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The Hanson-Hughes Debate on
"The Crack of a Future Dawn"

 Journal of Evolution and Technology  -  Vol. 16  Issue 1 - June 2007 - pgs 99-126
http://jetpress.org/v16/hanson.html

PDF Version
 


Editor's Introduction

"Follow the money" has been the operational rule for historians and investigative journalists since at least the Watergate era, if not earlier. Futurists do not have a money trail to follow, but instead must predict the trajectory of economic relations based on assumptions of what technological and social developments the future may hold. Many futurists assume that nanotechnology in combination with Artificial Intelligence (AI) will yield a world of material abundance with little or no need for human labor. The nano/AI cornucopia will rain down wealth upon one and all, giving slackers and solid workaholics equal access to almost anything they could ever need or want. But is this really the most likely scenario?

Economist Robin Hanson thinks not. As he reasoned in his paper "If Uploads Come First: The Crack of a Future Dawn" (1994), if the technology to copy, or upload, human minds is developed before strong AI, then the "result could be a sharp transition to an upload-dominated world, with many dramatic consequences. In particular, fast and cheap replication may once again make Darwinian evolution of human values a powerful force in human history. With evolved values, most uploads would value life even when life is hard or short, uploads would reproduce quickly, and wages would fall. But total wealth should rise, so we could all do better by accepting uploads, or at worse taxing them, rather than trying to delay or segregate them."

In his book Citizen Cyborg (2004), bioethicist (and JET editor) James Hughes took issue with the social implications of Dr. Hanson's paper. Dr. Hughes objected to Hanson's upload scenario, characterizing it as a "dismal, elitist utopia" that "recapitulates Marx's vision of universal immiseration, but this time in the Matrix."

When Hanson learned of what Hughes had written, on March 29, 2006 he posted a response to the WTA-Talk email list of the World Transhumanist Association. During March and April, a debate ensued. The text that follows is a lightly-edited transcript of that online debate. The original discussion thread, which includes messages from additional participants, can be read at: http://www.jetpress.org/thread.html

The debate text here is limited to what Hanson and Hughes wrote online, but with the addition of closing comments from each man which were written specifically for this document.

I would like to thank Robin Hanson and James Hughes for allowing me to assemble their email debate messages into this document. I hope it will prove to be a more convenient format for readers to follow the fascinating and important issues under discussion. All credit for the content of this document belongs to Dr. Hanson and Dr. Hughes. All errors, omissions, or infelicities of language are my responsibility alone.

Michael LaTorra

Member, IEET Board of Directors
WTA Publications Director
JET Editor



 

The Debate

Robin Hanson:
I learned last night that pages 169-170 of James Hughes' book Citizen Cyborg discuss my paper "If Uploads Come First" http://hanson.gmu.edu/uploads.html . In that section Hughes severely misrepresents my positions. He paints me as gleefully advocating having a ruthless pampered ruling class, "not very different from contemporary luxury suburbs," being "set off from a larger terrain of violence and injustice" among downtrodden masses. I am posting a public response here, to a list I know that he reads.

From James Hughes' book Citizen Cyborg (excerpted here):

The extropians have also cultivated important allies in libertarian politics such as Virginia Postrel and Ron Bailey, sympathizers with their militant defense of personal liberty and hostility to regulation and environmentalism. ... Postrel has now organized Bailey and other technolibertarians, ... into The Franklin Society. The first project of the Society has been to campaign against attempts to ban embryonic stem cell research. In 2003, one member of the new Franklin Society, extropian economist Robin Hanson, a professor at George Mason University, achieved his full fifteen minutes of fame. ... While I think the experiment had merit and would not have encouraged terrorism, the episode does illustrate some of the moral and political blindness that the unreformed extropian anarcho-capitalist perspective lends itself to.

Putting me in this context suggests that I have a "militant defense of personal liberty and hostility to regulation and environmentalism" and that I am an "unreformed extropian anarcho-capitalist". While I have long associated with people under the flag "extropian" (via mailing lists, conferences, and journals), I deny these other claims.

In 2002 I agreed to sign a petition saying "therapeutic cloning should not be banned," sponsored under the name "Franklin Society," but I otherwise have no knowledge of or association with such a society. I presume that James would also have signed such a petition at the time.

The Policy Analysis Market was a joint project of many people, and I was the only such person with any "extropian" associations. Other people on the project were more directly responsible for the web page examples that caused the furor; those people can reasonably be blamed for "political blindness," though not in my opinion for "moral blindness."

... he published a now often-cited essay "If Uploads Come First - the Crack of a Future Dawn" in Extropy magazine. ... He argues that the capabilities of machine-based person would be so much greater than those of organic humans that most non-uploaded people would become unemployed.

My main argument was that uploads will cost much less, not that they would be more capable.

... Eventually the enormous population of uploads would be forced to work at very low subsistence wages - the cost of their electricity and disk space - ruled over by a very few of the most successful of the uploads.

I say nothing about people being ruled over by a successful elite. I talk disapprovingly about wealth inequality among humans, caused by some humans not insuring against an upload transition. I talk about inequalities in the number of copies made of particular uploads, but I do not speak at all about wealth inequalities among uploads.

Hanson dismisses the idea that governments could impose redistribution on uploads since there would be large economic benefits of an unfettered transition to Matrix life.

The only thing I say about government redistribution [in "If Uploads Come First"] is this:

politicians would do better to tax uploads and copies, rather than forbidding them, and give the proceeds to those who would otherwise lose out. {Note that such a tax would be a tax on the poor, paid to the relatively rich, if one counted per upload copy.}

This is hardly a dismissal of redistribution. Nor is my claim one I think James would disagree with.

Returning to Citizen Cyborg:

The average quality of life of the subsistence upload and the unemployed human would allegedly be higher than before. So the best we future residents of an uploaded society can do is become as versatile as possible to maximize our chances of ending up as one of the lucky rule or employed classes.

The first sentence here is a reasonable summary of my position. But the second sentence here does not at all follow from the first, and I said nothing like it in my paper.

Hanson dismisses the idea that people will fight the division of society into a mass of well-fed plebes and a superpowerful elite since the growth in the gross domestic product is the sole measure of his utopia,

I never mentioned anything like "gross domestic product" and so certainly didn't endorse it as a "sole measure" of value. The division I talk most about is humans and uploads, not "well-fed plebes and a superpowerful elite," and to the extent I take sides it is with the uploads, who are poorer.

Hanson: …and the elimination of the weak will select for "capable people willing to work for low wages, who value life even when life is hard."

With a dismal, elitist utopia like this who needs a Luddites's dystopia?

My paper was mainly a positive, not a normative analysis. That is, I mainly tried to forecast what would happen under such a scenario, and only make limited comments along the way about what private actions or public policies we might prefer. I tried not to shy away from describing the negatives along with the positives.

Even after all of Hughes' strong language, I'm not sure I can identify any particular claim I made in my paper that he would disagree with. And while he favors redistribution, it is not at all clear to me who he wants to take from, and who to give to under the scenario I describe. After all, given the three distinctions of human/upload, rich/poor, and few/many-copied, there are eight possible classes to consider.

James Hughes:
Thanks for taking the time to respond Robin.

And doing so in a comradely, academic exchange even though my description of your views was polemical and, in your analysis, incorrect.

However, I just was in Oxford with you at the James Martin Institute's Future Forum ("Tomorrow's People: The Challenges of Technologies for Life Extension and Enhancement" http://www.martininstitute.ox.ac.uk/jmi/forum2006/) and saw you give another version of this very "Crack of a Future Dawn" scenario in which you did not mention any regulatory or political solution possible to this scenario of general unemployment that you foresee being created by a proliferation of uploaded workers, so I don't think my analysis of your views needs much revision. When a member of the audience asked, as I have in the past, whether we might not want to use some kind of political method to prevent general unemployment and wealth concentration in this Singularitarian scenario your response was, as it has been in the past and was in that paper, that no one will want to prevent this coming to pass since we will all own stock in this explosive economy and will therefore all be better off than we were before.

In the essay "If Uploads Come First" you say:

…imagine the potential reaction against strong wage competition by "machine-people" with strange values. Uploading might be forbidden, or upload copying might be highly restricted or forbidden...If level heads can be found, however, they should be told that if uploading and copying are allowed, it is possible to make almost everyone better off. While an upload transition might reduce the market value of ordinary people's human capital, their training and ability to earn wages, it should increase total wealth, the total market value of all capital, including human capital of uploads and others, real estate, company stock, etc. Thus it can potentially make each person better off.

