implications

It tends to be easier to make social predictions about the middle of a distribution of characteristics, than about the tails of such a distribution. For example, it is easier to predict the typical time spent sleeping or eating, and the typical style of such activities, than the maximum or minimum time spent in such activities, or the styles of sleeping or eating done by those who spend an unusual amount of time in these functions. This is in part because when scenarios can differ according to a great many variables, this high-dimensionality creates a lot more detail to specify about the tails (i.e., extremes) compared with the middle of a distribution. This is also in part because hard-to-anticipate factors often have disproportionate effects on distribution tails. As ordinary humans are on the periphery of the em society, such issues make it harder to make predictions about humans in an em society. Even so, we should try. Ems are so fast that humans will only experience days in the time that a typical em experiences years. This suggests that during the entire em era humans will only achieve modest psychological and behavioral adaptations to the existence of ems. The human world will mostly look like it did before ems, except for a limited number of changes that can be made quickly. Ems being faster than humans also suggests that most substantial changes to human behaviors during the em era are driven by outside changes, rather than from within human society. Relevant outside changes include wars, changing prices such as wages, interest rates, and land rents, and an explosion of new products and services from the em economy. Because ordinary humans originally owned everything from which the em economy arose, as a group they could retain substantial wealth in the new era. Humans could own real estate, stocks, bonds, patents, etc. Thus a reasonable hope is that ordinary humans become the retirees of this new world. We don’t today kill all the retirees in our world, and then take all their stuff, in part because such actions would threaten the stability of the legal, financial, and political world on which we all rely, and in part because we have many direct social ties to retirees. Yes we humans all expect to retire today, while ems don’t expect to become human, but em retirees are vulnerable in similar ways to humans.

Signals

Today, we make many choices with an eye to how those choices influence how others see us. For example, we try to give others a favorable impression of our general capacities, such as wealth, health, vigor, intelligence, knowledge, skills, conscientiousness, and artistic sense. With this in mind, we try to appear impressive in our arts, sports, schooling, hobbies, vocabularies, and other markers. For example, we plausibly pay extra for visibly nice clothes, cars, houses, etc., in part to show that we can afford such things. We use big words and witty banter in part to show our intelligence and schooling. We go to school in part to show our intelligence, conscientiousness, and conformity. We play sports in part to show our intelligence, health, strength, self-control, toughness, and cooperativeness. We play music in part to show our intelligence, self-control, passion, and creativity. We also try to give others a favorable impression of our loyalties and connections. That is, we try to credibly show that we feel strong positive ties toward certain individuals and groups, who feel similarly toward us. We can also try to show negative feelings toward rivals and outsiders. With this in mind, we choose with whom we spend our time, who we praise or criticize, and our styles of clothing, music, movies, etc. We follow gossip, news, and fashion in part to help show that we are well connected to respected sources of information. We enjoy stories and participate in politics in part to convince associates of our moral sympathies. We sometimes even cry for help, to show who will come running. Today, we spend a large fraction of our energy and wealth on such “signaling,” both because humans naturally care greatly about gaining status and respect in the eyes of others, and because being rich allows us to attend more to such concerns. As mentioned in Chapter 2, Era Values section, in terms of simple functionality, we seem today to spend excessive amounts on schools, medicine, financial intermediation, and huge projects. In contrast, while ems share most of our desires for respect, they live in a more competitive world, where they can less afford to indulge such desires.

