How Safe are Uploads?

Well, in Hanson's words: Poor Folks Do Smile

Our ancestors were designed with pleasure and pain to motivate them in a near subsistence world. ... Our descendants will be similarly adapted to find joy and meaning in their near subsistence lives.

IIRC, he says that religion and ideology are symptoms of modern-day wealth/excess, and future folk won't be able to afford non-adaptive/non-correct beliefs. He calls our current position in history as "The Dreamtime"

Well, it is possible that he has said inconsistent things at different times, but in the posts I linked in my above comment, he argues (in my opinion plausibly) that the social mechanisms of control and coordination for ems may well end up being based on similar (epistemically) irrational beliefs as in historical human societies, i.e. religion, ideology, strict custom, etc. ("Onward Christian robots!," as he put it.)

[Edit - forgot to add: ] And of course, adaptive and correct beliefs are not always one and the same, and it's a huge fallacy to argue as if they were.

None of the technological advances in human history so far have produced machines capable of replacing human labor across the board at much lower cost.

You seem to think that the luddite fallacy depends on the possibility of substitution not being across the board. I've already answered a similar point by jimrandomh but I will answer again. Suppose that we have a series of revolutions in one sector after another in which labor-saving machines greatly increase the productivity of workers within that sector. So, what will happen? First, let's see what will happen in just one sector. According to Wikipedia, the main critique of luddism is as follows:

The term "Luddite fallacy" has become a concept in neoclassical economics reflecting the belief that labour-saving technologies (i.e., technologies that increase output-per-worker) increase unemployment by reducing demand for labour. Neoclassical economists believe this argument is fallacious because they assert that instead of seeking to keep production constant by employing a smaller and more productive workforce, employers increase production while keeping workforce size constant.

So, what will happen according to this critique is that the workforce size remains constant within the sector that has been affected by the change. Hold your horses - I know what you're going to say, but one thing at a time. Recall, we are trying to predict what will happen if there is a series of tech revolutions in one sector after another eventually covering all sectors. The result, based on the Wikipedia quote, is that all sector employment will remain the same.

Now, what you were going to say is, I think, that when labor saving devices hit a sector, labor shifts to other sectors. Am I right? We have the example of agriculture which seems to show this happening. So we want to know, what happens if labor-saving devices hit all sectors? Let's say they hit them simultaneously. If the solution to the luddite nightmare was that labor would shift to another sector, then the solution here must be that labor would shift entirely out of the economy, there not being any other sectors to shift to - right? But that does not follow.

We can reproduce the same sector-shifting phenomenon with immigration. In the US, immigrants have taken over certain sectors of the economy in many regions. In my region, Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Latin Americans have taken over many fast food kitchens. The result has been that Americans have shifted into other sectors.

But what if immigrants came to the US and entered into every sector simultaneously? Would they totally displace Americans completely out of the economy? No, they would not. They would simply expand the economy.

So there's a puzzle here. If immigrants enter one sector, American labor shifts away from the sector. But if immigrants enter all sectors, Americans stay in place. What explains this? What explains is is that the reason for the shift is relative wages. Americans shift to sectors where wages are higher. But if wages in all sectors remain the same (which they very well might in an economy which is simply expanding) then there won't be any shifting. But here's another objection: immigrants depress wages in the sectors they enter. Therefore if they entered all sectors simultaneously, they would depress all wages simultaneously, right? But that does not at all follow. Immigrants depress wages in the sector they enter but they do so only by offering more value for money to the customer - in short, they depress wages in their sector only by boosting effective wages in other sectors. If they enter all sectors simultaneously, they depression and boosting could very well cancel out.

With uploads, in contrast, the population growth necessary to hit the Malthusian limit

Yes, the Malthusian limit. I specifically said this was a strong argument. The arguments that I answered were not Malthusian. It's not because of the Malthusian limit that uploads would supposedly replace humans, but because they are better and cheaper - which is not because of the Malthusian limit. I do have many thoughts on Hanson's Malthusian argument, but they have nothing specifically to do with uploads. I want to postpone discussion about the Malthusian limit for another time. Here I am specifically talking about uploads versus humans at a time before the Malthusian limit is reached.

why didn’t the draft horses benefit from trading with motor transport then, but ended up in slaughterhouses instead? Your entire argument can be reworded as telling an American draft horse circa 1920 that he has no reason to fear displacement by motor vehicles. What is the essential difference when it comes to human labor versus uploads supposed to be?

Every species has a natural niche in which the species is fully able to support itself, and the niche can only support so many members of that species. Draft horses greatly outnumbered their natural niche, but they did not outnumber their artificial niche - the niche created for them by humans who were supporting them in exchange for work. When humans ceased to support them, then the draft horses, which greatly outnumbered their natural niche, died out. For all I know some of the wild horses are descendants draft horses.

The niche of a species is roughly determined by the total amount of food that the species is able to produce or obtain. Draft horses obtained food from humans, and could obtain only a small fraction of that food by themselves. Humans do not outnumber their natural niche, because humans make enough food to support themselves.

In order for uploads to lead to a mass dying off of humans, uploads would have to massively reduce the total quantity of food that humans produce. This would require that the uploads take over the land. However, Hanson's upload scenario depends on uploads needing very few resources. Let's take this to the limit and suppose that uploads require zero resources and work for free, demanding absolutely nothing in return. This merely takes to an extreme the very factors that were used to argue that humans will starve to death in the upload scenario. Given uploads that use no resources and work for free, it is not obvious that uploads would take over any agricultural land. So the same amount of food can still be produced.

It had been imagined that uploads would replace doctors, academics, etc. But none of this reduces the amount of food available to humans. And actually it increases the amount of medicine, education, etc. available to humans.

No, these are not the same.

It does not matter whether they are the same or not - what matters is whether the differences change the conclusion.

Labor-saving machines replace humans with a smaller number of humans, at some ratio. If the economy grows by that same ratio, then the demand for humans is back where it started.

Why does this change the conclusion? You need to explain how this makes the conclusion any different. You have an "if" there. I can propose an equivalent "if" in my scenario - and I did, which is that the total economy, both supply and demand, expands along with the population (where population = human + upload). Remember, the uploads are potential demanders, not just suppliers.

Labor-saving machines also apply only to some domains but not others, so the tasks which machines can't do become limiting and expand. But with uploads, there is no such ratio; no operators are needed, and there are no domains of things uploads can't do. so growing the economy further does not make humans valuable again.

Again, why does this change the conclusion? You say that there are no domains of things that uploads can't do. But you could say the same thing of new babies. There are no things that new babies can't do. So, suppose that our population is increased a hundredfold by new babies. Now we have 99 new-population for each old-population. And they can do everything the old-population can do. So, is the old-population no longer valuable? No - the economy simply expands a hundredfold. The 99 new-population compete for the exact same jobs that the old-population were doing, sure, but they are also 99 new customers. The new people buying stuff exactly matches the new people selling stuff. So the old-population remains in business.

There is no way for me to answer that without getting deeply into politics.