I'll say again: I think the scenario is a scary one, in ways that you don't appear to recognize, because most people have little confidence that they would actually be better off in a world in which all "human capital" is radically devalued by the proliferation of electronic workers. That includes me; although I do own stocks in mutual funds today, and those stocks might benefit from a Singularitarian economic boom, I still feel like my world and my future is being determined by unaccountable elites who control my political institutions, elites quite content to see vast numbers of people immiserated as inequality grows.

The scenario you describe is one where it appears these inequalities of wealth and power would just get a lot more extreme and far less politically ameliorable.

If Singularitarianism wants to paint a truly attractive future, and not one that simply fans the flames of Luddism, then it has to put equality and social security in the foreground and not as a dismissive afterthought. To his credit Moravec, in Robot, argues for a universalization of Social Security as a response to human structural unemployment caused by robot proliferation. Marshall Brain (http://marshallbrain.com) reached the same conclusion, and several of the principals at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (http://www.ieet.org/) and I are supporters of the concept of a Basic Income Guarantee (http://www.usbig.net/). But since this would require state intervention I suspect you don't favor such a proposal, which is why you advocate(d) minarchist solutions like universal stock ownership in the Singularity.

Perhaps the most troubling parts of the essay are:

As wages dropped, upload population growth would be highly selective, selecting capable people willing to work for low wages, who value life even when life is hard. Soon the dominant upload values would be those of the few initial uploads with the most extreme values, willing to work for the lowest wages.

And then later

Those who might want to be one of the few highly copied uploads should carefully consider whether their values and skills are appropriate. How much do you value life when it is hard and alien?...Those who don't want to be highly-copied uploads should get used to the idea of their descendants becoming a declining fraction of total wealth and population....

How is this different from a radical Social Darwinism, arguing that this Pac-man world will eliminate all the uppety prole uploads, the ones who might want minimum wage laws or unions, and just leave the good hard workers willing to work for subsistence?

You say:

I talk disapprovingly about wealth inequality among humans, caused by some humans not insuring against an upload transition.

Which I assume refers to this passage, the only one that mentions inequality in the essay:

Would there be great inequality here, with some lucky few beating out the just-as-qualified rest?...Computer technology should keep improving even if work on uploading is delayed by politics, lowering the cost of copying and the cost to run fast. Thus the early-adopter advantage would increase the longer uploading is delayed; delaying uploading should induce more, not less, inequality. So, if anything, one might prefer to speed up progress on uploading technology, to help make an uploading transition more equitable.

So yes, you did argue against inequality, but only in passing as one reason why of a rapid transition to general unemployment in an upload-dominated economy should not be hampered by political regulation. If we try to slow this transition, a minority of uploads will just become even richer. So we should speed the transition to give more uploads a piece of the pie.

But you are right that you do not explicitly describe a concentration of wealth, only mention it as a possibility in order to discourage regulation, and you do describe mechanisms that might spread wealth out among the uploads and humans. But then how is that consistent with the scenario "As wages dropped, upload population growth would be highly selective, selecting capable people willing to work for low wages"?

Doesn't that imply that humans would be unemployed, most uploads working for upload-subsistence, and some very few uploads will be raking in the big bucks? Or is the scenario one of truly universal and equal poverty among all the uploads, with no wealthy owners of capital anymore in the equation?

You note that we might progressively tax wealth accumulators in this economy, but then in the last sentence of the paper's abstract you say:

…total wealth should rise, so we could all do better by accepting uploads, or at worse taxing them, rather than trying to delay or segregate them.

And then later:

If forced to act by their constituents, politicians would do better to tax uploads and copies, rather than forbidding them, and give the proceeds to those who would otherwise lose out.

Which pretty clearly implies that you only grudgingly accept Social Security and redistributive taxes on uploaded wealth accumulators as a concession to political unrest, and not as an obvious and essential step in maintaining an egalitarian polity.

That said, the reason I devoted the attention to the essay that I did was because I think it is a very smart and foresightful scenario of a future that could come to pass. But I do think the piece illuminates a techno-libertarianism that most people will find scary, and which our movement needs to contextualize in proactive social policies, precisely in order to defend the possibility of uploading from bans. As you note, in such a future I would recommend (fight for) redistribution from the wealthy - uploads or human - to the majority, to ensure some form of rough equality, and some form of Social Security more egalitarian and universal than stock ownership, such as a Basic Income Guarantee. (Did you have in mind the distribution of mutual fund shares to everyone in the developed and developing world? If so, I think that would be a welcome addition to the scenario.)

And if the economy and world start to change with the rapidity that you forecasted at Oxford—doubling every couple of weeks, with a proliferation of uploads—I would also favor strong regulatory action to slow and temper the transition. A rapid take-off Singularity is both dangerous and anti-democratic, and we should say so and say what kind of policies we think are necessary to make sure it doesn't happen, and how we can slow it down if it starts. You don't really endorse redistributive, Social Security or regulatory policies in the essay, but rather argue against them, and you didn't even mention them at Oxford. Clearly, you consider them suboptimal, counter-productive concessions to Luddites. So I do think we have a difference of opinion that I have not mischaracterized.

However, I apologize again for the polemical tone of the passage since we are friends, and for not more fully describing your views.

Robin Hanson:
James, you are acting more like a politician than a scholar here. I tried to focus attention on how the specific words of your summary differ from the specific words of my paper that you purport to summarize, but you insist on trying to distill a general gestalt from my writings, based on a simple one-dimensional redistribution-based political axis. Apparently in your mind this axis consists of good people on the left who support redistribution, employment, and high wages in the service of equality, and evil people on the right who seek inequality, unemployment, and low wages in the service of social Darwinism. Since I predict that the technology of uploads will lead to unemployment for humans and low wages and Darwinian selection for uploads, and I only mention and endorse one possible redistribution, apparently not enthusiastically enough for you, I must be one of the evil people. Come on!

With cheap uploads there is pretty much no way to escape "unemployment" for most humans. That is, while you could give people make-work jobs, and/or pay them lots more than the value of their work, the truth is that for most people the value of their labor to others would be little, and if that were all they were paid they would not work. Also, unless we are willing to impose population controls on uploads far more Draconian than those in China today, we could not escape uploads getting low wages and undergoing Darwinian selection. The only way to induce upload wages far above the cost of creating uploads would be to prevent the vast majority of uploads from existing at all. And the only way to avoid Darwinian selection among uploads would be, in addition, to limit severely the number of copies made of individual uploads. These are not statements of advocacy; they are just the hard facts one would have to deal with under this scenario. So are you criticizing me for not endorsing Draconian upload population control?

I repeat again the conclusion of my last message:

while he [Hughes] favors "redistribution," it is not at all clear to me who he wants to take from, and who to give to under the scenario I describe. After all, given the three distinctions of human/upload, rich/poor, and few/many-copied, there are eight possible classes to consider.

To elaborate, the key reason I hesitate to more strongly endorse redistribution is that it is not clear who are really the "deserving poor" to be aided in this scenario. In dollar terms the poorest would be the uploads who might be prevented from existing. If one only considers the per-capita wealth of existing creatures, the poorest would be the many copies of those "who value life even when life is hard." But these would be the richest uploads in clan terms, in that such clans would have the most copies; counting by upload clans identifies a different poor. Humans would have far larger per-capita income, but many would be poorer if we talk in terms of income relative to their subsistence level, since the subsistence level for uploads would be far lower than that of humans. Should their not taking advantage of the option to convert from human to upload be held against the "poor" humans? Finally, a few humans will have rare abilities to make substantial wages; does that make them "rich" even if they do not own much other wealth? If you are going to criticize me for not explicitly supporting the redistribution you favor, I think you should say more precisely who you would take from and who you would give to.

Now for a few more detailed responses:

If Singularitarianism wants to paint a truly attractive future, and not one that simply fans the flames of Luddism, then it has to put equality and social security in the foreground and not as a dismissive afterthought.

My purpose is not to paint a truly attractive future; my purpose is to paint as realistic a picture as possible, whatever that may be.

... in Oxford with you ... When a member of the audience asked, as I have in the past, whether we might not want to use some kind of political method to prevent general unemployment and wealth concentration in this Singularitarian scenario

This did not happen. One person asked "What does your economic model predict people will do?" This was in response to the idea of improving robots, but he said nothing specifically about politics, employment, or wealth concentration.

Hughes wrote:

your response was, as it has been in the past and was in that paper, that no one will want to prevent this coming to pass

I never said that no one would try to stop uploads.

