2.1: Over the long term we should expect at least some civilizations to fall into the attractor of treating consciousness as their intrinsic optimization target.
Premise 3: There will be convergence that some qualia are intrinsically valuable, and what sorts of qualia are such.
Conjecture: A key piece of evidence for discerning the presence of advanced alien civilizations will be megascale objects which optimize for the production of intrinsically valuable qualia.
--
Essentially: I think formal consciousness research could generate a new heuristic for both how to parse cosmological data for intelligent civilizations, and what longest-term future humanity may choose for itself.
Physicalism seems plausible, and the formulation of physicalism I most believe in (dual-aspect monism) has physics and phenomenology as two sides of the same coin. As Tegmark notes, “humans … aren’t the optimal solution to any well-defined physics problem.” Similarly, humans aren’t the optimal solution to any well-defined phenomenological problem.
I can’t say I know for sure we’ll settle on filling the universe with such an “optimal solution”, nor would I advocate anything at this point, but if we’re looking for starting threads for how to conceptualize the longest-term optimization targets of humanity, a little consciousness research might go a long way.
More:
https://opentheory.net/2019/09/whats-out-there/
https://opentheory.net/2019/06/taking-monism-seriously/
https://opentheory.net/2019/02/simulation-argument/