I think your formulation is elegant, but I think the real possibilities are lumpier and span many more orders of magnitude (OOMs). Here’s a modification from a comment on a similar idea:
I think there would be some probability mass that we have technological stagnation and population reductions, though the cumulative number of lives would be much larger than alive today. Then there would be some mass on maintaining something like 10 billion people for a billion years (no AI, staying on earth either due to choice or technical reasons). Then there would be AI doing a Dyson swarm, but either because of technical reasons or high discount rate, not going to other stars. Then there would be AI settles the galaxy, but again either because of technical reasons or discount rate, not going to other galaxies. Then there would be settling many galaxies. Then 30 OOMs to the right, there could be another high slope region corresponding to aestivation. And there could be more intermediate states corresponding to various scales of space settlement of biological humans. Even if you ignore the technical barriers, there are still many different levels scale we could choose to end up at. Even if you think the probability should be smoothed because of uncertainties, still there are something like 60 OOMs between survival of biological humans on Earth and digital aestivation. Or are you collapsing all that and just looking at welfare regardless of the scale? Even welfare could span many OOMs.
I think your formulation is elegant, but I think the real possibilities are lumpier and span many more orders of magnitude (OOMs). Here’s a modification from a comment on a similar idea:
I think there would be some probability mass that we have technological stagnation and population reductions, though the cumulative number of lives would be much larger than alive today. Then there would be some mass on maintaining something like 10 billion people for a billion years (no AI, staying on earth either due to choice or technical reasons). Then there would be AI doing a Dyson swarm, but either because of technical reasons or high discount rate, not going to other stars. Then there would be AI settles the galaxy, but again either because of technical reasons or discount rate, not going to other galaxies. Then there would be settling many galaxies. Then 30 OOMs to the right, there could be another high slope region corresponding to aestivation. And there could be more intermediate states corresponding to various scales of space settlement of biological humans. Even if you ignore the technical barriers, there are still many different levels scale we could choose to end up at. Even if you think the probability should be smoothed because of uncertainties, still there are something like 60 OOMs between survival of biological humans on Earth and digital aestivation. Or are you collapsing all that and just looking at welfare regardless of the scale? Even welfare could span many OOMs.