A recent post at my blog may be interesting to LW. It is a high-level discussion of what precisely defined value extrapolation might look like. I mostly wrote the essay while a visitor at FHI.
The basic idea is that we can define extrapolated values by just taking an emulation of a human, putting it in a hypothetical environment with access to powerful resources, and then adopting whatever values it eventually decides on. You might want some philosophical insight before launching into such a definition, but since we are currently laboring under the threat of catastrophe, it seems that there is virtue in spending our effort on avoiding death and delegating whatever philosophical work we can to someone on a more relaxed schedule.
You wouldn't want to run an AI with the values I lay out, but at least it is pinned down precisely. We can articulate objections relatively concretely, and hopefully begin to understand/address the difficulties.
(Posted at the request of cousin_it.)
We are trying to formally specify the input-output behavior of an idealized computer, running some simple program. The mathematical definition of a Turing machine with an input tape would suffice, as would a formal specification of a version of Python running with unlimited memory.
Okay, I see that that's what you're saying. The assumption then (which seems reasonable but needs to be proven?) is that the simulated humans, given infinite resources, would either solve Oracle AI [edit: without accidentally creating uFAI first, I mean] or just learn how to do stuff like create universes themselves.
There is still the issue that a hypothetical human with access to infinite computing power would not want to create or observe hellworlds. We here in the real world don't care, but the hypothetical human would. So I don't think your specific idea for brute-force creating an Earth simulation would work, because no moral human would do it.