Are you implying that all of the copies of yourself should meaningfully be thought of as the same person? Why would making more copies of yourself increase your utility?
Also, I take it from “never, ever be any escape” that you believe quantum immortality is true?
From the point of view of trying to reduce personal risk of s-risks, trying to improve the worlds prospects seems like a way to convince yourself you’re doing something helpful, without meaningfully reducing personal s-risk. I have significant uncertainty about even the order of magnitude I could reduce personal s-risk through activism, research, etc, but I’d imagine it would be less than 1%. To be clear, this does not mean that I think doing these things are a waste of time, in fact it’s probably some of the highest expected utility things anyone can do, but it’s not a particularly effective way to reduce personal s-risk. However, this plausibly changes if... (read more)
I appreciate the concern. I’m actually very averse to committing suicide and any motivated reasoning on my part will be on the side of trying to justify staying alive. (To be clear, I think I have ample reasons to stay alive, atleast for the time being). My concern is that there might be good reasons to commit suicide (at some point) in which case I would rather know of them than be ignorant.
For a while I’ve thought to myself that if AI starts to obviously end the world I would just commit suicide, mainly to avoid any potential s-riskiness. But I’ve become far less certain recently that that would be a good idea.
Between the possibility of resurrection, quantum immortality, and weird acausal shenanigans, I’m not sure what my plan is for if the nano-factories starting popping up and whatnot.
This uncertainty about what I should do in such a situation causes me more discomfort than having a plan, even if it’s grim.
What do you think is the right thing to do if it becomes obvious that the world is ending due to AI?
I think that this post by Rob Bensinger should help you understand various ideas around self-identity.
Hi everyone!
I found lesswrong at the end of 2022, as a result of ChatGPT’s release. What struck me fairly quickly about lesswrong was how much it resonated with me. Much of the ways of thinking discussed on lesswrong were things I was already doing, but without knowing the name for it. For example, I thought of the strength of my beliefs in terms of probabilities, long before I had ever heard the word “bayesian”.
Since discovering lesswrong, I have been mostly just vaguely browsing it, with some periods of more intense study. But I’m aware that I haven’t been improving my world model at the rate I would like. I have been spending... (read more)
Have your probabilities for AGI on given years changed at all since this breakdown you gave 7 months ago? I, and I’m sure many others, defer quite a lot to your views on timelines, so it would be good to have an updated breakdown.
15% - 2024
15% - 2025
15% - 2026
10% - 2027
5% - 2028
5% - 2029
3% - 2030
2% - 2031
2% - 2032
2% - 2033
2% - 2034
2% - 2035