gRR comments on Holden's Objection 1: Friendliness is dangerous - Less Wrong

11 Post author: PhilGoetz 18 May 2012 12:48AM

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Comment author: gRR 26 May 2012 04:04:05PM *  0 points [-]

Space (land or whatever is being used). Mass and energy. Natural resources. Computing power. Finite-supply money and luxuries if such exist. Or are you making an assumption that CEVs are automatically more altruistic or nice than non-extrapolated human volitions are?

These all have property that you only need so much of them. If there is a sufficient amount for everybody, then there is no point in killing in order to get more. I expect CEV-s to not be greedy just for the sake of greed. It's people's CEV-s we're talking about, not paperclip maximizers'.

Well it does need hardcoding: you need to tell the CEV to exclude people whose EVs are too similar to their current values despite learning contrary facts. Or even all those whose belief-updating process differs too much from perfect Bayesian (and how much is too much?) This is something you'd hardcode in, because you could also write ("hardcode") a CEV that does include them, allowing them to keep the EVs close to their current values.

Hmm, we are starting to argue about exact details of extrapolation process...

There are many possible and plausible outcomes besides "everybody loses".

Lets formalize the problem. Let F(R, Ropp) be the probability of a team successfully building a FAI first, given R resources, and having opposition with Ropp resources. Let Uself, Ueverybody, and Uother be the rewards for being first in building FAI<self>, FAI<everybody>, and FAI<other>, respectively. Naturally, F is monotonically increasing in R and decreasing in Ropp, and Uother < Ueverybody < Uself.

Assume there are just two teams, with resources R1 and R2, and each can perform one of two actions: "cooperate" or "defect". Let's compute the expected utilities for the first team:

We cooperate, opponent team cooperates: EU("CC") = Ueverybody * F(R1+R2, 0) We cooperate, opponent team defects: EU("CD") = Ueverybody * F(R1, R2) + Uother * F(R2, R1) We defect, opponent team cooperates: EU("DC") = Uself * F(R1, R2) + Ueverybody * F(R2, R1) We defect, opponent team defects: EU("DD") = Uself * F(R1, R2) + Uother * F(R2, R1)

Then, EU("CD") < EU("DD") < EU("DC"), which gives us most of the structure of a PD problem. The rest, however, depends on the finer details. Let A = F(R1,R2)/F(R1+R2,0) and B = F(R2,R1)/F(R1+R2,0). Then:

  1. If Ueverybody <= Uself*A + Uother*B, then EU("CC") < EU("DD"), and there is no point in cooperating. This is your position: Ueverybody is much less than Uself, or Uother is not much less than Ueverybody, and/or your team has so much more resources than the other.

  2. If Uself*A + Uother*B < Ueverybody < Uself*A/(1-B), this is a true Prisoner's dilemma.

  3. If Ueverybody >= Uself*A/(1-B), then EU("CC") >= EU("DC"), and "cooperate" is the obviously correct decision. This is my position: Ueverybody is not much less than Uself, and/or the teams are more evenly matched.

Comment author: [deleted] 26 May 2012 04:11:44PM 1 point [-]

These all have property that you only need so much of them.

All of those resources are fungible and can be exchanged for time. There might be no limit to the amount of time people desire, even very enlightened posthuman people.

Comment author: gRR 26 May 2012 04:53:13PM *  0 points [-]

I don't think you can get an everywhere-positive exchange rate. There are diminishing returns and a threshold, after which, exchanging more resources won't get you any more time. There's only 30 hours in a day, after all :)

Comment author: DanArmak 26 May 2012 06:55:49PM 0 points [-]

You can use some resources like computation directly and in unlimited amounts (e.g. living for unlimitedly long virtual times per real second inside a simulation). There are some physical limits on that due to speed of light limiting effective brain size, but that depends on brain design and anyway the limits seem to be pretty high.

More generally: number of configurations physically possible in a given volume of space is limited (by the entropy of a black hole). If you have a utility function unbounded from above, as it rises it must eventually map to states that describe more space or matter than the amount you started with. Any utility maximizer with unbounded utility eventually wants to expand.

Comment author: [deleted] 26 May 2012 06:04:59PM 0 points [-]

I don't know what the exchange rates are, but it does cost something (computer time, energy, negentropy) to stay alive. That holds for simulated creatures too. If the available resources to keep someone alive are limited, then I think there will be conflict over those resources.