Here's a start for you I feel that people who refuse to give a numerical prior and use protestations of ignorance (that can be cured with a 5-second google search) as an excuse to say "very low" are really engaging in motivated cognition, usually without realizing. Whenever one says "I don't have much info so I think the probability of X is really low", one should ask oneself: (1) Would I apply the same argument to ~X ? A "very low" prior for X implies a very high prior for ~X. Am I exploiting the framing of using X rather than ~X to engage in motivated skepticism? (2) Has it even crossed my mind to think about how easy it might be to find the info, and if not, am I willfully clinging to ignorance in order to avoid having to give up a cherished belief?

Roko: Given a well-organized and generous system of redistribution, the situation actually wouldn't be that bad. Despite all the silly panicking about overpopulation, the Earth is a pretty big place. To get some perspective, at the population density of Singapore, ten billion people could fit into roughly 1% of the total world land surface area. This is approximately the size of the present-day Mongolia. With the population density of Malta -- hardly a dystopian metropolis -- they'd need about 5% of the Earth's land, i.e. roughly the area of the continental U.S. Therefore, assuming the powers-that-be would be willing to do so, in a super-high-tech regime several billion unproductive people could be supported in one or more tolerably dense enclaves at a relatively low opportunity cost. The real questions are whether the will to do so will exist, what troubles might ensue during the transition, and whether these unproductive billions will be able to form a tolerably functional society. (Of course, it is first necessary to dispel the delusion -- widely taken as a fundamental article of faith among economists -- that technological advances can never render great masses of people unemployable.) Now, you write: I'm not at all sure of that. I hate to sound elitist, but I suspect that among the common folk, a great many people would not benefit from the liberation from the need to work. Just look at how often lottery winners end up completely destroying their lives, or what happens in those social environments where living off handouts becomes the norm. It seems to me that many, if not most people need a clear schedule of productive work around which they can organize their lives, and lacking it become completely disoriented and self-destructive. The old folk wisdom that idle hands are the devil's tools has at least some truth in it. This is one reason why I'm skeptical of redistribution as the solution, even under the assumption that it will be organized successfully.

Not without some changes; yes - and: not part of the human economy. Various machines certainly behave in goal-directed ways - and so have what can usefully be described as "vested interests" - along the lines described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vested_interest Can you say what you mean by "interests"? Probably any difference of opinion here is a matter of differing definitions - and so is not terribly interesting. Re: "The fact that machines are not exclusively on our side simply means that they do not perfectly fulfill our values." That wasn't what I meant - what I meant is that they don't completely share human values - not that they don't fulfill them.

It's not an either/or thing. You could spend, say, 1% of your resources on setting up a colonization wavefront.

I doubt you'd have to wait for aliens - humans, trans-humans or AIs who stayed outside the simulation would likely do the job first. One reason I'd have no desire to enter a simulation.