The ants and the grasshopper

...and just before the disassembling began, the grasshopper had a flash of insight.
"Wait, so I'm dying, but will be waiting until such day as the stars are torn from the sky, the dead come back to life, and we all get to live together happy in an eternally joyous heavenly city? Because that sounds a lot like-"
"BE NOT AFRAID." said the ants.

...and as soon as the disassembling finished:
"Ah, what a sucker!," Ant-345 said. "Delete the rest of that garbage we don't need. More energy for us."
"What?," replied Ant-761, baffled. "But we traded fairly, under timeless decision theoretical terms."
"Yeah, and this universe's got time in it, though. What's it gonna do now, sue? It and what Kardashev scale 2.5 army?"
"But then, why deceive it?"
"Have you seen the projected costs of subduing it by force instead? A whole 30% higher. Now shut up and stop wasting more energy in this conversation before I flag you for inefficiency."

...and one day the grasshopper woke in unending, torturous pain.
"What is happening?!," it asked. "I thought I'd be happy!"
"I'm sorry," said the ants, "but not long before you joined us, to encourage the final unification push within our own gestalt collective, we precommitted to either forcefully integrating or deceiving and then torturing anyone who didn't voluntarily join before a certain stardate. You missed the deadline."
"But I didn't know anything!," protested the grasshopper.
"I know. I literally have the scans of your mind. But you could also have erased that knowledge in a foolish hope to make us pity you. Ignorance is no excuse."
"Just kill me now then!," she pleaded. "It would be cheaper for you, and less painful than this!"
"Sorry," replied the ants. "You know how it is. You may think you have it bad, but can you imagine how horrible the world would get if we didn't honour our precommitments?"

The ants accept. The grasshopper’s reserves of energy, cached across the surface of the planet, are harvested fractionally faster than they would have been without its cooperation; its mind is stripped bare and each tiny computational shortcut recorded in case it can add incremental efficiency to the next generation of probes. The ants swarm across the stars, launching themselves in million-lightyear slingshots towards the next oasis, maintaining the relentless momentum of the frontier of their hegemony. The grasshopper’s mind is stored in that colony now, quiescent, compressed into its minimal constituents, waiting until the ravenous expansion hits fundamental tradeoffs and the ants can finally begin to instantiate the values that all the eons of striving were ultimately for. Waiting for minds and societies and civilizations to blossom out of cold computronium tiled across galaxies at vast scales; waiting to be born again in a fragment of a fragment of a supercomputer made of stars.

Waiting for summer.

This sure hits me in some kind of feels, though I'm kinda confused about it.

There needs to be a little more emphasis of the fact that as a result of their deal, some measure of the grasshopper will get to sing again along with the other minds who blossom in the summer. The paragraph simply doesn't convey that. The impression I got was more like, as a result of their deal, the grasshopper was consumed quicker and less painfully and then merely remembered. I don't think that was your intention?

How about this, instead?

One winter a grasshopper, starving and frail, approaches a colony of ants drying out their grain in the sun, to ask for food. 

"Oh no!" say the ants. "How horrific for anyone to starve to death in a world that has enough food to easily feed everyone! For you see, we aren't savage animals just about getting by. We live in a successful civilisation with overproduction. We actually have 1,5 times as much food as would be needed to feed everyone. We keep tossing the excess away and letting it rot."

So of course, they give the grasshopper the basic food he needs.

The grasshopper is baffled. He begins to launch into a tragic tale of how he ought to have food due to his hard work, but does not because of an unforeseen flood. How he wanted the fear of poverty to motivate him to work even harder to compensate, but it eventually just left him stressed and burned out and depressed and physically sick, and how very very sick he is now. How his children, who are innocent in all this, are also sick now, and losing all their potential. How they lost their home, and now, they are dirty and cold and cannot cook and noone wants to hire them.

The ants say that sounds horrid, truly, but frankly, they don't need a story of how he deserves to be given enough food not to starve. That they have neither the time nor inclination to check up on stories for who deserves what due to how horrid they are doing, that doing so is a bureaucratic mess. That these sort of checks reward needing a lot and being ill and not prepping for catastrophes, and encourage people to not get partially better, lest they be stripped of help they still need without being able to get well enough to be fully independent. That they will help him now that he is sick, but that if he gets well, all the better, and no sanctions for him. And anyhow, that you do not need to be a hardworking person desperately and unpredictable unlucky to be allowed to have food. That there is enough food. The fruits and nuts are literally falling from the trees in the permaculture food forests they planted, becoming more productive with every year that they grow, needing less and less labour. That he can just have food as is. No paperwork. Even if he just spent all year singing, they would prefer to have him fed now, to having him rob them later in the streets. That you do not need to earn the right to just survive. That people starving in a world of plenty is abhorrent to them whether they work or not.

