A resolution to the Doomsday Argument.

I don't see why simulated observers would almost ever outnumber physical observers. It would need an incredibly inefficient allocation of resources.

The question isn't how many simulated observers exist in total (although that's also unknown), but how many of them are like you in some relevant sense, i.e. what to consider "typical".

Avoiding the DA gives them a much clearer motive. It's the only reason I can think of that I would want to do it. Surely it's at least worth considering?

Many people do think they would have other reasons to run ancestor simulations.

But in any case, I don't think your original idea works. Running a simulation of your ancestors causes your simulated ancestors to be wrong about the DA, but it doesn't cause yourself to be wrong about it.

Trying to steelman, what you'd need is to run simulations of people successfully launching a friendly self-modifying AI. Suppose out of every N civs that run an AI, on average one succeeds and all the others go extinct. If each of them precommits to simulating N civs, and the simulations are arranged so that in a simulation running an AI always works, so in the end there are still N civs that successfully ran an AI.

This implies a certain measure on future outcomes: it's counting "distinct" existences while ignoring the actual measure of future probability. This is structurally similar to quantum suicide or quantum roulette.

What did you mean by" they direct the AI to create billions of simulated humanities in the hope that this will serve as a Schelling point to them"

It's not about the number of humans. It's about the number of observer-moments. Imagine if you were the only human ever. If you're only twenty years old, it's unlikely that you'd live to be a billion. You're not going to just happen to be in one of the first twenty years.

Most people consider causality to be a rather serious argument. If you're going to unilaterally declare certain lines of argument illegitimate, and then criticize people for failing to present a "legitimate" argument, and declaring that any opinions that disagree with you don't improve the discussion, that's probably going to piss people off,

You say that one can change A by changing B, while there is no causal mechanism by which B can influence A. That's denying causality.

Well, if you don't like the term 'denying causality', feel free to replace it, but the point holds anyway.

In my prior probabilities system, finding a way around causality is somewhere near finding a way around energy conservation law. No way, unless there are tons of evidence.

Evidence of some unique features.

Ah - I'd seen the link, but the widget just spun. I'll go look at the PDF. The below is before I have read it - it could be amusing and humility inducing if I read it and it makes me change my mind on the below (and I will surely report back if that happens).

As for the SSA being wrong on the face of it - the DA wiki page says "The doomsday argument relies on the self-sampling assumption (SSA), which says that an observer should reason as if they were randomly selected from the set of observers that actually exist." Assuming this is true (I do not know enough to judge yet), then if the SSA is false, then the DA argument is unsupported.

So - lets look at SSA. In a nutshell, it revolves around how unlikely it is that you were born in the first small% of history - and ergo, doomsday must be around the corner.

I can think of 2 very strong arguments for the SSA being untrue.

First - this isn't actually how probability works. Take a fair coin and decide to flip it. The probability of heads and tails are the same, 1/2 - 50% for each. Flip the coin, and note the result. The probability is now unity - there is no magic way to get that 50/50 back. That coin toss result is now and forever more heads (or tails). You cannot look at a given result, and work backwards about how improbable it was, then use that - because it is no longer improbable, it's history. Probability does not actually work backwards in time, although it is convenient in some cases to pretend it does.

Another example - what is the probability that I was born at the exact second, minute, hour, and day, at the exact location I was born at, out of the countless other places and times that humanity has existed that I could have been born in/at? The answer, of course - unity. And nil at all other places and times, because it has already happened - the wave form, if you will, has collapsed, Elvis has left the building.

So - what is the probability you were born so freakishly close to the 5 million year reign of humanity, in the first 0.000001% of all living people? Unity. Because it's history. And the only thing making this position any different whatsoever from the others is blind chance. There is nothing one bit special about being in the first bit, other than that it allows you to notice that. (Feel free to substitute anything for 5 million above - it's all the same).

Second - there are also logical issues - you can spin the argument on it's head, and it still works (with less force to be sure). What are the chances of me being alive for Doomsday? Fairly small - despite urban legend, the number of people alive are a fairly small percentage (6-7%) of all who have ever lived. Ergo - doomsday cannot be soon, because it was unlikely I would be born to see it. (again, flawed - right now, the liklihood I was born at that time is unity)

An argument that can be used to "prove" both T and ~T is flawed, and should be discarded, aside from the probability thing. Prove here being used very loosely, because this is nowhere close to proof, which is good because I like things like Math working.

Time to go read a PDF.

Update: Done. That was quite enjoyable, thank you. A great deal of food for thought, and like most good, crunchy info filled things, there were bits I quite agreed with, and quite disagreed with (and that's fine.)

I took some notes; I will not attempt to post them here, because I have already run into comment length issues, and I'm a wordy SOB. I can post them to a gist or something if anyone is interested, I kept them mostly so I could comment intelligently after reading it. Scanning back thru for the important bits:

Anthropomorphic reasoning would be useless as suggested - unless the AI was designed by and for humans to use. Which it would be. So - it may well be useful in the beginning, because presumably we would be modeling desired traits (like "friendliness") on human traits. That could easily fail catastrophically later, of course.

The comparison between evolution and AI, in terms of relation to humans on page 11 was profound, and very well said.

There are an awful lot of assumptions presented as givens, and then used to assert other things. If any of them are wrong - the chain breaks. There were also a few suggestions that would violate physics, but the point being made was still valid ("With molecular nanotechnology, the AI could (potentially) rewrite the solar system unopposed." was my favorite; it is probably beneficial to separate what is possible and impossible, given things like distances and energy and time, not to mention "why?").

There is an underlying assumption that intelligence can increase without bound. I am by no means sure this is true - I can think of no other trait that does so, you run into limits (again) of physics and energy and so on. It is very possible that things like the speed-of-light propagation delay, heat, and inherent difficulty of certain tasks such as factoring would end up imposing an upper-limit on intelligence of an AI before it reached the w00 w00 god-power magic stage. Not that it matters that much, if it's goal is to harm us, you don't need to be too smart to do that...

Anyone thinking an AI might want my body for it's atoms is not thinking clearly. I am made primarily of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen - all are plentiful, in much easier to work with form, elsewhere. An early stage AI bootstrapping production would almost certainly want metals, some basic elements like silicon, and hydrocarbons (which we keep handy). Oh, and likely fissionables for power. Not us. Later on, all bets are off, but there are still far better places to get atoms than people.

Finally - the flaw in assuming an AI will predate mind upload is motivation. Death is a powerful, powerful motivator. A researcher close to being able to do it, about to die, is damn well going to try, no matter what the government says they can or can't do - I would. And the guesses as to fidelity required are just that - guesses. Life extension is a powerful, powerful draw. Upload may also ultimately be easier - hand-waving away a ton of details, it's just copy and simulation; it does not require new, creative inventions, just refinements on current thoughts. You don't need to totally understand how something works to scan and simulate it.

Enough. If you have read this far - more power to you, thank you much for your time.

PS. I still don't get the whole "simulated human civilizations" bit - the paper did not seem to touch on that. But I rather suspect it's the same backwards probability thing...