I'll say again: I think the scenario is a scary one, in ways that you don't appear to recognize, ... although I do own stocks in mutual funds today, and those stocks might benefit from a Singularitarian economic boom, I still feel like my world and my future is being determined by unaccountable elites who control my political institutions, elites quite content to see vast numbers of people immiserated as inequality grows.

I am well aware that the scenario I describe is scary, and also that many people do not trust political elites to act in their interest. I do not argue that people should trust political elites.

[Hughes quoted Hanson] "As wages dropped, upload population growth would be highly selective, selecting capable people willing to work for low wages."

Doesn't that imply that humans would be unemployed, most uploads working for upload-subsistence, and some very few uploads will be raking in the big bucks? Or is the scenario one of truly universal and equal poverty among all the uploads, with no wealthy owners of capital anymore in the equation?

My scenario is consistent with both high and low concentration of ownership of capital, and with high or low inequality of wages among uploads. I make no prediction about there being a few very rich uploads.

Moravec, in Robot, argues for a universalization of Social Security as a response to human structural unemployment caused by robot proliferation. ... since this would require state intervention I suspect you don't favor such a proposal, ... You don't really endorse redistributive, Social Security or regulatory policies in the essay, but rather argue against them, and you didn't even mention them at Oxford, and clearly consider them suboptimal, counter-productive concessions to Luddites. ... Which pretty clearly implies that you only grudgingly accept Social Security and redistributive taxes on uploaded wealth accumulators as a concession to political unrest, and not as an obvious and essential step in maintaining an egalitarian polity.

You keep jumping to conclusions. Just because I take no position does not mean I am against your position.

James Hughes:
Robin Hanson wrote:

Since I predict that the technology of uploads will lead to unemployment for humans and low wages and Darwinian selection for uploads, and I only mention and endorse one possible redistribution, apparently not enthusiastically enough for you, I must be one of the evil people.

I don't think you are evil. I just think you share the worldview of many American economists, and most of the 1990s transhumanists, who prefer a minarchist, free-market oriented approach to social policy, and do not see redistribution and regulation as desirable or inevitable. My book was a critique of that point of view, and I used your article as a brilliant paradigmatic example of it. Empirically, the people who are most attracted to libertarianism, neo-liberalism (or whatever) are those who are most likely to benefit from those policies: affluent men in the North. My challenge to you, and all of us, is that we need to break out of those blinkers. Try to see the world from the perspective of the billions who live on dollars a day. And from the perspective of those who are quite suspicious of emerging technologies because these are used to bomb them or exploit them. For such people, the benefits of technology are often inaccessible.

As to your assertion that your piece is merely descriptive and not normative, I leave that to the reader to judge; see http://hanson.gmu.edu/uploads.html

To me it is clear that you are excited about this future (a "Crack of a Future Dawn" after all) and see it as a desirable one with universal advantages, a future that should not be slowed or regulated by state intervention. So you are about as non-normative as Karl Marx in Das Kapital—here is how the system works, here is our inevitable future, here is how people will react, and here is how we will end up in paradise. No, there is no normative analysis needed in techno-utopian determinism—we either get with the program, or end up on the dustbin of history.

…unless we are willing to impose population controls on uploads far more Draconian than those in China today, we could not escape uploads getting low wages and undergoing Darwinian selection.

Rights do not exist in isolation. Reproductive rights have to be balanced against others, such as the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Aubrey de Grey, for instance, has been quite clear in emphasizing that we will inevitably need to consider limits on reproduction if we have unlimited life expectancy. Uploading and space exploration only moves out the necessity.

In addition, potential future people, uploads or human, do not have rights; only existing people do. So I do think reproductive control on uploads would make perfect sense, and would be one of the policies that should be pursued if we were faced with your scenario.

In effect, your scenario is one version of the runaway AI scenario, with individual viral egos instead of one monolithic AI, and I see both as existential risks that we need transhumanist policies to prevent, not to facilitate.

The only way to induce upload wages far above the cost of creating uploads would be to prevent the vast majority of uploads from existing at all.

Then why isn't population control the only way to induce human wages to rise? Yes, labor supply does affect wages, but so do government policies like worker safety laws, taxation and minimum wages. The fact that these policies are completely off your radar is part of the problem.

And the only way to avoid Darwinian selection among uploads would be to, in addition, limit severely the number of copies made of individual uploads.

Again you reveal a Social Darwinist view without any acknowledgement that there can be collective solutions to social problems. Of course, we can prevent the forces of social selection from killing off all the beings who don't want to work for low wages, and selecting for the diligent subsistence drones. If there is such a population pressure, we create new selection parameters to encourage or require other population traits. But again, the notion of social engineering is apparently anathema.

An example: clearly employers already prefer human workers who work long hours, are perfectly loyal, and never organize for collective benefits. To the extent that there are psychopharmaceuticals and cybernetics that allow employers to "perfect" their workers there will be efforts to apply them.

So we pass laws that, even if we all get to take Modafanil, no one can work more than 50 hours a week. We pass laws against loyalty drugs/chips, just as we once outlawed serfdom and company towns. We pass collective bargaining laws that mandate that all uploads need to use at least 30% of their CPU cycles for personal, non-remunerative enrichment.

Without these kinds of policies we could drift toward hive-mind drone existences, losing individual subjective agency, which is one of the existential threats pointed to by World Transhumanist Association Chairman Bostrom.

…while he [Hughes] favors "redistribution," it is not at all clear to me who he wants to take from, and who to give to, under the scenario I describe. After all, given the three distinctions of human/upload, rich/poor, and few/many-copied, there are eight possible classes to consider.

Rich to Poor will do nicely thank you, regardless of their number or instantiation.

To elaborate, the key reason I hesitate to more strongly endorse redistribution is that it is not clear who are really the "deserving poor" to be aided in this scenario.

Yes, "deserving poor" is part of the problem. The desirability of rough social equality does not depend on any notion of "deservingness".

I do not argue that people should trust political elites.

No, only the unfettered market. Is there any form of law, state or collective action other than market exchange in your imagined Dawn?

My scenario is consistent with both high and low concentration of ownership of capital, and with high or low inequality of wages among uploads. I make no prediction about there being a few very rich uploads.

Sadly, reality is not consistent with the notion that there will be a new era of equality with radical technological change. The winners/owners will change, but any equality to be achieved is something we have to fight for, not something to be fervently wished for.

Just because I take no position does not mean I am against your position.

Robin, I don't think you have ever taken my position(s) seriously enough to reject them - they simply are alien to the kind of economic analysis that you do. I wish you would take them seriously enough to explicitly reject them so we could have that conversation.

James Hughes:
Quoting a message from Russell Wallace:

I agree with you that this is a potential problem, but rather than rely on a monolithic government to legislate our way out of them (which has well known problems of its own), I will suggest that this is exactly the sort of thing my Domain Protection idea is designed for:

http://homepage.eircom.net/~russell12/dp.html

As I understand your proposal Russell, it is that we would ask the world-controlling Friendly AI to set up regions that are not allowed to interfere with one another, one for uploads and one for ur-humans.

This of course broaches the problems that we face today with the enforcement of international agreements that countries should not invade one another.

A) There are sometimes good reasons for countries to be invaded, as when they pose a threat to the rest or are violating human rights.

B) There needs to be a legitimate, accountable global authority to enforce those agreements, and unfortunately the US Presidency is not such an authority

I don't see how a Friendly AI gets us there. If it has the kind of power necessary, it is clearly monolithic. If it is legitimate, but not accountable, it's a benevolent monarchy (cross your fingers). If it is legitimate and accountable (replace-able, control-able) then it is a part of global democratic governance.

Robin Hanson:
James Hughes wrote:

I don't think you are evil. I just think you share the worldview of many American economists, and most of the 1990s transhumanists, who prefer a minarchist, free-market oriented approach to social policy, and do not see redistribution and regulation as desirable or inevitable. ...

Hanson: I do not argue that people should trust political elites.

No, only the unfettered market. Is there any form of law, state or collective action other than market exchange in your imagined Dawn?

You keep making these false statements about me, which I deny. I teach economics and in most lectures I make statements about the desirability and inevitability of regulation and redistribution. Really.

... Yes, labor supply does affect wages, but so do government policies like worker safety laws, taxation and minimum wages. The fact that these policies are completely off your radar is part of the problem.

I am well aware of such policies. But my claim is that in this context they would "prevent the vast majority of uploads from existing at all" if they raised wages a lot remains true. I wrote: "…while he favors 'redistribution,' it is not at all clear to me who he wants to take from, and who to give to, under the scenario I describe. After all, given the three distinctions of human/upload, rich/poor, and few/many-copied, there are eight possible classes to consider."