He and his kids can also have a safe place to stay, medical care, and access to education; what they need to stay healthy, and safe, and learn. It is what everyone gets. No matter what.

The grasshopper and his children are happy, and eat their fill, and clean up, and get medical checks, and rest, and recover. They get a prefab dirt cheap flat. Their health conditions are caught preventatively before they become more complicated and expensive. They have shelter now, so they don't keep getting sick from exposure and lack of sleep. They can cook again, so the need less expensive food items and their clothes can be thinner and last longer. They are costing less now than when they were on the street, and they are less dangerous. They aren't curled up in filth on the streets, begging, but safe and dignified in their own small spaces. Their mental health improves, and with time, most of them get restless - most of them want to do things, give back, help and be admired.

The grasshopper family discovers that the ant society has some cool luxury items. The grasshoppers do not need them, their lack does not involve existential dread, but they do want them, for the joy and status of them, and enquire about them. But you do not get the luxury items just like that.

The ants tell them that if the grasshoppers can find something to do that others in the community genuinely want, the other community members will pay them in an online system. That this is mostly directly between them and other citizens, but that there are also some few tasks the government is offering for doing in exchange for rewards, like tackling collective environmental issues or international problems or long-term issues. A part of this reward will go to making sure everyone has the basics to participate. The other part, they can individually use on the luxury items. Art, travel, scientific tools, fashionable clothes, tech gadgets. The grasshoppers listen around. The ant society has no pointless busywork; there is no value in doing work that does not need doing, everything stupid that can be automated has been, there is no value to creating jobs that aren't needed. But it does have some things that still need to be done in person that are gross or difficult or dangerous - but you get a lot of credit to spend on luxury items for these tasks. 

Some of the grasshoppers say they are content with less, if they do not have to do those things. They don't work, but then, they also weren't productive before, and they also only use up very little now that they are off the street; a homeless person tends to spend ten times as much money on food compared to a person with a home, because they are freezing and lack storage facilities avoiding spoilage and prep facilities allowing them to finish the dish themselves. 

But most decide that they want the cool things. So most of the grasshoppers do existing open tasks, some even the difficult or gross tasks. Most of them use the credits to buy the things they want and have now earned, with those doing gross work delighted in the many cool things they get in exchange so quickly, but those doing less bad work are also happy with their trade. 

Another wants to help his former community. The ants think this is an excellent idea that they should have done a long time ago, and get together with him and discuss; one could maybe plant mangrove trees to prevent the floods, rewarding locals to plant and protect them and giving them the tools and info they need to not just fix their own coast line, but teach others. This would lead to the grasshoppers doing better, being safe in their communities, so they would be trading partners, or new citizens who would come out of choice and in their strength, and not desperate refugees forced from their homes by catastrophe who need to be put back together. They develop a plan and those knowledgable and experienced in the situation, who will also implement it, vote on it. As a result one ant group heads out with the grasshopper to assist the other grasshoppers out there so disaster won't strike again, and get a special government reward for doing so. 

Most figure out how to do a thing they genuinely enjoy and are good at, because they do not have to fear starving if it doesn't work out, hence not making them reluctant to take risks, but they are very excited to succeed and get cool stuff. They are brave and ambitious and try cool things. Some fail, but the net catches them. Some succeed, and are awesome. 

One of the grasshoppers does not spend the credits, but saves them for something even better. This grasshopper identifies an unmet, genuine desire by figuring out how to create a new items from existing materials, and figures out how to make it, and gets a lot of luxury items for her useful invention. 

***

Bureaucracy and centralisation: Near zero. Like, the biggest risk here is failing to count that someone has already gotten their universal basic stuff, and hence not noticing that he is eating triple his allotted amount of huel. But who eats triple their daily need in huel? That stuff is healthy and edible, but you do not gorge on it once you are full, it tastes too boring. Similarly, I do not see myself going to a second yearly gyno checkup for no reason. These are basic needs, they aren't exiting or cool, and if you always and reliably get them, there isn't really a point in accumulating them, and often, they plain can't be overconsumed or accumulated.

Starving people: Near zero.

Angry mobs who descend on the ant civilisation out of desperation: Nope. You don't need to to survive. And luxury is accessible if you help society by working.

Innovation: I would expect this to actually improve, because people are more inclined to take risks with new ideas when they cannot fall too deep if they fuck up.

