[ExI] Forking

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2011-12-27 17:51, Keith Henson wrote:
> Don't forget that I practically invented forking as a way to crew star
> ships for the Far Edge Party.

I have never forgotten it. In fact, I learned about the idea from 
reading your text when I was a wee kid.

> "   People have talked about making a copy of themselves and having the copy do
> the unpleasant chores.  That's silly.  A good copy would be indistinguishable
> from the original right down to desires.  You could neither make a copy to go
> visit the stars nor one to stay on Earth that would be happy unless you didn't
> care which you did (unlikely) or someone messed with their personalities
> (unethical).  In fact, I think it would be unethical to distinguish between
> copies (a case where the Golden Rule applies in its strongest form).  The only
> case I can see where copies are justified is a situation where a person really
> has no preference between two mutually exclusive choices."

Agreed. As one of my friends puts it, "Treat your fork as you would 
treat yourself".

 > (Rereading it made me realize just how old the ideas we have been
 > talking about are.  Scary)

Which makes me wonder where the *new* ideas are. I suspect they are 
right under our noses, but we do not recognize that they are really new.

(Incidentally, have you read Alastair Reynold's novel "The House of 
Suns"? It involves clades of people cruising the galaxy and holding Far 
Edge Parties at certain intervals.)

>> If I fork myself, there will now be twice as much me-experience, twice
>> the amount of human capital and twice as many entities sharing my goals.
>
> You will also have half the resources per capita.  Widespread,
> uncontrolled forking is isomorphic to gray goo.

It is the overpopulation debate again. My FHI colleague Toby Ord gave a 
good talk on the question a few weeks back:
http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/videos/view/128
He suggested that it might beneficial to have more population for a 
number of reasons. For example, in an information economy more minds 
produce goods that are useful for all others. We also need larger groups 
to produce very complex goods, and we should not be convinced that we 
have somehow reached the limit here. Then of course there are the 
ethical reasons to want people to exist, although these ones are more 
complex to argue from.


> I suppose forking should be added to excessive population growth rate
> as a reason we don't see the works of aliens.

Well, if forking is a road to grinding poverty and forks can get a 
temporary benefit by colonizing, then it would lead to a version of 
Robin Hanson's "burning the cosmic commons" scenario of very rapidly 
expanding technospheres using all material to grow. They would be fairly 
visible if they cannot spread at a significant fraction of light-speed.


-- 
Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford University