Yes, there are several possible solution to the measure problem in the map.
If a share of simulations is extremely large, it may overweight my real copies in most of measure problem solutions. That means that no matter how we solve measure problem, I will most likely find my self in the simulation. But it is just a conjecture.
If a share of simulations is extremely large, it may overweight my real copies in most of measure problem solutions.
But without solving the measure problem you can't even say that.
For example, let's say that X% of all universes form simulated universes, and in each of the universes that does, there are Y universes formed on average. Sounds simple, right? Just multiply the two and you get how many simulated universes there are per real universe.
Except that without solving the measure problem, you can't actually say what X% is OR what Y is. It all depends on which way you slice infinity, and you will get very different numbers for both. You could make X 99% or .0000001%, you could make Y 2 or a hundred trillion, just by measurement the infinite universes infinity in different ways, and we don't know which way to measure them is right.
A more concrete problem is that this same kind of anthro reasoning in an infinite multiverse leads to all kinds of bizarre conclusions, many of which are clearly not true. (The Youngness Paradox for example). That makes me doubt that that kind of reasoning actually works at all.
Until we come up with a better way to deal with the Measure Problem, I'm personally not taking any probabilistic arguments in the form of the one Bostrom uses to argue for the simulation hypothesis very seriously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_problem_%28cosmology%29
If people aren't familiar with the measure problem, it's a serious problem in cosmology right now in any model that assumes infinite universes (like most versions of inflation do, for example.) In this specific case, it would look something like "if there are infinite universes, and an infinite number of simulated universes, what are the odds you are in a simulated universe? How do you divide infinity by infinity?" And we really don't know how to answer questions in that form; there have been a number of mathematical attempts to do so, but they come up with wildly different answers, and it's not clear which if any is correct. Depending on exactally how you write the fraction out the answer can be very different.
Edit: I see that you did mention the measure problem in your post, but in my opinion you're missing the part of the measure problem that causes the biggest problems for Bostrom's argument.
I think that without uploading or creating copies (and without AI) any life extension method would give 1000 years life expectancy maximum. It is very long but nowhere near immortality.
Uploading is almost like creating AI, so if we will have EMs, we will come to AI very soon after it. In the earlier versions of the map plan A was named "Victory on aging", and after it was renamed in "To survive until Immortality", which is oxymoron, so I think that "survive until FAI" is the best name and idea.
I think that without uploading or creating copies (and without AI) any life extension method would give 1000 years life expectancy maximum
That was Aubry de Grey's estimate of how long people would live if we cured aging, but that assumes the same rate of deaths from accidents, suicides, ect as we have today. But with advanced cyborg technology, medical technology, biotechnology, and/or nanotechnology, as well as other technological improvements that reduce the risk of accidental death (self driving cars, for example), that could be a lot longer.
Edit: To be clear, I agree with you that if uploading/"making copies" proves possible, that that could theoretically grant a much "safer" kind of longevity that could last much longer on average. I'm just saying that even without that, 1000 years is just a starting point towards what's possible, and we likely be able to do significantly better then that.
It's worth mentioning that a lot of the kinds of technology in path A could also lead to immortality (or at least, to extreme longevity, "immortality" is kind of a loaded word) if strong AI either doesn't happen at all, or happens but for some reason doesn't help as much as we think, or if we decide to not do it at all, or if it takes much longer then we expect to happen. I don't know how likely any of those possibilities are, but I don't think they're all zero.
This comment is followed by my previous one. I can't make a chain comment due to multiple downvotes. I am not trying to be disrespectful. I was raising a genuine question. I thought Effective Altruism was all about humanity saving people from diseases and famine. I am still trying to understand what Transhumanism is for. If you seek immortality while others try to save miserable lives from poverty, diseases, lack of water, and so on, are you assuming that the resources we have on our earth is limitless? They are not. We don't even have to go to poverty-striken countries in Africa. If China enlarges their middle class, you will already feel the world resources being absorbed to one huge country. We will be in trouble with our population. It is still growing and the spectrum of inequality still makes pursuit of immortality a selfish choice.