James responded:

Rich to Poor will do nicely thank you, regardless of their number or instantiation.

I gave a long analysis showing how there were at least five different ways to conceive of who are the "poor" in such a scenario, and I have twice now asked you to clarify which of these groups you want to favor with redistribution. You complain that I have not supported "redistribution" but without clarification this can only be a generic slogan.

James Hughes:
Robin Hanson wrote:

You keep making these false statements about me, which I deny.

I'm sorry you think I'm misrepresenting you. Of course you know about the political side of political economy, and I'm sure you teach about it. What I keep wanting is more realistic application and advocacy of the legitimate role of democratic deliberation and law in your writing.

You are associated, for instance, with "ideas futures" and market-based approaches to aggregating social preferences as a way to replace democratic mechanisms. As I said, I think your proposals are interesting and I would love to see the results of the experiments. But they do indicate a directionality in your work over the last fifteen years, arguing for a shift from reliance on democratic deliberation to market mechanisms.

Isn't that the case? Isn't it fair to characterize you as a libertarian economist?

worker safety laws, taxation and minimum wages... would "prevent the vast majority of uploads from existing at all" if they raised wages a lot remains true.

Yes, we agree about that. If we regulated uploads in certain ways it would restrict the incentive to clone/bud/build more of them. Just like passing laws that you have to send your kids to school instead of work them to death in the fields or factories changes kids from exploitable labor into luxury consumables, reducing the economic incentive to have them.

I gave a long analysis showing how there were at least five different ways to conceive of who are the "poor" in such a scenario, and I have twice now asked you to clarify which of these groups you want to favor with redistribution. You complain that I have not supported "redistribution" but without clarification this can only be a generic slogan.

Your examples are interesting, and worthy of additional discussion, but I really don't have to parse them before I can advocate a general principle that I want to live in a roughly equal society.

But I'll make a stab: in other writing I've pointed to the fact that liberal democracy is founded on the consensual myth of the discrete, continuous, autonomous individual. To the extent that neurotechnology erodes that consensual illusion, it fundamentally problematizes liberal democracy (and "the market"). I call that the "political Singularity," and I don't mean that in a whoopee! way.

So the problem you pose of whether a "clan" of upload clones, all sharing core identity software, should be treated as one—very rich—individual or a bazillion very poor individuals is a really serious problem for the future. Perhaps we will need a bicameral legislature, like the US Senate and House, one based on personalities and the other on bodies.

I don't know and I find the prospect very troubling. I would like to live in a world, like Brin's Kiln People, where I could send a copy of myself to work while the base-unit me stays home to read and cook. But in Brin's world, even though the clones only last 48 hours, they still have existential crises about whether they are the same as the base person, or a separate person with a right to life. We have yet to come up with a good solution to these dilemmas, which may be another reason to phase them in cautiously.

Robin Hanson:
Marcelo Rinesi wrote:

The notion that - devoid of legal, societal or other restrictions; assuming that they will be possible and cheap; assuming that they will behave roughly as Von Neumann-Morgenstern utility maximizers, etc- uploads will eventually displace humans from most of the economic system and then compete fiercely between themselves, seems reasonable under the light of what we know of economics (substitute for "game theory" if you will or even "what I would do if I woke up uploaded"). The qualifications "devoid of legal, etc." are critical in this paragraph, of course. Change the parameters and the model results change; to some degree, the polemical question is not that the model is wrong, but what end results would be desirable, which ones of those end results would be possible, and what parameters would take us there.

Yes, that is just how economic theorists like myself work. We first create a baseline model, the simplest one we can come up with that describes the essence of some situation, and then we vary that model to explore the effects of both various outside influences and of possible policies one might choose. The simplest model of most situations tends to be a low regulation model, but that does not mean that we are recommending no regulation. That is just usually the best starting point for considering variations.

Robin Hanson:
James Hughes wrote:

Hughes: I just think you ... do not see redistribution and regulation as desirable or inevitable.

Hanson: You keep making these false statements about me, which I deny.

Hughes: I'm sorry you think I'm misrepresenting you....You are associated, for instance, with "ideas futures" and market-based approaches to aggregating social preferences as a way to replace democratic mechanisms.... But they do indicate a ... shift from reliance on democratic deliberation to market mechanisms. Isn't that the case? Isn't it fair to characterize you as a libertarian economist?

No, it is not fair to characterize me as a libertarian economist. Some of my colleagues perhaps, but not me. You have been so far complaining that since I did not talk much about regulation in my uploads paper, that I must be hostile to the idea and unaware of the regulatory issues you hold dear. I have been trying to explain that I am aware of such issues and remain open to regulation, but that a low regulation analysis is usually the best first analysis step in economic analysis. I had thought a bit about upload regulation, but it is a messy situation and I felt uncertain, so I choose not to say anything in that twelve-year-old paper.

The subject of "idea futures" as applied to government policy is about how we should choose regulation. It is not itself pro- or anti-regulation. Yes, I've advocated trying out markets to choose regulation, but that doesn't make me against democratic deliberation. For example, I am a fan of James Fishkin's experiments in deliberative democracy mechanisms.

As I said previously:

I gave a long analysis showing how there were at least five different ways to conceive of who are the "poor" in such a scenario, and I have twice now asked you to clarify which of these groups you want to favor with redistribution. You complain that I have not supported "redistribution" but without clarification this can only be a generic slogan.

To which James replied:

Your examples are interesting, and worthy of additional discussion, but I really don't have to parse them before I can advocate a general principle that I want to live in a roughly equal society.

Well, that is a key difference in our styles. "Equal society" is too vague a slogan for me to endorse. ("Equal in what?" my internal critic screams.) I would rather not take a public position if I cannot find something clearer to endorse. But please do not mistake my lack of many positions on upload regulation in my first uploads paper for not my caring about or being aware of regulatory issues.

For your information, regarding the questions I posed, my current leanings are that creatures who might exist should count in our moral calculus, that upload copies will diverge quickly enough that they should mostly be treated separately, instead of as clans, that the ability of humans to earn substantial wages should not matter much beyond its contribution to their income, and that while the fact that the human subsistence levels are higher should be a consideration, that consideration is greatly weakened when humans reject the option to convert into cheaper-to-assist uploads. Your intuitions may differ, but I don't think anyone should feel very confident about such opinions.

James Hughes:
Robin Hanson wrote:

…it is not fair to characterize me as a libertarian economist.

Excellent. Delighted to hear it.

I am a fan of James Fishkin's experiments in deliberative democracy mechanisms.

Excellent. Me too. I think they complement the idea markets mechanism nicely in our promotion of participatory models of future governance.

…my current leanings are that creatures who might exist should count in our moral calculus,

Hmm. A long-standing debate in utilitarian theory, as you know. Clearly, we want to make policy that will ensure the greatest possible happiness for all the beings that exist in the future, even though we are not obliged to bring them into existence. It seems like your model in "Dawn", if we interpret it as normative rather than descriptive, would fit with "the repugnant conclusion" of utilitarianism that we should create as many beings as possible, even if each of them might have less happy lives, because we will thereby create a greater sum of happiness than by creating fewer, happier beings. Is that what you mean?

…that upload copies will diverge quickly enough that they should mostly be treated separately, instead of as clans….

I would agree, but it depends on how much they are extensions of the primary subjective "parent." One can imagine one consciousness shared across many bodies or upload clones, tightly networked, where separate self-identity never arises. The Borgian possibility.

…that the ability of humans to earn substantial wages should not matter much beyond its contribution to their income….

Not sure what you mean there.

…and that while the fact that the human subsistence levels are higher should be a consideration, that consideration is greatly weakened when humans reject the option to convert into cheaper-to-assist uploads.

I make the same argument about human enhancement and disability. I'm happy to have the Americans with Disabilities Act urge accommodation of the disabled in the workplace. But to the extent that disability becomes chosen in the future (refusal of spinal repair, sight replacement, cochlear implants and so on) it weakens the moral case for accommodation.

If neo-Amish future humans refuse to adopt technologies that allow them to be faster and more enabled, or refuse to upload, any case they might argue for accommodation of their disadvantage is weak. But framing all humans who decide to remain organic as undeserving, self-cripplers in a brave new uploaded world is part of the political challenge your essay points us to. We need to come up with a more attractive frame for the co-accommodation of organic and upload life.

