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thomblake comments on Objections to Coherent Extrapolated Volition - Less Wrong
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This line of reasoning is hardly limited to CEV. I'm reminded of Bishop Wright's apocryphal sermon about how we've pretty much discovered everything there is to discover.
Sure, if we progress far enough, fast enough, that all the meaningful problems I can conceive of are solved and all the meaningful goals I can imagine are reached, then there will only be two kinds of people: people solving problems I can't conceive of in order to achieve goals I can't imagine, and people living without meaningful goals and problems. We have the latter group today; I suspect we'll have them tomorrow as well.
The possibility of their continued existence -- even the possibility that everyone will be in that category -- doesn't strike me as a good enough reason to avoid such progress.
I'm also tempted to point out that there's something inherently inconsistent about a future where the absence of meaningful problems to solve is a meaningful problem, although I suspect that's just playing with words.
I don't think that's just playing with words. If we've solved all the problems, then we've solved that problem. We shouldn't assume a priori that solving that problem is impossible.
See also: fun theory.
I agree with you that we shouldn't assume that finding meaningful activities for people to engage in as we progress is impossible. Not least of which because I think it is possible.
Actually, I'd say something stronger: I think right now we suck as a species at understanding what sorts of activities are meaningful and how to build a social infrastructure that creates such activities, and that we are suffering for the lack of it (and have done for millenia), and that we are just starting to develop tools with which to engage with this problem efficiently. In a few generations we might really see some progress in this area.
Nevertheless, I suspect that an argument of the form "lack of meaningful activity due to the solving of all problems is a logical contradiction, because such a lack of meaningful activity would then be an unsolved problem" is just playing with words, because the supposed contradiction is due entirely to the fact that the word "problem" means subtly different things in its two uses in that sentence.
Can you explain what those two meanings are?
I don't mean anything deep by it, just that for example a system might be able to optimize our environment to .99 human-optimal (which is pretty well approximated by the phrase "solving all problems") and thereby create, say, a pervasive and crippling sense of ennui that it can't yet resolve (which would constitute a "problem"). There's no contradiction in that scenario; the illusion of contradiction is created entirely by the sloppiness of language.
I don't think I follow; if the environment is .99 human-optimal, then that remaining .01 gap implies that there are some problems remain to be solved, however few or minor, right?
It might simply be impossible to solve all problems, because of conflicting dependencies.
Yes, I agree that the remaining .01 gap represents problems that remain to be solved, which implies that "solving all problems" doesn't literally apply to that scenario. If you're suggesting that therefore such a scenario isn't well-enough approximated by the phrase "solving all problems" to justify the phrase's use, we have different understandings of the level of justification required.