Existence

A functioning em is the result of information representing an em mental state being placed in compatible signal-processing hardware. When this hardware “runs,” it repeatedly calculates the next mental state by combining the previous mental state with inputs from outside systems, and then sends resulting signals to outside systems. In this situation, an em can be said to experience this succession of mental states, while interacting with outside systems. As em hardware and supporting resources are not free, ems are not free; someone must pay to create an em. When an em is copied, the em mental state sitting in compatible hardware is fi rst read out as bits, and then those bits are copied, transmitted, and read into new compatible hardware. Then at the new hardware those bits are converted into the exact same em mental state, now ready to run on this new hardware. Immediately after this copy action, the evolution of the mental states in the two different hardware systems would be exactly the same, if it were not for errors and differences in environmental inputs, and differences in random fluctuations within a fault-prone emulation process. Just as ems are not free but costly, copies are also not free but costly. Typically, an em with an established role in the em world is asked if they want to approve the creation of a new copy, who would have a new life with a new role in that world. Before agreeing to create this new life, the original could ask about the new em’s intended job, location, friends, etc. On occasion, offers for new life roles might be made to archived copies. That is, ems might agree to allow the storage of archive copies, who can then be awoken later to consider new life offers. If the revived copy rejected the offer, it might be retired or ended, as previously agreed. To actually make a copy, an em may invoke a special viewing mode, wherein the em specifies or approves a description of the set of em roles that would result from this copying act. When an em initiates a copy event, it should be ready and willing to take on any of the roles of the resulting copies. Immediately after the copy event, each em copy is informed of its assigned role. Typically one of the ems is assigned to continue its previous role, while other ems are assigned to take on new roles.

Infrastructure

As we will discuss in Chapter 18 , Cities section, em cities are likely to be big, dense, highly cost-effective concentrations of computer and communication hardware. How might such cities interact with their surroundings? Today, computer and communication hardware is known for being especially temperamental about its environment. Rooms and buildings designed to house such hardware tend to be climate-controlled to ensure stable and low values of temperature, humidity, vibration, dust, and electromagnetic field intensity. Such equipment housing protects it especially well from fire, flood, and security breaches. The simple assumption is that, compared with our cities today, em cities will also be more climate-controlled to ensure stable and low values of temperature, humidity, vibrations, dust, and electromagnetic signals. These controls may in fact become city level utilities. Large sections of cities, and perhaps entire cities, may be covered, perhaps even domed, to control humidity, dust, and vibration, with city utilities working to absorb remaining pollutants. Emissions within cities may also be strictly controlled. However, an em city may contain temperatures, pressures, vibrations, and chemical concentrations that are toxic to ordinary humans. If so, ordinary humans are excluded from most places in em cities for safety reasons. In addition, we will see in Chapter 18 , Transport section, that many em city transport facilities are unlikely to be well matched to the needs of ordinary humans. Higher prices to rent volume near city centers should push such centers to extend both higher into the sky and deeper into the ground, as happens in human cities today. It should also push computers in city centers to be made from denser physical devices, that is, supporting more computing operations per volume, even if such devices are proportionally more expensive than less dense variants. City centers are also less likely to use deterministic computing devices, if such devices require more volume and cooling. It may be possible to make computing devices that use less mass per computing speed supported, even if they cost more per operation computed. Such lighter devices are more likely to be used at higher city elevations, because they reduce the cost of the physical structures needed to hold them at these heights.

Implementation

Compared with ordinary humans, it is much easier to directly read the internal state of an em mind. This should allow some types of “mindreading.” Consider taking two ems and trying to match parts in one of them to parts in the other, to say which parts are the “same.” during the early opaque em era it will usually not be possible to make a complete match. Even so, some parts could be matched, such as the parts that receive initial inputs from eyes and ears. For matched parts, it should be possible to put the parts of one emulation into the same brain activation state as that of the matching parts in another emulation. So, for example, one might force an emulation to see and hear exactly what another emulation sees and hears. More parts can be matched for emulations of the same original human, especially if they have diverged for a shorter subjective time. Such more closely matched emulations could thus be arranged to more fully “read” each other’s minds. Mild mindreading might be used to allow ems to better intuit and share their reaction to a particular topic or person. For example, a group of ems might all try to think at the same time about a particular person, say “George.” Then their brain states in the region of their minds associated with this thought might be weakly driven toward the average state of this group. In this way this group might come to intuitively feel how the group feels on average about George. Of course this should work better for closer copies, and after this exercise participating individuals might still return to something close to their previous opinions of George. Even when minds cannot be matched part for part, statistical analysis of how activation in different parts and situations correlates with actions and stated feelings should allow cheap partial mindreading, at least for some shallow “surface” aspects of emulation minds. Both of these types of mindreading require access to the internal state of an emulation process. Those not granted such access have an even weaker ability to read minds than do humans today. Today, humans routinely leak many features of their brain states via tone of voice, gaze, facial expressions, muscle vibrations, etc.