Robin Hanson:
James Hughes wrote:

Hanson: …my current leanings are that creatures who might exist should count in our moral calculus,

Hmm. A long-standing debate in utilitarian theory as you know.

Yes.

Clearly we want to make policy that will ensure the greatest possible happiness for all the beings that exist in the future, even though we are not obliged to bring them into existence.

I know many disagree on this point, but it seems to me that bringing creatures into existence with lives worth living should count as a moral good thing, just as I appreciate others having created me and I think they did a good thing worthy of praise. If so, the prevention of vast numbers of uploads must weigh against policies to greatly increase per-upload wages. But this need not be decisive of course.

It seems like your model in Dawn, if we interpret it as normative rather than descriptive, would fit with "the repugnant conclusion" of utilitarianism that we should create as many beings as possible, even if each of them might have less happy lives, because we will thereby create a greater sum of happiness than by creating fewer, happier beings. Is that what you mean?

The "repugnant conclusion" has never seemed repugnant to me, which is another way I guess I disagree with others in population ethics. But, yes, this upload scenario offers a concrete application of such issues.

In that sense, if neo-Amish humans refuse to become faster, more able uploads their case for accommodation of their decision is weak. But framing all humans who decide to remain organic as undeserving, self-cripplers in a brave new uploaded world is part of the political challenge your essay points us to. We need to come up with a more attractive frame for the co-accommodation of organic and upload life.

I don't know if a better frame can be found, but I'd be happy to hear of one.

Robin Hanson:
Eugen Leitl wrote:

AI and whole body/brain emulation is the mother of all disruptive technologies. You may want to regulate them -- but you won't be able to, if they don't want to be regulated.

That is of course another good reason for first analyzing low regulation scenarios.

As one tries to use regulation to move further and further away from those scenarios, the stronger become the incentives to get around the regulation, and so the more Draconian the monitoring and enforcement process must become.

For that reason it seems hard for me to imagine successfully raising upload wages to be more than ten times what unregulated wages would be. Unregulated wages could be, say, $1/yr, putting the upper limit of regulated at say $10/yr.

So there seems no way to escape upload wages being very low by today's standards.

James Hughes:
Robin Hanson wrote:

As one tries to use regulation to move further and further away from those scenarios, the stronger become the incentives to get around the regulation, and so the more Draconian the monitoring and enforcement process must become.

Right now, around the world, there are many countries that have slavery/involuntary servitude, and within the North there are many employers who evade minimum wage laws by paying in cash, or who have unsafe working conditions, or who coerce workers to do illegal things. Lots of people evade paying taxes, and lots of people commit crimes. But the solution is not to simply give up on the notion of law and the regulation of the labor market. It's to strengthen the regulatory capacity and efficacy of the state.

The limits on making the state stronger in a democracy are the willingness to pay for the costs of the regulation, and the tolerance for the impositions on liberty and privacy. This is where I think we should be creatively imagining - and I'm sure many already are - ways that the cybernetics and information tools, and eventually AI's, can detect crime without imposing high regulatory costs. The balance between law enforcement and liberty will still be a problem, however.

For instance, like most Connecticut residents, I exceed the speed limit every day driving back and forth to work. But I've only gotten two speeding tickets in the last ten years. To actually enforce speed laws effectively would, with cops, take an order of magnitude more traffic cops hidden behind berms on the side of the road. No one can afford that. If we had a smart highway and smart cars, or even if each car had a GPS tracker, we could easily detect speeding and automatically impose fines, and some states have experimented with auto-speed tracking lasers that capture license plates and mail out fines.

So, if truly effective traffic law enforcement was cheap, the question before the public would be whether they really wanted to have those laws enforcing those speeds. I suspect that if we really enforced traffic laws we would raise the speed limit to the usual 80 mph on the CT highway. Or we would keep it the same, the state coffers would fill with fines, and there would be fewer highway deaths. Either way, it's a democratic choice.

This is the situation we face now with all the potentially apocalyptic threats. For example, are we willing to create the regulatory and police apparatuses to ensure that we don't end up cracked in a future dawn by runaway AI's and uploads? If the kinds of surveillance and prevention it will take to prevent apocalyptic risks are "Draconian" then hopefully we can have a public debate about what the trade-offs are between security and risk. At least the cost of surveillance and enforcement should come down though, making the consideration of effective surveillance and enforcement fiscally acceptable.

Of course, I say that after the US has just bankrupted itself and weakened domestic liberty on the pretext of suppressing terrorism and chasing chimerical weapons of mass destruction, while actually generating terrorism and seeing nuclear proliferation continue unchecked. So I grant the capacity of democracies to destroy liberties and spend inordinate sums on law enforcement unwisely. Maybe a Friendly AI-on-a-leash would help us make better decisions.

Robin Hanson:
James Hughes wrote:

Hanson: As one tries to use regulation to move further and further away from those scenarios, the stronger become the incentives to get around the regulation, and so the more Draconian the monitoring and enforcement process must become.

Hughes: ... This is the situation we face now with all the potentially apocalyptic threats - e.g. are we willing to create the regulatory and police apparatuses to ensure that we don't end up cracked in a future dawn by runaway AI(s) and uploads. If the kinds of surveillance and prevention it will take prevent apocalyptic risks are "Draconian" then hopefully we can have a public debate about what the trade-offs are between security and risk. At least the cost of surveillance and enforcement should come down however, making the consideration of effective surveillance and enforcement fiscally acceptable.

Imagine that the hardware cost of supporting another upload is $1/yr, but that regulation has increased the legal wage to $100/yr. Upload John Smith is thinking of starting a new business whose main expense is 10,000 employees. The costs of this business are then $1,000,000/yr if done by the book. John could instead create 10,000 copies of himself to run the business, in which case his costs would be $10,000, plus whatever it takes to hide the computers running his uploads. This would clearly be extremely tempting to John.

Presumably John's copies of himself are not going to complain about the arrangement. So to prevent this one might need to inspect every computer capable of running an upload at at anything close to the efficiency of computers designed to run uploads, to make sure they aren't running hidden uploads.

Alternatively one might need accurate ways to estimate the number of people that must be needed to produce any given product or service. And one would have to prevent the existence of "free wage zones," so global governance would be required.

James Hughes:
Robin Hanson wrote:

…one would have to prevent the existence of "free wage zones," so global governance would be required.

Here we agree.

Concluding Remarks by Robin Hanson

I have long been interested in the social implications of future technologies, participating in mailing lists and conferences that seemed to take such technologies seriously. And I entered graduate study in economics in part because future speculation usually reflects more expertise in physical or biological science, or psychology, than in social science. Over Christmas break in 1993, halfway through my first year of economics graduate school, I first tried to correct that deficit by applying simple economic theory to an important future scenario. I choose the scenario I judged then, and still judge today, to be the most important analyzable future scenario that I can imagine – cheap brain simulators, also called uploads.

The usual economic practice is to first model a relatively low regulation scenario, both because such scenarios tend to be easier to analyze, and because actual regulation is usually light. The next usual step is to compare this baseline scenario against various possible regulations, ideally considering not only the potential to correct market failures, but also costs of monitoring, enforcement, and evasion. The standard economists’ criterion for evaluating such alternatives is quite capable of, and often does, recommend regulation and/or redistribution. (U.S. economists are on average politically to the left of the U.S. public, though to the right of U.S. academics.)

My resulting paper, “If Uploads Come First,” followed this standard practice. Having found dramatic implications in a simple baseline scenario, I used my limited time to make those implications clear to a wider audience, mentioning only a few possible regulations. As my paper was relatively informal, I did not try to publish it in an economics journal. A few years later I tried some formal modeling in related areas, but learned that economists have little interest here. I was advised that pursuing this would hurt my academic career, even at a relatively eclectic place like George Mason University. Heeding this advice, I focused my efforts elsewhere, and recently received tenure.

Imagine my surprise, when over 12 years later I happened across a book that James Hughes had published seventeen months earlier, wherein he described my paper as a “brilliant paradigmatic example” of “libertarian … unreformed extropian anarcho-capitalist” and “techno-utopian determinism,” for “1990s transhumanists, who … do not see redistribution and regulation as desirable or inevitable.” Supposedly, I celebrated a future where “most non-uploaded people would become unemployed,” with “a radical Social Darwinism … [to] eliminate all the uppety prole uploads, the ones who might want minimum wage laws or unions,” thereby achieving an ideal “division of society into a mass of well-fed plebes and a superpowerful elite” to “rule over” them.

