First, there are still huge uncertainties about whether there will actually be digital minds who are actually sentient. The uncertainties are much higher than for wild animals. We know both that sentient wild animals can exist, and that a lot of them will exist (for a certain amount of time), but we have uncertainties on whether sentient digital minds are possible, and also, if they are possible, whether they will actually be produced in huge numbers.
I agree but I don’t think this changes much. There can be so many digital minds for so long, that in terms of expected value, I think that digital minds dominate even if you think that there is only a 10% chance that they can be sentient, and a 1% chance that they will exist in high numbers (which I think is unreasonable). I explain why I think that here. Although I’ve just skimmed it and I don’t think I did a great job at it, I remember reading a much better explanation somewhere, I’ll try to find it later.
For now, I’ll just add one more argument to it: Stuart Armstrong makes it seem like it’s not that difficult to build a Dyson Sphere by disassembling a planet like Mercury. I imagine that the materials and energy from disassembling planets could also be probably used to build A LOT of digital minds. Animals are only able to use resources from the surface layer of a small fraction of planets and they are not doing it that efficiently. Anyway, I want to look into this topic deeper myself, I may write more here when I do.
Participating in CLR’s fellowship does make you more informed about their internal views. Thank you for sharing that. I am personally not convinced by CLR’s open publications that those are things that would in expectation reduce s-risk substantially. But mabye that’s due to my lack of mathematical and computer science capabilities.
I agree but I don’t think this changes much. There can be so many digital minds for so long, that in terms of expected value, I think that digital minds dominate even if you think that there is only a 10% chance that they can be sentient, and a 1% chance that they will exist in high numbers (which I think is unreasonable).
I would have the same conclusion if have the same probabilities you assigned, and the same meaning of “high numbers”. I believe my credence on this should depend on whether we are the only planet with civilization now. If yes, and if by high numbers it means >10,000x of that of the expected number of wild animals there will be in the universe, my current credence that there actually will be a high number of digital beings created is <1/10000 (in fact, contrary to what you believe, I think a significant portion of this would come from the urge to simulate the whole universe’s history of wild animals) BTW, I change my credence on this topics rapidly and with orders or magnitudes of changes, and there are many considerations related to this. So I might have changed my mind the next time we discuss this.
But I do have other considerations that would likely make me conclude that, if there are ways to reduce digital being suffering, this is a or even the priority. These considerations can be summarized to one question: If sentient digital beings can exist and will exist, how deeply will they suffer? It seems to me that on digital (or even non-biological analog) hardware, suffering can go much stronger and run much faster than on biological hardware.
I agree but I don’t think this changes much. There can be so many digital minds for so long, that in terms of expected value, I think that digital minds dominate even if you think that there is only a 10% chance that they can be sentient, and a 1% chance that they will exist in high numbers (which I think is unreasonable). I explain why I think that here. Although I’ve just skimmed it and I don’t think I did a great job at it, I remember reading a much better explanation somewhere, I’ll try to find it later.
For now, I’ll just add one more argument to it: Stuart Armstrong makes it seem like it’s not that difficult to build a Dyson Sphere by disassembling a planet like Mercury. I imagine that the materials and energy from disassembling planets could also be probably used to build A LOT of digital minds. Animals are only able to use resources from the surface layer of a small fraction of planets and they are not doing it that efficiently. Anyway, I want to look into this topic deeper myself, I may write more here when I do.
Thank you for your replies Saulius.
Participating in CLR’s fellowship does make you more informed about their internal views. Thank you for sharing that. I am personally not convinced by CLR’s open publications that those are things that would in expectation reduce s-risk substantially. But mabye that’s due to my lack of mathematical and computer science capabilities.
I would have the same conclusion if have the same probabilities you assigned, and the same meaning of “high numbers”. I believe my credence on this should depend on whether we are the only planet with civilization now. If yes, and if by high numbers it means >10,000x of that of the expected number of wild animals there will be in the universe, my current credence that there actually will be a high number of digital beings created is <1/10000 (in fact, contrary to what you believe, I think a significant portion of this would come from the urge to simulate the whole universe’s history of wild animals) BTW, I change my credence on this topics rapidly and with orders or magnitudes of changes, and there are many considerations related to this. So I might have changed my mind the next time we discuss this.
But I do have other considerations that would likely make me conclude that, if there are ways to reduce digital being suffering, this is a or even the priority. These considerations can be summarized to one question: If sentient digital beings can exist and will exist, how deeply will they suffer? It seems to me that on digital (or even non-biological analog) hardware, suffering can go much stronger and run much faster than on biological hardware.