The ethics of randomized computation in the multiverse

lukeprog

From David Deutsch's The Beginning of Infinity:

Take a powerful computer and set each bit randomly to 0 or 1 using a quantum randomizer. (That means that 0 and 1 occur in histories of equal measure.) At that point all possible contents of the computer’s memory exist in the multiverse. So there are necessarily histories present in which the computer contains an AI program – indeed, all possible AI programs in all possible states, up to the size that the computer’s memory can hold. Some of them are fairly accurate representations of you, living in a virtual-reality environment crudely resembling your actual environment. (Present-day computers do not have enough memory to simulate a realistic environment accurately, but, as I said in Chapter 7, I am sure that they have more than enough to simulate a person.) There are also people in every possible state of suffering. So my question is: is it wrong to switch the computer on, setting it executing all those programs simultaneously in different histories? Is it, in fact, the worst crime ever committed? Or is it merely inadvisable, because the combined measure of all the histories containing suffering is very tiny? Or is it innocent and trivial?

I'm not so sure we have the computing power to "simulate a person," but suppose we did. (Perhaps we will soon.) How would you respond to this worry?

From David Deutsch's The Beginning of Infinity:

Take a powerful computer and set each bit randomly to 0 or 1 using a quantum randomizer. (That means that 0 and 1 occur in histories of equal measure.) At that point all possible contents of the computer’s memory exist in the multiverse. So there are necessarily histories present in which the computer contains an AI program – indeed, all possible AI programs in all possible states, up to the size that the computer’s memory can hold. Some of them are fairly accurate representations of you, living in a virtual-reality environment crudely resembling your actual environment. (Present-day computers do not have enough memory to simulate a realistic environment accurately, but, as I said in Chapter 7, I am sure that they have more than enough to simulate a person.) There are also people in every possible state of suffering. So my question is: is it wrong to switch the computer on, setting it executing all those programs simultaneously in different histories? Is it, in fact, the worst crime ever committed? Or is it merely inadvisable, because the combined measure of all the histories containing suffering is very tiny? Or is it innocent and trivial?

I'm not so sure we have the computing power to "simulate a person," but suppose we did. (Perhaps we will soon.) How would you respond to this worry?

I'm assuming that expected value of running the computer is dominated by universe-optimizing AGIs it generates, which would have much better conditions for bootstrapping from a well-defined program in a fully-functional computer than if they have to do it boltzmann brain-style.

Our world already contains many computers that are subject to quantum fluctuations. Some of them even use quantum noise random number generators, so you just need a small glitch to accidentally execute that data, thus creating all the universe-optimizing AGIs you can imagine.

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The ethics of randomized computation in the multiverse

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The ethics of randomized computation in the multiverse

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