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MixedNuts comments on Rationality Quotes September 2012 - Less Wrong
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I think I disagree; care to make it precise enough to bet on? I'm expecting life still around, Earth the main population center, most humans not uploaded, some people dying of disease or old age or in wars, most people performing dispreferred activities in exchange for scarce resources at least a couple months in their lives, most children coming out of a biological parent and not allowed to take major decisions for themselves for at least a decade.
I'm offering $100 at even odds right now and will probably want to bet again in the next few years. I can give it to you (if you're going to transfer it to SIAI/CFAR tell me and I'll donate directly), and you pay me $200 if the world has not ended in 100 years as soon as we're both available (e.g. thawed). If you die you can keep the money; if I die then win give it to some sensible charity.
How's that sound? All of the above is up for negotiation.
(Neglecting any logistic or legal isses) this sounds like a no brainer for Eliezer (accept).
Like you would be better served by making the amounts you give and expect to receive if you win somewhat more proportionate to expected utility of the resources at the time. If Eliezer was sure he was going to lose he should still take the low interest loan.
Even once the above is accounted for Eliezer should still accept the bet (in principle).
Dollar amounts are meant as purchasing-power-adjusted. I am sticking my fingers in my ears and chanting "La la, can't hear you" at discounting effects.
That's a nice set of criteria by which to distinguish various futures (and futurists).
As wedifrid says, this is a no-brainer "accept" (including the purchasing-power-adjusted caveat). If you are inside the US and itemize deductions, please donate to SIAI, otherwise I'll accept via Paypal. Your implied annual interest rate assuming a 100% probability of winning is 0.7% (plus inflation adjustment). Please let me know whether you decide to go through with it; withdrawal is completely understandable - I have no particular desire for money at the cost of forcing someone else to go through with a bet they feel uncomfortable about. (Or rather, my desire for $100 is not this strong - I would probably find $100,000 much more tempting.)
PayPal-ed to sentience at pobox dot com.
Don't worry, my only debitor who pays higher interest rates than that is my bank. As long as that's not my main liquidity bottleneck I'm happy to follow medieval morality on lending.
If you publish transaction data to confirm the bet, please remove my legal name.
Bet received. I feel vaguely guilty and am reminding myself hard that money in my Paypal account is hopefully a good thing from a consequentialist standpoint.
Bet recorded: LW bet registry, PB.com.
Care to explain why? You sound like you expect nanotech by then.
I definitely expect nanotech a few orders of magnitude awesomer than we have now. I expect great progress on aging and disease, and wouldn't be floored by them being solved in theory (though it does sound hard). What I don't expect is worldwide deployment. There are still people dying from measles, when in any halfway-developed country every baby gets an MMR shot as a matter of course. I wouldn't be too surprised if everyone who can afford basic care in rich countries was immortal while thousands of brown kids kept drinking poo water and dying. I also expect longevity treatments to be long-term, not permanent fixes, and thus hard to access in poor or politically unstable countries.
The above requires poor countries to continue existing. I expect great progress, but not abolition of poverty. If development continues the way it has (e.g. Brazil), a century isn't quite enough for Somalia to get its act together. If there's a game-changing, universally available advance that bumps everyone to cutting-edge tech levels (or even 2012 tech levels), then I won't regret that $100 much.
I have no idea what wars will look like, but I don't expect them to be nonexistent or nonlethal. Given no game-changer, socioeconomic factors vary too slowly to remove incentive for war. Straightforward tech applications (get a superweapon, get a superdefense, give everyone a superweapon, etc.) get you very different war strategies, but not world peace. If you do something really clever like world government nobody's unhappy with, arms-race-proof shields for everyone, or mass Gandhification, then I have happily lost.
Thanks for explaining!
Of course, nanotech could be self replicating and thus exponentially cheap, but the likelihood of that is ... debatable.