Mini map of s-risks

Surely it can't be the total solution of the FP, as it doesn't explain coordination problem, but the thought is terrifying.

I finally read your article about Fermi paradox and would like to say that I mostly agree with you and have been thinking in the same directions.

A couple of comments:

1. To escape wrong ways to prevent x-risks by other civilizations, we could try random strategy. We'll throw a dice and choose some strange path. In that case, we will have chances NOT to repeat others strategies, which failed in other civilizations, even if they did the same - throw a dice.

2. The idea of the natural selection of the universes, that is the fecund universes in black holes by Lee Smolin, "nicely" combines with idea that most civilisation goes extinct as a result of the physical experiment. We create a special black hole on LHC, that create many universes, like our own. In other words, our universe is fine-tuned in the way that civilisations self-destroy by creating many new universes. No matter how improbable such construction, it will dominate because of its ability to replicate.

3. It is important to send signals to other civilisations, especially if we know how we are going to fail, to tell them that some dangerous paths should be escaped. However, we could attach to this message our DNA and some cultural information - and the request to resurrect us. Also, we should do it not in the form of the radiosignals, but as a data hoard on Moon, as most probably the next civilization will appear again on Earth. If aliens arrive in the Solar system they also will be able to find the message. I wrote an article about it recently, which still a draft.

Spread of wild animals

This implies that for wild animals life is not worth living. So just kill them all, as quickly as possible?

Thanks for adding ideas, I will add them in the next version of the map.

I think that the way we explore s-risks should be beneficial to our future. And for that we need that s-risks will not exclude x-risks, or create them. However, the lines of reasoning where life in general is net-negative, or human sufferings are less important than animal sufferings, or running simulation or reinforcement learning algorithms are regarded as mindcrime - are themself able to create dystopian future without any measurable reduction of sufferings.

To balance x-risks and s-risks we need to understand that non-existence is also a form of sufferings in a provable way.

At first, we need to define suffering not based on pain, but based on values and choices. It is measurable and is according to common sence. Some masochists may love pain, or in some cases pain is felt but not regarded as bad.

However, if define suffering only through pain we have problems:

1) non-existence becomes preferable in many situations, about which common sense says that they should bot be preferable.

2) Wireheading becomes good solution

3) Sufferings become unmeasurable, as we can't measure other's qualia.

4) We may start to decide about others' preferences against their will, but based on out (false) extrapolation of it.

So defining suffering through values and choices will help to come to more consistent results. We could ask a person about its worse possible outcome, and in many cases it will be not only pain. It case of animals we often can't ask, but we could make a thought experiment, would they prefer to live.

Such thought experiment helps us to establish that non-existence is a form of suffering for most actually existing humans and animals (but not mind in general). Imagine that my cat died. Is it suffering tomorrow? I could imagine that it will be alive tomorrow and measure two things 1) its pain level 2) its readiness to protect its life. The fact that it would protect its life if was alive - is an argument that non-existence fo it is a form of suffering, and it could be measured.

An interesting fact is that in cultures like India, where reincarnation is just a popular belief, the subjective measure of suffering is lower.

That's an interesting claim. What evidence do you have for that claim?

If it is a question to me, I think no. It may be simpler to make bad AI able to kill anyone in the next decade than to solve nature of consciousness and thus learn if any AI actually have any subjective experiences. I have been working 2 years ago on a plan of research of the nature of consciousness, but later mostly abandoned it as I think it is not an urgent question.

Indexical blackmail was somewhere on lesswrong, and idea is that AI in the box creates many my copies, and inform me about it, and because of this I can't be sure that I am not one of such copies, and thus I will realise it from the box (or face torture with probability 999 to 1000). I can't find the link.

The idea is based on idea of the "indexical uncertainty", which is googlable, for example, here: https://books.google.ru/books?id=1mMJBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT138&lpg=PT138&dq=indexical+uncertainty&source=bl&ots=Pmy8RXDflh&sig=7RT7DQIKidIN-Q6Po6seizyNGYw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi285nQzfrUAhXjZpoKHQJ2CQM4ChDoAQgjMAA#v=onepage&q=indexical%20uncertainty&f=false

Hacker's joke - it is a hypothetical situation when first and last AI creator is just a random 15 years old boy, who wants to play with AI by putting in it stupid goals. Nothing to google here.