Effective altruism is trying to find the most efficient help people who are suffering in general. Yes, helping poor people pull themselves out of poverty is a part of that. So is funding medical research that will help people suffering from the terrible diseases of aging; Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, Parkinson's , and so on. In fact, those diseases probably cause even more suffering in the world today then famine and poverty.
As far as "what transhumanism is for", most people would say that it's for making human live better in general, all over the world. In general, improving technology should create more wealth for everyone; we should be able to improve our lives and improve the lives of people in the third world at the same time. Improving technology is the big reason that many people in the world are better off these days, and that will continue to happen.
No one thinks that the resources on Earth are limitless. And, yes, overpopulation could in the long run be an issue that affects that, although that actually has more to do with the birth rate then with the death rate. You can have a rapidly growing population even with a short lifespan, and you can have a pretty stable population where the average lifespan is 1000 years, it just depends on the birth rate.
We haven't cured aging, we've just improved treatment for a lot of specific diseases. A cure for aging would massively improve life expectancy almost overnight. And it wouldn't be predictable from previous trends of increased vaccinations or whatever.
I wouldn't expect there to be a single cure that would change things "overnight". Even de Grey talks about 7 different categories of aging damage, each of which will need a different type of treatment; and those are just general categories, most likely there will be different treatments for different systems in the body as well. And he's probably somewhat optimistic in his description of the problem.
However, I think it's entirely possible that we'll make enough progress in enough different areas to reach longevity escape velocity in our lifetimes. It's not going to be a single breakthrough that happens overnight though.
It's also interesting to note that the NCCIH isn't the result of presidential action.
Politically focusing on getting a congressman or senator elected is much easier than running for president.
You often see third parties putting fourth a candidates for president, not because they expect to win, but just as a way to try to get more attention for their specific issues.
"Zoltan Istvan is a man on a mission to end death. ... For whatever it's worth, Zoltan has been involved in extreme adventures his entire life, and is the inventor of volcano boarding (which is just like it sounds)."
I sense an inconsistency.
Not necessarily. I've heard some people describe the effort to end aging like this: "The goal isn't to live forever. The goal is to live to the age of 250 with the body of a 25 year old and then die in a freak skydiving accident."
I agree that SENS is likely the best place to send donations to promote longevity research.
Actually, it's a shame that longevity research doesn't get mentioned by the Effective Altruism movement very often. I'm just now casually wondering if there might be enough value in having a Givewell-like nonprofit evaluation organization focused on longevity research to justify creating such an organization. Note that Animal Charity Evaluators is an animal-based Givewell-like nonprofit evaluation organization-- which means that this sort of thing has been done before.
This having been said, Aubrey de Grey already seems incentivized to fund the most cost-effective anti-aging research first, so directly funding SENS might be everyone's best bet.
Another good non-profit research institution that funds a lot of good aging research is the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.
It probably depends on if you think the SENS approach or more mainstream types of aging research are more likely to produce more significant results. It's worth mentioning that Google's "Calico" company has recently announced a partnership with Buck.
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May be it is the reason why Bostrom tried to make simulation argument only about one civilization - human, which either will simulate its ancestors or not.
In this case he is almost independent from other civilizations in the Universe (but not in fact: there are other human civilizations there and as real ones are earlier in time they will dominate landscape in hyperexponential universe) SA does not work for one civilization also because human-llke simulation may be created by completely unhuman creators.
But also finding holes in SA does not prove that we are not in the simulation. If we don't know how to calculate probabilities we have to use vague prior, in which simulation and reality is equally possible.
Oh, I don't think you can prove we're not in a simulation; almost by definition it can't really be disproven.
I'm not 100% convinced that it's actually possible in our universe to simulate an entire other universe just as complicated as ours (you start running into problem with the minimum energy and space requirements in order to hold that much information, for example), but even if not that isn't a proof that we're not in a simulation, since it's possible that beings in a more complicated universe then ours are simulating us.