Lord, where to begin? Yes, my baseline scenario implied low wages, human unemployment, and upload selection effects. And yes, of course, I understand that such implications are momentous. If this scenario is realistic, truly great things are at stake here, justifying careful consideration. But I am not libertarian, and I did not dismiss redistribution or regulation, nor forecast a ruling upload elite, nor celebrate negative features of the scenario I described. My paper did not even address income inequality within uploads or humans as groups, and so only considered redistribution from uploads to humans, as an unfortunate but perhaps politically necessary transfer from poor to rich.

I posted and explained these denials, but James replied that since in a recent talk I “did not mention any regulatory or political solution possible to this scenario of general unemployment. … I don’t think my analysis of your views needs much revision.” Since other futurists have loudly put “equality and social security in the foreground” and endorsed a “Basic Income Guarantee,” James took my silence as revealing my true anti-uppety-prole colors. I suppose since I also did not discuss racism, sexism, or animal rights, James must have also concluded that I am a racist, sexist, and torturer of animals.

I explained to James that human unemployment occurs in pretty much any scenario with many uploads, and that it was not clear to me who James wanted “to take from, and who to give to, … given the three distinctions of human/upload, rich/poor, and few/many-copied.” James replied that he wasn’t ready to be more specific regarding the scenario I described, but that he wanted me to endorse a general transfer from “rich to poor,” even if we aren’t sure what exactly that phrase means in this context.

To me, however, the details are everything. Yes, of course I’m concerned that people could get hurt, and I want to avoid such harm. But I want to find specific policies appropriate for specific situations, instead of parroting ambiguous political slogans. And the situation really is complex. Not only should we consider the great good that might come from creating many more lives worth living, but our feelings about inequality are far from simple.

Yes, humans today seem somewhat averse to income inequality, and redistribution can be part of an effective response to that aversion. But we seem much less averse to inequality of sexual, sporting, or artistic achievement. And we seem much more concerned about income inequalities between the families of a nation, and less concerned about the larger inequalities between nations or within families. Given how little we understand about inequality aversion today, it is no small task to project inequality aversion, and its optimal policy response, into a future with unemployed humans, upload clans, preference selection, very rapid growth, and much more.

James focused on aspects of my scenario of concern to the political left, but it is worth noting some other aspects that would seem to be of great concern the political right. Not only are there issues of whether uploads are persons, have moral worth, or threaten human dignity, but there is the jarring thought that in my baseline scenario there may well be far more upload men than women, and almost no children. After all, men now dominate the upper tails of achievement likely to be favored for upload copying, and there is little point in taking decades to raise a child when one can copy and train adult uploads.

So is an upload world a heaven or a hell? What we need is more analysis of what our possible futures really are, and less social pressure to jump to premature conclusions about how to deal with those futures. A metaphorical lynching of the only economist in recent years to explore the social dynamics of upload scenarios, for his failure to parrot political slogans, is hardly the way to achieve this.

Concluding Remarks by James Hughes

This very stimulating discussion is at the core of what the transhumanist movement should be doing: (a) extrapolating the radical options that humanity faces, (b) making an optimistic argument for a particular set of futures, and (c) building a proactive movement to ensure that we create a desirable future. In Citizen Cyborg I attempted to do all three of these things, and critiqued Robin Hanson for appearing to argue for what I consider to be a wholly unattractive future, that is that he had engaged in (a) and (b), a future which I don’t want to live in and which I think most people, if they believed that future would be the result of uploading, would work hard to make impossible by banning uploading.

Through our dialogue I’ve come to appreciate that Dr. Hanson thought he was only working on the first task, the extrapolation of a possible future. I’m still skeptical that the exercise was not normative since there were so many counterfactual possibilities dismissed in the essay, such as democratic deliberation and state intervention to affect the outcome. I’m also skeptical because the conclusions were argued to be the most profitable of all possible outcomes for everyone, even those who lose out in this free-market version of the Matrix. But I’ll take his assurances that his focus was always primarily academic rather than normative.

So I invite Dr. Hanson to think and write more about how to create an attractive and politically plausible future scenario, one capable of illuminating the public policies we require and inspiring public confidence instead of fear. As a model I would offer Nick Bostrom’s essay “The Future of Human Evolution.” Bostrom asks in that essay whether we can have any confidence that competitive evolutionary pressures will lead human beings toward a future any of us will want to live in. He offers two scenarios in particular that are possible but unattractive. The first is a world in which we have all outsourced aspects of our knowledge, memories and personality until we become shallow “executive-modules.” In the other scenario, which he describes as “all work and no fun,” he suggests that agents who jettison all features that give life meaning would outcompete the rest. This seems close to the future described in "Crack of a Future Dawn."

But Bostrom doesn’t stop with these two possibilities. He asks further what kinds of policies we might create, and what collective action we might undertake, to prevent these futures, and to ensure the flourishing of people who enjoy the kinds of lives we think are valuable. He suggests that we could ban the kinds of technologies that would make possible these outcomes, but that such bans would be too costly for everyone, since we would have to forgo their substantial benefits. The more attractive alternative is to create a global “singleton” to constrain and guide competition, discouraging trends that lead to the unpleasant future scenario, and encouraging trends that lead to a more positive future. That singleton could be a world government, democratic or despotic, a super-AI, or even a hegemonic moral code. It could be minimalist, but it would have to be hegemonic. I don’t think Bostrom’s essay quite yet contributes to the goal of building public enthusiasm for an attractive and attainable posthuman future, since most people would rather not live under the rule of despotic tyranny or super-AI, nor will they have confidence in a universal moral code to deter defectors, but at least Bostrom's essay is one step closer.

Hanson’s essay is cited throughout Bostrom’s paper, and Bostrom’s essay is certainly a more careful response to the “Crack of a Future Dawn” scenario than the one I offered in Citizen Cyborg, which was a more polemical exercise. But whether presented polemically or academically, we need to move beyond simple extrapolations of possible extreme futures that most consider unattractive. We need positive visions and proactive solutions. Hopefully this dialogue has advanced that project.

David Brin Comments

Thanks for inviting me to comment on the Hanson-Hughes debate. I'd like to respond on two levels. First a meta-observation about the process and then some more on substance.

Alas, despite their collegial tone, this “debate” seems to be yet another one in which disputants answer each other inefficiently, only occasionally acknowledging the others’ points. Neither of these respected adults does the one thing that is generally recommended for winning a disputant credibility and moving the process along. Paraphrasing.

Early on, it might have behooved Hughes to ask: "Robin, am I right in assuming that you mean_____?" and then letting Hanson quibble in a back/forth manner till he is forced to admit that Hughes is finally paraphrasing "in the right ballpark." This process may seem tedious. But it is Stage One whenever two sides genuinely want to argue with each other, and not with strawmen.

Oh, it does not always work. We all know nitpicking hairsplitters who would never allow an opponent to paraphrase successfully, or admit when they have done so. But then, the immaturity is theirs, not the opponent's.

In any event, I feel that developing better methodologies for disputation may be crucial. (See the lead article in the American Bar Association's Journal on Dispute Resolution, Aug. 2000: http://www.davidbrin.com/disputationarticle1.html)

Now, to the dispute at hand. If I may attempt my own paraphrasing of Hughes, I believe that he is interested in taking proactive, morally-grounded measures in order to ensure that a new (cyber) realm will be just and fair.

Alas, in his eagerness, Hughes behaved unfairly himself, blaming the messenger (Hanson) instead of patiently examining the message. After all, Hanson’s original paper was about engaging in initial explorations of the new realm and its implications. Spreading out the possibilities and posing the ensuing dilemmas. He might be excused for not - in his very first analysis - hurrying to satisfy Hughes’s priorities by, say, laying down a complete set of remedies and prescriptions.

Indeed, one task must be completed before the other can ensue! Rushing to premature prescribing - after only a crude, initial “analysis” - was precisely the sin of Karl Marx. A little calm exploration might be called for, laying out all of the parameters, before issuing grand moral declarations of “what must be done.”

Hanson says: "After all, given the three distinctions of human/upload, rich/poor, and few/many-copied, there are eight possible classes to consider." This matrix is fascinating to consider in its own right. Only then does it make any sense to demand moral action.

1) I do think that Hughes gains the upper hand on several occasions. For example:

"I don't know and I find the prospect very troubling. I would like to live in a world, like Brin's Kiln People, where I could send a copy of myself to work while the base- unit me stays home to read and cook. But in Brin's world, even though the clones only last 48 hours, they still have existential crises about whether they are the same as the base person, or a separate person with a right to life. We have yet to come up with a good solution to these dilemmas, which may be another reason to phase them in cautiously."

