Daniel,

I appreciate you didn't call my hypothesis "far fetched" as Eckard suggests but asked why would such a; "leap forward in quantum mechanics make a significant difference to humanity's future? Is it more, less, or equally important relative to other major scientific questions, in your opinion?"

I answered, noting that the unification of classical (relativity) and quantum...

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Daniel,

I appreciate you didn't call my hypothesis "far fetched" as Eckard suggests but asked why would such a; "leap forward in quantum mechanics make a significant difference to humanity's future? Is it more, less, or equally important relative to other major scientific questions, in your opinion?"

I answered, noting that the unification of classical (relativity) and quantum physics it enabled was far more important than and other major scientific question as it advanced understanding in ALL areas, particularly ecological, as Judy also recognises. I asked for a suggestion of the most unlikely area by someone asking a similar question. I was given the 'expansion of the sun'.

Firstly; precise ideas of IF and WHEN would emerge (the odds are ~15:1 we'd be accreted to the AGN first) and then also methods to escape the fate(s) earlier, i.e. apparent FTL space travel, via the logical solution to the common apparent superluminal AGN (quasar) jet outflows at up to 46c (in the AGN frame), which is if the mechanism is correct, is all about collimation (flows within flows with shear planes between). Links to the PR papers on that are available if you're interested.

It really is fundamental to all matter based science. Judy sees the great biological implications but also the failure to RECOGNISE it's importance, and to challenge assumptions and current doctrine. All other hypotheses are judged against the fundamental doctrines, so correct solutions will be rejected until we correct the foundations.

The solution itself is geometrically self apparent, but again it's dismissed as it's 'different' to current doctrine. I hope you can see the universal relevance. Do pick a topic yourself if you wish, which you think may NOT benefit from the fundamental understanding of classical 'QM' - (but note my prev essays covered many already).

I'm happy if I've helped the well deserved rise of your own. Now as Judy says we just need specifics!

Best wishes

Peter

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Dear Daniel,

I read your essay with interest, and I agree with the essence of your proposal. In particular, I fully subscribe to the idea that producing and disseminating technical, publicly understandable knowledge of critical phenomena is . . . critical.

I only have a minor remark about your style of presentation.

In Section 2 the exposition is kept to a high level...

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Dear Daniel,

I read your essay with interest, and I agree with the essence of your proposal. In particular, I fully subscribe to the idea that producing and disseminating technical, publicly understandable knowledge of critical phenomena is . . . critical.

I only have a minor remark about your style of presentation.

In Section 2 the exposition is kept to a high level of abstraction, with advantages in terms of elegance and conciseness; but I feel it would have benefitted from some concrete, coloured examples of the future scenarios that you classify, just to please the reader`s imagination, and perhaps to better match the nature of this contest. (It is clear from your bio that you work full time on these topics: you probably take for granted a number of ideas that normal readers would need to see expanded, and you prefer to focus on the overall logical architecture of your exposition.)

In presenting the four categories of crucial phenomena in Section 3 you do provide some more examples - but again I had the impression that the exposition is a bit more concerned with the logical symmetry and elegance of the classification than to the effectiveness (and appropriateness) of the examples.

The notion of `breadth` of humanity`s future, measured by the controlled resources, also sounds a bit vague (to this reader).

In some cases it may be hard to quantify the duration of humanity, i.e. to decide where to place the mark of termination, in light of the hybrid solutions (cyborgs etc.) mentioned in several other essays in this contest.

Talking about abstraction, this is another passage which I would have loved to see expanded: `humanity`s future size could be dramatically impacted by the cosmological rate of expansion, which determines how much matter is ultimately reachable by humans.` This sounds abstractly reasonable, but, to some reader, it may be hard to attach some definite meaning to the concept.

Ah! The ending of your text (on collective humility) is cute!

Good luck for your important work, and best regards.

Tommaso

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Hello Daniel,

I enjoyed your essay, and I agree with its central thesis to the point of thinking it is essential that we do deal with the existential risks that face humanity, but some of your intermediate points fall apart for me. Premise 2 on page 2 is almost too easy to disprove or discredit, and appears to be of no value, while abandoning that premise reveals a host of phenomena to be...

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Hello Daniel,

I enjoyed your essay, and I agree with its central thesis to the point of thinking it is essential that we do deal with the existential risks that face humanity, but some of your intermediate points fall apart for me. Premise 2 on page 2 is almost too easy to disprove or discredit, and appears to be of no value, while abandoning that premise reveals a host of phenomena to be breadth-transformative - all because of context dependencies which follow from premise 1, which I think is universal.

