Late Great Filter Is Not Bad News

It seems to me that viewing a late Great Filter to be worse news than an early Great Filter is another instance of the confusion and irrationality of SSA/SIA-style anthropic reasoning and subjective anticipation. If you anticipate anything, believing that the great filter is more likely to lie in the future means you have to anticipate a higher probability of experiencing doom.

Let's take this further: is there any reason, besides our obsession with subjective anticipation, to discuss whether a late great filter is 'good' or 'bad' news, over and above policy implications? Why would an idealized agent evaluate the utility of counterfactuals it knows it can't realize?

Yes there are different ways to conceive what news is good or bad, and yes it is good from a God-view if filters are late. But to those of us who already knew that we exist now, and have passed all previous filters, but don't know how many others out there are at a similar stage, the news that the biggest filters lie ahead of us is surely discouraging, if useful.

All else being the same we should prefer a late coin toss over an early one, but we should prefer an early coin toss that definitely came up tails over a late coin toss that might come up either way. Learning that the coin toss is still ahead is bad news in the same way as learning that the coin came up tails is good news. Bad news is not isomorphic to making a bad choice. An agent that maximizes good news behaves quite differently from a rational actor.

First of all, a late great filter may be total, while an early great filter (based on the fact of our existence) was not - a reason to prefer the early one.

Secondly, let's look at the problem from our own perspective. If we knew that there was an Omega simulating us, and that our decision would affect when a great filter happens, even in our past, then this argument could work.

But we have no evidence of that! Omega is an addition to the problem, that completely changes the situation. If I had the button in front of me that said "early partial great filter/no late great filter", I would press it immeditately, because, updating on the fact of my existence at this time, this button now reads: "(irrelevant unchangeable fact about the past)/no late great filter". Up until the moment I have evidence that I live in a universe where Omega is indeed simulating me, I have no reason not to press the button.

We can't do anything today about any filters that we've already passed...

This seems centered around a false dichotomy. If you have to choose between an early and a late Great Filter, the later may well be preferable. But the presupposes it must be on or the other. In reality, there may be no Great Filter, or there may be a great filter of such a nature that it only allows linear expansion, or some other option we simply haven't thought of. Or there may be a really late great filter. Your reasoning presumes an early/late dichotomy that is overly simplistic.

I don't seem to understand the logic here. As I understand the idea of "Late Great Filter is bad news", it is simply about bayesian update of probabilities for hyphoteses A = "Humanity will eventually come to Explosion" versus not-A. Say, we have original probabilities for this p = P(A) and q = 1-p. Now, suppose, we take Great Filter hyphoteses for granted, and we find on Mars remnants of great civilization, equal to ours or even more improved. This means that we must update our probabilities of A/not-A so that P(A) decreases.

And I consider this really bad news. Either that, or Great Filter idea has some huuuuge flaw I overlooked.

So, where am I wrong?

In the scenario where the coin lands tails, nothing interesting happens, and the coin is logically independent of anything else, so let us assume that the coin lands heads. We are assuming (correct me if I'm wrong) that Omega is a perfect predictor. So, in the second scenario, we already know that the person will press the button even before he makes his decision, even before he does it, or else either a). Omega's prediction is wrong (contradiction) or b). the Earth was destroyed a million years ago (contradiction). The fact that we currently exist gives us information about what people will do in the future, because what people will do in the future is perfectly tied to whether we were destroyed in the past through the logical device of Omega. Hence, in the second scenario, there's not even a "choice", because the outcome is known to us ahead of time. The Universe, including "choices", is deterministic, but we do not call something a "choice" when the outcome is known with complete certainty ahead of time.

I think that, because we have no experience with actual psychics, most of us have no idea what it feels like to have something that's normally a "choice" be pre-determined. If an actual, perfect predictor says that you are the Chosen One, it doesn't matter whether you go on a heroic quest, or lay in bed and read magazines all day, because you're going to wind up saving the Universe regardless. If you are a heroic individual, and a perfect predictor says that you will go on a dangerous quest, either a). there must be zero probability of you deciding to stay home and read magazines, which is fantastically unlikely because zero is a small number and dangerous quests are difficult, or b). you staying at home and reading magazines won't affect the outcome. How many heroes whose salvation of the universe was prophesied in advance carried out that logic?

