Maybe this will be more helpful:
If the universe computes things that are not computational continuations of the human condition (which might include resolution to our moral quandaries, if that is in the cards), then it is, with respect to optimizing function g, wasting the perfectly good computational depth achieved by humanity so far. So, driving computation that is not somehow reflective of where humanity was already going is undesirable. The computational work that is favored is work that makes the most of what humanity was up to anyway.
To the extent that human moral progress in a complex society is a difficult computational problem, and there's lots of evidence that it is, then that is the sort of thing that would be favored by objective g.
If moral progress of humanity is something that has a stable conclusion (i.e., humanity at some point halts or goes into a harmonious infinite loop that does not increase in depth) then objective g will not help us hit that mark. But in that case, it should be computationally feasible to derive a better objective function.
To those who are unsatisfied with objective g as a solution to Problem 2, I pose the problem: is there a way to modify objective g so that it prioritizes morally better futures? If not, I maintain the objective g is still pretty good.
I attended Nick Bostrom's talk at UC Berkeley last Friday and got intrigued by these problems again. I wanted to pitch an idea here, with the question: Have any of you seen work along these lines before? Can you recommend any papers or posts? Are you interested in collaborating on this angle in further depth?
The problem I'm thinking about (surely naively, relative to y'all) is: What would you want to program an omnipotent machine to optimize?
For the sake of avoiding some baggage, I'm not going to assume this machine is "superintelligent" or an AGI. Rather, I'm going to call it a supercontroller, just something omnipotently effective at optimizing some function of what it perceives in its environment.
As has been noted in other arguments, a supercontroller that optimizes the number of paperclips in the universe would be a disaster. Maybe any supercontroller that was insensitive to human values would be a disaster. What constitutes a disaster? An end of human history. If we're all killed and our memories wiped out to make more efficient paperclip-making machines, then it's as if we never existed. That is existential risk.
The challenge is: how can one formulate an abstract objective function that would preserve human history and its evolving continuity?
I'd like to propose an answer that depends on the notion of logical depth as proposed by C.H. Bennett and outlined in section 7.7 of Li and Vitanyi's An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications which I'm sure many of you have handy. Logical depth is a super fascinating complexity measure that Li and Vitanyi summarize thusly:
The mathematics is fascinating and better read in the original Bennett paper than here. Suffice it presently to summarize some of its interesting properties, for the sake of intuition.