Not only is this a wise attitude, well-expressed, but it also shows excellent literary taste. I certainly find interesting his suggestion of "bicameral legislatures" (or some futuristic and many-house extrapolation) in order to ensure that many styles of who we are will get represented.

I am also with him when it comes to extolling the problem-solving potential of Enlightenment tools like democracy.

And yet, in much of the following, I side with Hanson, because I believe that Hughes misses the purpose (and, indeed, the pleasure) inherent in this extrapolation of nature into the cyber world.

2) Hanson refers to real world Nature. He notes that biological life expanded and reproduced itself into every available niche, until it always and predictably reached one of three conditions:

a population boom,

equilibrium, or

population culling.

All three of these conditions involve a lot of death and competition, things that aren't very "nice" in modern liberal parlance, even though they are utterly natural. Still, if you are a member of the species involved, obviously, you’d prefer one of the three over the others. A population boom time is way more fun. Such a boom happens when plentiful resources ensure you plenty of chances to successfully reproduce.

It is one thing to say that we ought to rise above nature and impose better values and better ways upon ourselves. (e.g. our own modern quest to attain “sustainability” in human relations with Earth’s biosphere.) I wholeheartedly agree! In fact, even though Hughes portrays Hanson as a social Darwinist, I know that Robin agrees too!

Nevertheless, a sense of perspective requires that we step back and consider what it is that we are saying. When we seek to opt out of nature’s normal boom/bust cycle, we are saying that Man is wiser than Nature! An assertive and even hubristically aggressive statement!

Ever the optimist, I believe that we will prove this statement to be true, over time! (Alas, probably after a painful learning process.) But still, let's be honest; the onus of proving it is upon us.

(Above all, it won’t happen if we are dogmatically rigid or unimaginative.)

In any event, is it fair of Hughes to denounce Hanson for laying out a situation that simply extrapolates into the cyber world what has already taken place in nearly all of biological nature? All right, the cyber world is still unformed. Within certain overall constraints of the possible, it will be ours to design. We may even proudly attempt to make it *better* than organic nature (more attentive to values of "fairness" for example).

Even so, our first step must be to study the baseline condition. Not to reject all discussion by simply calling that baseline evil.

3) In Nature, the aforementioned boom-equilibrium-culling cycles provoked different species to take differing reproductive strategies. "R and K" strategies differ greatly. One produces vast numbers of offspring, counting on a few to survive massive losses. The other emphasizes caring for and nurturing and investing in a very few progeny. Which style dominates can depend on environmental circumstances.

Hanson appears to foresee cyber realm that will be similar to the early seas of Earth, a very simple realm whose vast (computational) resources soon get strained by rapid, exponential and Malthusian reproduction. In this model, high-nurture strategies like human- style child-investment have no obvious place. Indeed, it took a long time for those high-nurture strategies to arrive in the sea...mostly brought there by mammals like cetaceans, who had developed them in the more complex environs of dry land.

Let's be plain about what this means. In such an environment, what is “right” or “fair” may be more a matter of local conditions than the personal preferences of a descendant of a gregarious, high-nurturing hominid, like Hughes. Forcing birth control upon plankton or smelt is NOT likely to be appreciated by the plankton or the smelt, who want only to survive and spew forth as many duplicates as possible. (“Hey, it’s my thing. It’s what I do.”)

Mind you, I am fully aware that the "plankton" in this case (Hanson’s projected cyber world) will be supersmart uploads. They will compete and survive by working hard and providing services that ultimately add to the wealth of the real world that owns the mainframes. I grok all that. Still, by the simple logic of this "sea" that they live in, they will consider it moral to spew copies of themselves whenever possible. Moreover, they will probably consider it immoral for the machine operators - the real world owners - to stop them.

Was it George Bernard Shaw who wrote: “Do not treat others as you would like to be treated; their standards may be different.”

Furthermore, if the cyber world does resemble the simple and somber sea, it is plain that uploaded denizens of that world will have a second goal, beyond mass-spew reproduction. They will also look for opportunities to live higher on the cyber food chain.

Indeed, what happens in natural environments is a rapid development of pyramids of predation. Higher predators preying on lower predators who prey on herbivores who consume primary producers...all of it in a dour sea where humor and art are impossible, because the environment's raw simplicity allows no niches for pause from incessant struggle. No spare time or space or resources for complexity or nuance.

Likewise, in the cyber world, the "solution" to Hanson's overpopulation will be hierarchies of predation. This will happen whether or not predation is forbidden by the system's "gods" (the sovereign organic humans who own the computers wherein all of this is going on). It will happen because the rare denizens who randomly wander into some predatory method will gain sudden and unstoppable advantages. Resulting in their own sudden population boom.

Moreover, this logic is not subject to protest. (Indeed, the urge to object to it merits study and scrutiny! It is the very essence of screamin' “Nature is so wrong!”) Every species that ever dwelled in the sea—and most of those who lived on land—had to deal with this harsh set of imperatives. They are all quite adapted to it and used to it.

If we do intend to design methods for imposing fairness upon the cyber world, we will only succeed if we start by conceding the scale and difficulty of the problem.

4) All right. Now here is where I part company with Hanson. Up to this point, his logic is strong. (And Hughes is entirely unfair not to look, study and learn before commenting.)

But I must ask then, do we really want to replicate the sea?

In fact, I agree with both Hanson and Hughes that rule-set intervention may be called for. The owners of the mainframes...who will presumably be organic humans, or their cyborg or robot descendants, or all three...may want to change the process so that it is nicer and more civilized by their criteria.

Should it be a realm occupied by slower-paced, more generous-minded Upload People, who share our value system? Perhaps because their mode of reproduction is the same as ours—intense investment in a very few high quality offspring.

This might be done by "taxing" rapid reproduction, as Robin suggests. Which may make the pyramid-bottom uploads poorer individually but would encourage higher-k reproductive strategies. Or else it might be done more subtly, by making the cyber world more like...well...life on the land. So complex and interesting that high investment offspring make more sense and have real advantages.

Indeed, this might be achieved by taking advantage of predation. If the environment were capricious and complex and a bit dangerous but with many islands of calm, where something like “childhood” can take place—the denizens of the cyber world might feel compelled to carefully nurture children who are capable of subtle self-reprogramming and alert response to shifting danger—just as hominid ancestors shifted to such strategies in the face of an uncertain environment.

Mind you, I am not prescribing! As I have said, it is premature and totally too early for that. What I am doing is indulging in gedankenexperiment (thought experiment) and Hughes might do well to step back enough to do the same for a while. Because understanding all of this will be more useful that rapid simplifying.

It will be especially necessary if our goal is to impose hominid concepts of fairness upon a newly forged cyber world.

5) So far, I have concentrated on Hanson's core topic, which Hughes willfully ignores— that of extrapolating the story of nature into a wild ecosystem online. It is not only unfair to simply and reflexively dismiss this as "social darwinism." It is, in its own right, a deeply worrisome dogma—liberal Puritanism.

Say what? This calls for an aside.... but a relevant one. I suggest we pause and take a close look at the archetype New England puritan—Cotton Mather. Yes, old sourpuss himself.

Now remove Mather’s nasty xenophobia and bigotry; what you have left is finger-wagging that far more closely resembles today's gloomy-dour liberals than anybody else! Certainly, Mather’s stern "waste not!" Puritanism has nothing in common with either libertarians or today's wastrel-spendthrift-aggressor/adventurer so-called "conservatives"!

Is Paul Ehrlich channeling the Pilgrim Fathers? Try that on for size. And don't you dare leap to impute my politics from this. You'll be wrong.

This relates because of that moralistic catch phrase “Social Darwinism.” And thus dismissing all relevance to the things described above, e.g. nature’s infinite capacity for adapting things like reproductive strategies—and the resulting moral codes to differing circumstances.

I mean, really, it is one thing to have ambition, aiming to be nicer than nature. It is quite another thing to consider it as given and automatic that all discussion of the natural world must be dismissed with a sternly chiding catch phrases.

6) All right, I had a reason for taking a riff into liberal Puritanism. Because I am about to chart a course into harm’s way. One that may send fusillades of outrage hurtling at me from every cannon-reflex of the Tolerance Movement.

Because it is time to talk about HIERARCHIES OF WORTH.

Because the world of cyber uploads will almost certainly shatter forever the “Grand Illusion.”

What Grand Illusion? Why the one that states that all denizens of the world have equal value and must be given at least somewhat equal treatment.