Variations

This book has mostly discussed what the em era is like as if that era is stable and never changes. But we expect many changes and trends over the em era. For example, the size of the em economy grows exponentially, although this growth may fluctuate more than it does today because of concentration in a few key cities. Also, the cost of computing hardware falls exponentially, and with it the energy used per computing operation, and the natural em body size. parallel computing costs fall faster than serial computing costs, and also faster than the cost of non-computer tools. So there is a trend in workplaces away from using serial computer tools and noncomputer tools, and toward using em minds and parallel computer tools. parallel software becomes more efficient relative to the emulation process, inducing ems to use more software tools. The cost of communication rises relative to the cost of memory and computing, increasing communication delays, and reducing the rate of travel, meetings, and distances between meeting participants. As computing hardware is the main em labor cost, em subsistence wages and median wages fall with computing costs. Thus the speed-weighted size of the em population grows even faster than does the em economy. The typical sizes of firms, clans, and cities grow both with the size of the population, and with the size of the economy. While the first ems run near the speed of ordinary humans, there is an early transition to most ems running at a much faster common speed, estimated in Chapter 18 , Choosing Speed section to be within a factor of four of 1000 times human speed. But during the em era typical em speeds may slowly decline, as the growing em economy creates spatially larger em cities which signals take longer to cross. After an initial burst of exploration, the space of feasible tweaks of em minds slowly grows, but perhaps does not add much value. Added tweaks, random drift in capital per clan, and learning about which clans are best at which jobs should all contribute to a slow increase in the dominance of economy activity by the top few clans. The top clans slowly hold a larger fraction of the jobs, and own a larger fraction of capital.

Society

How might em era cultures differ from prior era cultures? Today, we can identify many standard dimensions along which cultures around the world vary ( Hofstede et al. 2010 ; Gorodnichenko and Roland 2011 ; Minkov 2013 ). For some of these standard dimensions, the world has moved in a relatively consistent direction during the industrial era, and we have good reasons to expect this direction to be more productive in a modern economy. Because of this, we have good reasons to expect that a competitive em economy will continue to select for these cultural features. For example, we should expect more industriousness relative to indulgence, a work relative to a leisure orientation, time orientations that are long term relative to short term and that are tied to clocks instead of relationships, low instead of high context attitudes toward rules and communication, and a loose relative to tight attitude on interpreting social norms. For other standard cultural dimensions, productivity considerations don’t as clearly suggest which direction an em world favors. These dimensions include degree of avoidance of risk and uncertainty, tolerance of inequality, individual or group identity, cooperative or competitive emphasis, and high or low emotional expressiveness. Today, about 70% of the variation in values across nations is captured in just two key factors ( Inglehart and Welzel 2010 ). These two factors also capture much of the variation in individual values ( Schwartz et al. 2012 ). One factor varies primarily between rich and poor nations: increasing wealth seems to cause more individualism, universalism, egalitarianism, autonomy, and self-expression. These subfactors seem to be more a result than a cause of wealth. With increasing wealth, our values have moved away from conformity to traditional “conservative” farmer-like values, and toward more “liberal” forager-like values (Hanson 2010b; Hofstede et al. 2010). Poor nations tend more to value respecting parents and authority, believing in good and evil, and wanting to protect local jobs. Rich nations tend more to value trust and imagination, and acceptance of divorce and homosexuality.