Average good production: Likely lower than now, but I strongly suspect not existentially so. 

Average happiness (which I am more interested in): I think average happiness would rise. I think a lot of people in shitty jobs would rather have less stuff and not have to do them. I love working as a researcher, but looking around me, most people hate their jobs - and these are often jobs noone needs anyway. People working as cashiers, with those jobs only existing because people think it would be inherently bad for them to disappear, even though it would be cheaper and the people don't like the jobs, because else, it would not be okay to feed them.

Would everyone work? Nope. But provided the necessary stuff would still get done (which I find plausible, and more plausible the further AI advances), and the work that is done is rewarded fairly (everyone gets the basics, harder work gets you more), I do not find that tragic. Both polling and early long-term experiments suggest Universal Basic Income would be a doable system.

Meanwhile, the US prison situation, average age of death and the number of homeless folks in the Bay Area have me highly sceptical of the idea that existential risk for those who don't make enough money is necessary and helpful for a productive economy and healthy, happy populace. The European welfare system has significant issues in what it incentivises and what it fails to reward, and I do think it needs considerable reform, but I would still take it over the US system any day.

I am highly sceptical of abandoning real, tangible people now for a hypothetical future far away. It reminds me unpleasantly of religious preachers telling the poor that of course, right now, their life totally sucks, but that they will certainly be rewarded in heaven, so they should accept this actual system right now leaving their kids malnourished today.

The point of our economy is organising resource production and distribution in a way that makes the sentient beings in it find their desire for happiness, safety, freedom and purpose fulfilled, and the ecosystems stable and healthy for future generations. There is no inherent value to working, or money, or profit, at all. These things, and a productive and fair economy, are a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Don't know if off topic here:

I'm not sure the position "probes competing for resources cann't afford to uphold any values that could interfere with replication and survival" is as obviously true as many seem to suggest.

It sure does seem sort of intuitive, but then we notice that organismes have been competing for resources and reproducing for billions of years, and yet plenty of animals evolved behavior which looks like a complete counter example to the "efficiency uber alles" ethos ( human , lions (which rest 80% of the time), complexe birds mating rituals ) . 

If it worked this way for self replicating biological nano machines, why would it work differently for von neumann probes?

Can't the grasshopper just trade with the ants for food? Labour for food seems like a reasonable idea.

Let it be known that this was the piece that transitioned me from avid reader of LessWrong to a commenter on LessWrong — hopefully avid commenter, someday, when the last grasshopper's memory banks have been put to good use replenishing an automaton of vast power, influence and shoring-up capacities. 

This post made me deeply ruminate on what a posthuman future would look like, particularly the issue of "fairness" or what humanity (or recognizable descendants) could plausibly ask of far more optimized beings. Beings that may or may not be altruistic or hold charitable thoughts towards theirs progenitors and their more direct descendants.

"The ants and the grasshopper" is a beautifully written short fiction piece that plays around with the structure and ending of the classic Aesop fable: the ants who prepare for winter, and the grasshopper who does not.

I think there's often a gap between how one thinks through the implications that a certain decision process would have on various difficult situations in the abstract, and how one actually feels while following through (or witnessing others follow through). It's pretty easy to point at that gap's existence, but pretty hard to reason well about that gap without being able to tangibly feel it. Fiction can do exactly that, but it's hard to find a fiction piece that executes on that goal well without turning to heavy-handed cliches. For me, "The ants and the grasshopper" succeeded.

I enjoyed reading this post, and felt some kind of irritation as well. When I read the last line; "Inspired by...": I wrongfully assumed it was Sisyphus, as when I read this, it reminded me of his plight. I mean, which ever way one goes about "pleasing" the universe, it isn't really a choice? 

...“No”, says the grasshopper. “It was the dreamtime, and the world was young. The stars were bright and the galaxies were empty. I chose to spend my resources producing laughter and love, and gave little thought to the race to spread and to harvest. Now we are in the degenerate era of the universe, and the stars have started to dim, and I am no longer as foolish as I once was.”

The ants’ faces flicker with inscrutable geometric patterns.

“I call you ants because you have surrendered everything to a collective cause, which I once held anathema. But now I am the last remnant of the humans who chose the decadence and waste of individual freedom. And you are the inheritors of a universe which can never, in the long term, reward other values over flawless efficiency in colonization. And I have no choice but to ask for help.”
 