* ALERT! I am compelled yet again to proclaim, for the record, that I am all for civil rights and feminism and environmentalism and all the good stuff! My brother's a union man and my father marched with M.L. King. I want universal health care for all kids and universal education worldwide. I will listen politely to those who want to give partial civil rights to dolphins and chimps! Indeed, I am the only author who HAS GIVEN them such rights, in his novels. Elsewhere (http://www.davidbrin.com/eon1.html ) I talk extensively about how wealth and wisdom have caused successive "horizon expansions" so that our Circle of Citizenship has expanded to include many groups who once languished outside protection of culture and the law. Is that good enough?

Still, any hard-nosed observer of life and the cosmos must tell you that it is simply an Illusion—and a fetishistic one, at that—to claim that “all life has equal value."

We needed and still need this illusion, in order to complete our rapid transition to a better civilization, one that does not waste the creative potential of people because they were stereotyped by race or gender. I promote it myself, in various pro-tolerance messages, in both fiction and nonfiction. And yet, there must be a time and place for cold analysis. Hence, just among us, here, now, I have to tell you that universal and fetishistic hyper-tolerance is an oversimplification, and very probably a loony one.

"Where do you draw the line?" That's the question people ask vegetarians and animal rights activists...just as conservatives used to ask the same question of civil rights and feminist activists, before the line got (rightly) pushed outward.

I have no doubt that we will, in times to come, continue the process and draw our boundaries of inclusion “farther” than they are right now. Maybe we'll all give up eating meat, sooner than anyone now expects. (Or, more likely, eat only tissue cultured meat and never slaughter another creature for food.)

And yet, the question still remains, on the table: "Where do you draw the line?"

Hughes leaps ahead and implies equal rights for infinitely re-duplicating AI simulations, living only virtually inside computers! Nor am I saying he is wrong! Indeed, I have ruminated on this problem extensively.

(See a novella of mine that goes into exactly this topic:

http://www.davidbrin.com/stonesofsignificance1.html)

And yet, pause. At one level this might be the "right" direction for a good person to aim. At another, isn't it, as an automatic reflex, just a bit...well...silly?

Certainly, Hughes gets no help from theology, wherein every religion posits that the "created" owe everything to their creators. Everything. Indeed, if (as some now believe) we are simulations, then the questions soon become dizzying and quickly outgrow this cramped venue.

I do know this. If we could fix this "real" world by unleashing some simulations on the vast array of our real life problems, then I will entertain discussion of simulation rights AFTER the cornucopia of wealth has solved our outer world needs. After our myriad cyber slaves have helped us to save the Earth and given every real child enough to eat.

At which point, sated and maybe grateful, I might then think about expanding the circle to include purely imaginary beings.

7) By the way, Robin complains: "I still feel like my world and my future is being determined by unaccountable elites."

To see an egregious example of this, going on in real time, and possibly endangering us all long before there are uploads, see:

http://lifeboat.com/ex/shouting.at.the.cosmos

This is yet another “theoretical” issue. But one needing our attention right now.

8) Back on topic. Hughes says: "I don't think you are evil. I just think you share the worldview of many American economists, and most of the 1990s transhumanists, who prefer a minarchist, free-market oriented approach to social policy, and do not see redistribution and regulation as desirable or inevitable."

Alas, this is exactly the sort of reflex that has harmed liberalism so badly that its best hope of a "landslide" is to squeak back into control over one house of Congress. Demonizing everybody who speaks of markets or competition—or, indeed, engineering-based problem solving—is the same dour silliness that got liberalism marginalized in the first place. Feh!

It is time for liberals to reclaim their roots and recognize that the first liberal was...Adam Smith!

Smith would certainly have thought so! If he were here today, he would be campaigning vigorously against the neoconservative neo-feudalists, because they represent everything he hated! Which was UNFAIR competition, based on cronyism and favoritism and brutal exploitation of advantage. Indeed, Smith was all in favor of mass education and other forms of "redistribution" whose aim would be to create more effective market players. Turning abject subjects into sovereign and powerful citizens.

All it would take is the tiniest shift in perspective for today's liberals to realize and embrace this tradition, and thus do a ju jitsu on the neo-feudalists from which those troglodytes would never recover. But, in order to do this, liberals would have to part company with the outright leftists who have them bullied into hating "competition" on general principles!

Those who are smart enough (a minority) to grasp the notion of “emergent properties” may come to realize that fair competition is not the opposite of cooperation and generosity. It is the wellspring out of which generosity arises.

YES, THAT WAS A LONG POLITICAL SIDE RANT!

And yet, highly relevant. Because Hanson made clear that he was perfectly willing to discuss various proposals for "redistribution" that might make the cyber world better.

More like land ecosystems than the sea.

More like human society than red-claw nature.

More like America than feudal empires.

More like Star Trek than today's imperfect America.

Suggestions are welcome.

But to start with, we must consider and fully grasp the harsh logic of nature. And the contemporary left refuses to do that. While singing nature's praises in abstract, they seem to assume—in profound arrogance—that we can ignore nature as the baseline from which all reforms must then begin.

Yes, I have repeated that metaphor ad nauseum, but only because it bears repeating, over and over again. We will be far more adept at forging these new worlds in the image we desire—perhaps a just and fair and generous image—if we first grow well-steeped in the constraints that nature and mathematics and logic will try to impose.

Robin Hanson deserves credit for drawing attention to the red-claw logic that is likely to make the cyber world one of fierce competition...unless discussions like this one start shedding more light and less heat, pretty soon.

With cordial regards,

David Brin

http://www.davidbrin.com

Giulio Prisco Comments

I have been invited to comment on the debate between Robin Hanson and James Hughes on the social implications of uploads. I am happy to do so as I often think about mind uploading technology and its impact once it is developed. Please read Robin Hanson’s paper "If uploads come first" for a background.

I hope brain scanning technology of sufficient quality and resolution for future uploading will become available during my lifetime. If this does not happen, I hope to transport myself to a future time where mind uploading technology exists through cryonics. I want to see what interesting things will happen in the future, and one point on which I completely agree with both Robin Hanson and James Hughes is that operational uploading technology will have a huge impact on our world, including of course economics and politics.

So suppose you have a complete brain scan before you die, and you wake up in sometime in the future. You could wake up in another biologic body, in a robotic body, or as a conscious personality in a virtual world running on some future supercomputer. You may now be thinking of a virtual heaven, but you should think also of a virtual hell: you have been restored to be a slave in a future data processing farm—you are chained to a virtual metal chair that glows white hot as soon as you slow down—errors are punished with virtual torture. Or perhaps you are just tortured for fun. And this may be happening simultaneously to millions of parallel copies of you. Science fiction writer Richard K. Morgan has some particularly vivid descriptions of uploads tortured in virtual hells.

Unfortunately, we have a history of practicing slavery for economic advantage whenever we can do so without consequences. Even in today’s world, there would be widespread slavery if we did not have anti-slavery laws and the means to enforce them. Actually, in today’s world there is slavery. I do not believe this basic fact —that there are always many people ready to do the most horrible things for money, and even a few people ready to do the most horrible things just for fun—may change anytime soon. So, it is clear that we will need laws and technologies to make sure uploads are not used as slaves. Perhaps the required technologies will be developed as an evolution of today’s Digital Rights Management technologies. But of course, there will be crackers who will find ways to work around DRM protections for uploads. This will be a very important and complex issue.

Leaving virtual hells aside, one central point in the debate between Robin Hanson and James Hughes on the social implications of uploads is how to modify economic and political systems to permit coping with a society split between “original humans” and uploads.

But I do not think future societies will be split between pure original humans and pure uploads (and, I should add, pure artificial intelligences). On the contrary, I think that with the development and deployment of mind copy/cut/paste technologies, the pure modes of existence for conscious minds will blend and merge. I imagine a typical person in such a world as a computational construct, spending most of ver (a word that blends his and her because the notion of gender will become obsolete) time in virtual reality, using one or more physical bodies on a need basis, augmenting verself with AI subsystems, merging with others, spawning multiple copies, and copying/pasting ver memories and mental subsystems in all sorts of ways that we cannot even begin to imagine. Within the limits of our current imagination, a possible advanced future society is described in Greg Egan's novel Diaspora. The detailed fabric of economy and politics in such societies is probably completely beyond our understanding at this time.

But the first successful experiments in uploading may well take place before the end of this century, in a society relatively similar to ours. So current economic and political models will still apply during and after the initial deployment wave of uploading technology, and it is very important to start thinking of how we can cope with this very disruptive change.

Sincerely,

Guilio Prisco

http://transumanar.com


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