"But since copies of us occur more frequently in universes with late filters than in universes with early filters, such a decision (which Robin arrives at via SIA) can be justified on utilitarian grounds under UDT."

Doesn't this contradict the title of the post? If I understand correctly, you're saying, in agreement with Robin, that we should put work into preventing late filters. But anything that you want to put work into preventing is, ipso facto, bad news.

I downvoted this because it seems to be missing a very obvious point - that the reason why an early filter would be good is because we've already passed it. If we hadn't passed it, then of course we want the filter as late as possible.

On the other hand, I notice that this post has 15 upvotes. So I am wondering whether I have missed anything - generally posts that are this flawed do not get upvoted this much. I read through the comments and thought about this post a bit more, but I still came to the conclusion that this post is incredibly flawed.

But since copies of us occur more frequently in universes with late filters than in universes with early filters, such a decision (which Robin arrives at via SIA) can be justified on utilitarian grounds under UDT.

But it seems like our copies in early-filter universes can eventually affect a proportionally greater share of the universe's resources.

Also, Robin's example of shelters seems mistaken: if shelters worked, some civilizations would already have tried them and colonized the universe. Whatever we try has to stand a chance of working against some unknown filter that almost nobody escapes. Which suggests the question of why learning that filter reduction doesn't work is a reason to invest more in filter reduction. I'm not sure how to think about this in a way that doesn't double-count things.

Finally, I wish everyone would remember that filters and existential risks are different (though overlapping) things.

according to this line of thought, we're acting in both kinds of universes: those with early filters, and those with late filters.

Suppose that the reason for a late filter is a (complex) logical fact about the nature of technological progress; that there is some technological accident that it is almost impossible for an intelligent species to avoid, and that the lack of an early filter is a logical fact about the nature of life-formation and evolution. For the purposes of clarity, we might even think of an early filter as impossible and a late filter as certain.

Then, in what sense do we "exist in both kinds of universe"?

I agree. Note that the very concept of "bad news" doesn't make sense apart from a hypothetical where you get to choose to do something about determining these news one way or another. Thus CronoDAS's comment actually exemplifies another reason for the error: if the hypothetical decision is only able to vary the extent of a late great filter, as opposed to shifting the timing of a filter, it's clear that discovering powerful great filter is "bad news" according to such metric (because it's powerful, as opposed to because it's late).

I think this is a misleading problem, like Omega's subcontracting problem. Our actions now do not affect early filters, even acausally, so we cannot force the filter to be late by being suicidal and creating a new filter now.

Let us construct an analogous situation: let D be a disease that people contract with 99% probability, and they die at it at latest when they are n years old (let us say n=20).

Assume that you are 25 years old and there exists no diagnosis for the disease, but some scientist discovers that people can die at the disease even until they get 30. I don't know you, but in your place I'd call it a bad news for you personally, since you will have to live in fear for 5 additional years.

On the other hand it is a good news in an abstract sense, since it means 99% of the people has a good chance of living ten years longer.

Now the price question: If you are 25 years old and don't know whether you have the disease (p=99%) or not (p=1%), but you are presented with the option of being in one of the following two alternative universes: In one of them, people can live until they are 20 with the disease, in the other they die for sure before they become 30. Which one would you choose?

I must admit, it would not be an easy choice for me... :)

A tangent: if we found extinct life on Mars, it would provide precious extra motivation to go there which is a good thing.

Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 are not isomorphic: the former is Newcomb-like and the latter is Solomon-like (see Eliezer's paper on TDT for the difference), i.e. in the former you can pre-commit to choose the late filter four years from now if you survive, whereas in the latter there's no such possibility. I'm still trying to work out what the implications of this are, though...

Re: "believing that the great filter is more likely to lie in the future means you have to anticipate a higher probability of experiencing doom."

Maybe - if you also believe the great filter is likely to result in THE END OF THE WORLD.

If it is merely a roadblock - similar to the many roadblocks we have seen so far - DOOM doesn't necessarily follow - at least not for a loooong time.