If we took a nuclear physicist and dropped him back in ancient times, and even gave him a few samples from his laboratory to carry along; what could he do? He might manage a few parlor tricks like turning a sample of lead into gold, and create the legend of a magical 'Philosopher's stone,' but he (or she) could not manage to convey enough knowledge to lead to an enduring understanding of radioactivity - so we would only hear tales of 'alchemical fire' and that's about all that would remain. Paul Pilzer goes further, basing his theory of Economics on the assumption that premise 2 is false, and that the value of any commodity is determined by available technology and other factors that determine its usability and the efficiency thereof. So premise 2 is disproved. Still; I think your conclusion is valid, and that we should be aiming for a Large future, if we want to have a future at all.

I agree with your conclusion that we must take seriously the need to address existential risks, and your assessment that engineered biohazards and the AI singularity are two of our most pressing looming problems, where if left unaddressed; they certainly could lead to humanity's extinction, or relegate us to a future that is both Small and unpleasant. I will leave aside the first, except to say that GMO food crops could be such a problem, and that the burden should be on the creators of modified seeds to show their safety long-term - through scientific studies conducted in isolation - rather than making the whole world their lab or guinea pig and leaving the burden of proof (that there are unforeseen risks) to us. If there are complications, a large part of our food supply has already been contaminated, and Nature will further spread the 'contagion' around, so this might be a pressing issue.

The problem of existential risk from the AI singularity is one I've given considerable thought to and I have definite ideas about how we must act to head problems off. Specifically; we have a window of opportunity to develop machines and software capable of qualitative analysis - subjective databases and search engines - before the machines reach intelligence or self awareness due to the brute force of massively parallel processing. Such an intelligence would be formidable, but it would lack any subtlety or finesse, and would be both brutish and tyrannical. This makes for a very dismal future for humans.

I will conclude by copying some comments I made on the essay page of Leo KoGuan, as they also apply here. "I have been working for a number of years now to create a framework for qualitative or subjective search engines and databases, and I've even included some of the fruits of my research in that area in my FQXi essays, so it will be clear to all that this model follows from my prior work. Personally; I'd rather work with R2-D2 and C3PO than work for a Terminator style robot, and this is a necessary step in that direction. However; if we did create this technology, and fed into the computer works of the great philosophers, religious texts, legal documents, and so on; it would calculate percentage truth-values for various assertions contained therein.

Of course; it will cause the worst scandal in history when people realize that a computer is being made the arbiter of their religion. This is why such things must be handled with some sensitivity. It is also why I think the proposal of Jens Niemeyer for a repository of knowledge is important to humanity's survival, and deserves the development and use of such technology. This goes way beyond the Dewey decimal system (no pun intended - ed), and could be a way to achieve a scientific level of fair representation - which is a necessary step in your plan - but will ordinary humans be willing to set cherished beliefs aside, in order to realize a bright future instead of dystopia?"

How would you deal with that issue?

Regards,

Jonathan

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The split of phenomena into limiting and transformative is interesting. (Instead of "transformative phenomenon", which suggests, to the uninitiated reader, "phenomenon that rearranges some existing part of the world into a better part organized along different principles", we'd suggest a term like "mediating phenomenon" or "controlling phenomenon", which suggests "phenomenon that, if it exists,...

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The split of phenomena into limiting and transformative is interesting. (Instead of "transformative phenomenon", which suggests, to the uninitiated reader, "phenomenon that rearranges some existing part of the world into a better part organized along different principles", we'd suggest a term like "mediating phenomenon" or "controlling phenomenon", which suggests "phenomenon that, if it exists, will translate a difference in human action into a difference in the value of the future".) We wonder if there are other fruitful ways to draw distinctions between different kinds of crucial phenomena: for example, phenomena that determine a default expectation for what will happen in the absence of coordinated action, or phenomena for which research must be initiated far in advance (as opposed to on-demand).

Although your exposition of the concept "crucial" stands on its own, an expanded version could relate it to the standard decision-theoretical concept of "value of information", which applies whenever an agent faces the problem of allocating resources between (1) gathering additional information about alternatives and (2) improving the execution of the alternatives themselves. This would help to draw connections for readers primarily familiar with economics, statistics, or psychology, as well as for for readers entirely unfamiliar with decision theory or its relation to moral philosophy arguments.

Your general conclusion seems hard to dispute: there are aspects of the world that could have major effects on long-term outcomes, but that we understand incompletely in a way that would benefit substantially from the investment of far greater resources. We agree particularly about the need for improved understanding of the problem of AI safety (in your essay, "the difficulty of designing tasks for [anticipated] superintelligent AIs that would result in non-Disastrous outcomes"). We also agree about the related problem of formally identifying what kinds of potentially unrecognized value the future stands to win or lose (touched on in your essay in the scenario of "unconsummated realization"). Our essay is a brief note about the latter problem. On the surface, it describes a potential approach to mitigating dangers from well-meaning top-down activism (such as we expected many of the entries in the contest to be). However, it tries to be general enough to apply to any entity that potentially "steers who steers", so it could fit just as well in the context of the "indirect normativity"/"ideal preference" approach to AI safety.

Steven Kaas & Steve Rayhawk

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