To those who say "Nothing is real," I once replied, "That's great, but how does the nothing work?"
Suppose you learned, suddenly and definitively, that nothing is moral and nothing is right; that everything is permissible and nothing is forbidden.
Devastating news, to be sure—and no, I am not telling you this in real life. But suppose I did tell it to you. Suppose that, whatever you think is the basis of your moral philosophy, I convincingly tore it apart, and moreover showed you that nothing could fill its place. Suppose I proved that all utilities equaled zero.
I know that Your-Moral-Philosophy is as true and undisprovable as 2 + 2 = 4. But still, I ask that you do your best to perform the thought experiment, and concretely envision the possibilities even if they seem painful, or pointless, or logically incapable of any good reply.
Would you still tip cabdrivers? Would you cheat on your Significant Other? If a child lay fainted on the train tracks, would you still drag them off?
Would you still eat the same kinds of foods—or would you only eat the cheapest food, since there's no reason you should have fun—or would you eat very expensive food, since there's no reason you should save money for tomorrow?
Would you wear black and write gloomy poetry and denounce all altruists as fools? But there's no reason you should do that—it's just a cached thought.
Would you stay in bed because there was no reason to get up? What about when you finally got hungry and stumbled into the kitchen—what would you do after you were done eating?
Would you go on reading Overcoming Bias, and if not, what would you read instead? Would you still try to be rational, and if not, what would you think instead?
Close your eyes, take as long as necessary to answer:
What would you do, if nothing were right?
The way I frame this question is "what if I executed my personal volition extrapolating FAI, it ran, created a pretty light show, and then did nothing, and I checked over the code many times with many people who also knew the theory and we all agreed that it should have worked, then tried again with completely different code many (maybe 100 or 1000 or millions) times, sometimes extrapolating somewhat different volitions with somewhat different dynamics and each time it produced the same pretty light show and then did nothing. Lets say I have spend a few thousand years on this while running as an upload. Now what?"
In this scenario there's no optimization reason I shouldn't just execute cached thoughts. In fact, that's pretty much what anything I do in this scenario amounts to doing. Executing cached thoughts does, of course, happen lawfully, so there is a reason to dress in black etc in that sense. I used to be pretty good at writing some sad but mostly non-gloomy poetry and denouncing people as fools. Might be even more fun to do that with other modified upload copies of myself. When that got old, maybe use my knowledge of FAI theory to build myself a philosophy of math oracle neural module. Hard to guess how my actions would differ once it was brought on-line. It seems to me that it might add up to normality because there might be an irreducible difference between utility for me and utility for an external AGI even if it was an extrapolation of my volition, but for now I'm a blind man speculating on the relative merits of Picasso and Van Gogh.
Honestly I'm much less concerned about this scenario than I once was. Pretty convinced that there are ways to extrapolate me that do something even if they discover infinite computing power.
Dynamically linked: No-one but nerds and children care what moral philosophies say anyway, at least, not in a way that effects their actions. You, TGGP and Unknown are very atypical. Poke is much closer to correct. If anything, when the dust settled the world would be more peaceful if most people understood the proof.
Eric Mesoy: If utilities = 0 then dying from malnourishment isn't horrible.
Andy M: Your answer sounds more appropriate for someone fairly shallow and 20 years old who discovers that the world or his life will end in 6 months than for someone for whom utilities are set to zero or morality is lost.
Constant Pablo and especially Sebastian: Clearly thought! I should probably start reading your comments more carefully in the future.
Laura: Why unsympathetic? My guess is that you still confuse my and Eliezer's aspirations with some puerile Nietzschean ambition. I like who I am now too thank you very much, and if my extrapolated volition does want to replace who I am it is for reasons that I would approve of if I knew them, e.g. what it will replace me with is not "completely different, incomprehensible, and unsympathetic". That's the difference between a positive and a negative singularity. Death isn't abhorrent, life/experience/growth/joy/flourishing/fulfillment, rather, is good, and a universe more full of them more good than one less full, whether viewed from inside or from outside. Math is full of both death and flourishing and is not lessened by the former.
Phil: Very entertaining and thoughtful post.