Collaboration

How do rituals differ in an em world? Today, we use rituals such as graduations, marriages, retirement parties, and funerals to jointly and overtly affirm community values at key social transitions. However, if we use a broader sense of the term “ritual,” most social interactions and many apparently non-social processes are also rituals, wherein emotional energy becomes amplified as participants achieve a common focus of attention and act in ways that are finely synchronized and coordinated with each other ( Collins 2004 ). during rituals, synchronized feelings and body movements of people who are adjacent to one other become especially potent. Such group synchronization shows participants that they feel similarly to others in the group, and know each other well. people, things, and beliefs that are the mutual focus of attention in such rituals acquire added importance and emotional energy, and become able to increase the passion of subsequent rituals. The emotional energy that comes from a common focus of attention on synchronized actions has long influenced the frequency and structure of many forms of synchronized human activities, in dances, plays, movies, concerts, lectures, protests, freeways, business meetings, group recitations in schools, consumption of advertised products, and group songs that coordinate work in hunting, farming, sailing, armies, and factories. We expect ems to continue to show this tendency to prefer social situations where vivid awareness of finely synchronized actions can assure them of shared capacities and values. For example, similar to people today we expect ems to say hello and goodbye as they join and leave meetings, and to find reasons for frequent face-to-face meetings at work. Some examples of common overt rituals today are when the police stop a driver, when a waiter takes an order, when two sports teams battle in front of a crowd, and when an audience watches a movie together. In the industrial era, we have a substantially lower rate of such rituals than did our forager and farmer ancestors. For our ancestors, in contrast, it was more like having Christmas or Thanksgiving happen several times a month, with many smaller ceremonies happening several times a day (Collins 2004).

Rules

As law serves important social functions in most farmer and industrial societies, law will almost certainly continue in the em world. As the em world is more competitive, when enforcement is insufficient law will select not only for honest success, but also for cheating to create apparent success. Thus the em world should be all the more eager to choose institutions of law and its enforcement to ensure that cheaters do not prosper. To the extent that em law continues to invoke the concept of the expectations or beliefs of a “reasonable person,” that person is likely to be an em. Also, we discussed in Chapter 10 , Rights section, the wide range of legal environments that might cover the creation of em copies. At the other end of life, it is much easier to determine the wishes of past ems. After all, ems who are archived or retired can be directly consulted about their wishes. For ems who are erased but have very close copies still living, those close copies could be consulted. Th e ability to read minds, even at shallow levels, can offer em law better ways to determine pain, intent, and lies. Archived copies of minds from just before a key event could be used to infer the intent and state of knowledge of ems at that key event. Spur split tests might be used to determine unconscious biases. More generally, wider surveillance makes it easier for ems to notice rule violations, and to identify guilty parties. Spurs can ensure privacy not only in legal advice, but also in law enforcement. For example, an isolated police spur could look in detail at arbitrary private data and then end quietly if it found no legal violation, revealing nothing to outsiders but that one fact. Some elements of law today can be understood as attempts to insulate legal decisions from coalition politics in the larger society. For example, rules of evidence prohibiting hearsay (i.e., indirect testimony) and statistical inferences about members of groups can be seen in this light, as can the habit of expunging juvenile records. As em clans may be even better at forming effective coalitions than are family clans today, em law may need to try harder to insulate legal decisions from political coalitions.

Politics

Who is higher status in an em world? Humans are much less competent than ems in most jobs, and so ems see humans and styles and habits associated with humans as lower status. As ems must retire when they can no longer compete with younger workers, retirees are also lower status, as are styles and habits associated with retirees. Also, we have long treated places where people congregate more densely, and the people who congregate there, as higher status. Humans, retirees, and ems away from urban centers all tend to be slower. These features help to make slow speed seem low status to ems. In addition, faster ems tend to have many other features that are today treated as markers of higher status. Faster ems tend to be bosses, to embody more wealth, to host meetings, and to sit at premium locations. Faster ems find it easier to coordinate with each other in contests with slower ems. Fast ems hear of and react to news first, and so more quickly adopt new fashions. As faster em brains embody more capital, impoverished ems are often forced to run at slower speeds. Also, the lives of slower ems seem more like “death,” in the sense that they have a larger chance of ending sooner because of civilization instability. For example, if the em era lasts for 2 objective years, a micro-em experiences only 1 subjective minute during that period. Thus slower ems can naturally seem nearer to death, which seems low status. Thus we have many reasons to expect that ems who run faster are usually seen as higher status. Similarly, during meetings the more centrally located ems, for whom signal delays are smallest, may usually appear to be more central and powerful. Note that as em speeds will tend to clump, this creates a class system of distinct status levels. Today, residents of bigger cities tend to be seen as higher status, and their higher status isn’t much lost when they temporarily visit rural areas. Similarly, em status may not change much during temporary speed changes. It might instead be the typical speed of their clan or subclan that matters most. Slow ems can have the status mark of taking a longer-term bigger-picture view, and a few of them are trusted to manage capital for long-term payoffs.