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Gunnar_Zarncke comments on Open thread, Jul. 11 - Jul. 17, 2016 - Less Wrong
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Comments (131)
By now I have read (or skimmed) so many reviews of Age of Em that I probably could have read the book myself...
Anyway.
I though about the two future paths: A Hansonian Em future and a machine AI future. I wondered how to reconcile the (seeming?) contradiction between them. Then the idea occurred to me that maybe that both can be (mostly? partly?) true:
If FAI is possible it will likely make Ems possible shortly after. If it is friendly as assumed then an exploitation of the Ems (loss of human value) as feared by many comments is ruled out by construction. What remains are things that are essentially human in social regards and efficient in economic terms.
If Robin Hanson is correct in his assumptions about economics and society are correct then I think the world created by FAI may play out as described by him. At least as long as it takes to go to the next level. Which may be quite short. As predicted by Hanson too.
I know regard reading a book a not so trivial investment of time and energy, given the huge quantity of possible books I could be reading right now.
Is there any particular reason to believe Hanson's beliefs? So that it makes sense to anticipate the future the way he does?
There's no particular reason to believe all of his predictions. But that's also true of anyone else who makes as many predictions as the book does (on similar topics).
When you say "anticipate the future the way he does", are you asking whether you should believe there's a 10% chance of his scenario being basicly right?
Nobody should have much confidence in such predictions, and when Robin talks explicitly about his confidence, he doesn't sound very confident.
Good forecasters consider multiple models before making predictions (see Tetlock's work). Reading the book is a better way for most people to develop an additional model of how the future might be than reading new LW comments.
If your model doesn't even get to 10%, then I say: unless you have hundreds of competing models in your mind (who has?), then do not even bother.
Your comment helped me reach the conclusion that reading AoE would be a waste of time.