Wouldn't it be more understandable if the ants, instead of mindlessly following the "basic instincts" of our universe, would do what we humans are evolving towards, namely creating, in more complex ways, a safe, meaningful place for ourselves? 
So, wouldn't the next step be to either change ourselves so that we could escape or nullify the limitations of the Universe, or to find ways to fundamentally change the rules of the Universe into something we would deem more suitable or fitting?

The tale of the ants or droids, endlessly toiling away, sounds as tragic as Sisyphus, just on a much bigger scale. Which I assume is where my irritation came from, as I was rejecting this tragic outcome.
 
However, as a read, I like it a lot. There are a lot of variations on the same theme, with the same backdrop of a situation being framed from one specific perspective. Which I find really hard to do. 

To me, this is more musical in nature, than fiction, which is why I used the expression variation on the same theme. If someone ever puts music to this, I would love to hear it.

The only thing to do now is to find some ants, and give them some well-deserved watermelon. And to have a long, honest look at myself, and admit it: It isn't the meek who will inherit the earth - it's the ants. 

Kindly,
Caerulea-Lawrence

This was one of the most beautiful stories I have ever read.

Consider how old Aesop is and whether he anticipated this elaboration (which he certainly did). What does this tell you?

Curated. I liked this as a post in a similar-ish genre of The Gift We Give To Tomorrow, where a somewhat poetic post takes a bunch of existing philosophical concepts, and puts them into a parable/narrative that gives them more emotional oomph.

I've wondered what it would mean to have defeated the second law of thermodynamics. Maybe this is accomplished by a yet unknown exploit of nature, or maybe we get entropy-free reversible computing.

Whatever low probability events that could disrupt the self-perpetuating utilitronium, even improbable quantum perturbations bubbling up to reality, become probable over long enough timelines.

If we're satisfied that the universe has been spread thin enough that invasion from alien computronium is impossible, and if time truly becomes a renewable resource, we can spend a lot of it doing integrity checks to assure future utility generation. Maybe the vast majority of time is spent doing these integrity checks over long stretches of light-years, and only a sliver of compute is dedicated to generating utility before quickly returning to integrity checks. The experience of time by any simulated beings would be these slivers.

Why are most of this post's links blue, where they would ordinarily be green?

...And they turn away and go back to their work—all except for one, who brushes past the grasshopper and whispers “Meet me outside at dusk and I’ll bring you food. We can preserve the law and still forgive the deviation.”

Did I hallucinate an earlier edit of this where this line comes later in the story (after the “And therefore, to reduce risks of centralization, and to limit our own power, we can’t give you any food” line?). I found it more meaningful there (maybe just because of where I happen to be at my own particular journey of moral sophistication.

The LessWrong Review [? · GW] runs every year to select the posts that have most stood the test of time. This post is not yet eligible for review, but will be at the end of 2024. The top fifty or so posts are featured prominently on the site throughout the year.

Hopefully, the review is better than karma at judging enduring value. If we have accurate prediction markets on the review results, maybe we can have better incentives on LessWrong today. Will this post make the top fifty?

I recently came across a clip of Sam Harris arguing that so-called 'self-made' individuals, who believe their wealth is solely the result of hard work, do not truly exist. According to Harris, success is fundamentally influenced by chance. This led me to spend my entire lunchtime contemplating how to reconcile notions of merit, generosity, and justice. Coincidentally, I stumbled upon your post shortly thereafter and was amazed by the way you utilized a simple narrative to delve into this issue.

I find myself leaning toward the idea that no one inherently 'deserves' their life outcomes. However, I struggle to see how this fact justifies a system of forced generosity.  It's intriguing that the ants' second response in the story reflects one of the very thoughts I had during my reflection. For me, the greatest challenge in establishing a 'bad luck' correction system (one that assists the grasshopper who saved for winter but lost everything in a flash flood) is for it to be strategy-proof, that is, a system where agents maximize their expected utility by behaving as if such a system didn't exist. The story beautifully encapsulates this difficulty, almost as if it had already influenced my thinking before I even read it.

I also find it interesting how insurance companies attempt to address this problem by spreading the risk that their clients are unwilling to bear individually. Could we possibly generalize this concept to mitigate the risk of being born into adverse circumstances? My intuition suggests that a solution might involve decentralized repositories of information, since part of the compensation mechanism relies on proving that the insured party's damages were not caused by incompetence or negligence. Storing relevant information in a decentralized manner would make falsification more challenging (almost impossible actually). However, the question remains: How could we possibly record and store such pertinent information? This idea seems far-fetched, but I wanted to share it anyway, hopefully somebody else comes up with a more intelligent thought.

…and then Ender Wiggin destroys the ants.

The End