Lemma: notes
!! Chance branching alone might suffice to avoid extinction.
: join @ `^*\(a\) Could the decline of.+p.+be sustained by chance\?$` @ 20_lemma.brec
: join @ `^*\(b\)`
- The branching rate would, however, have to surpass some threshold.
∵ Branches would themselves branch independently of each other.
∵ They could not plausibly (by mere chance) react appropiately to news (via branch
intercommunication) of another branch’s extinction.
- To learn the threshold rate, I would need a model based on a branching process.
: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branching_process
+ Dismiss ∵ chance branching has limits, at least one of which defeats it entirely.
/ This perhaps in conjunction with a sister remedy or two herein.
- The limits of chance branching are:
i) It does not (for us) operate at present.
ii) It could not plausibly work indefinitely, at least not in our universe.
- It would be stopped by the ultimate existential hazards.
- But so might deliberate branching, we know of no plausible way to circumvent
those ultimate hazards.
/ Though here the case does seem a little more hopeful,
and I think we *must* hope for this.
wrong!!
: see @ `^*iii\) It could not work for all plausible lines of agent.$`
iii) It could not work for all plausible lines of agent.
- It is plausible there could exist (at some time, place) agents whose line-branching
probability would fall below the threshold that could sustain chance branching.
- Such a line would certainly go extinct if chance branching
were its only means of *p* decay
/ Indeed *p* would not decay at all over the long run.
wrong!!
- For agents who choose to will their own survival, *p* reduction is
technical knowledge (know-how) to that end, which would itself be
stabilized against loss (know-how extinction, so to speak) by branching.
- For agents who do *not* choose to will their own survival, it makes no
sense to expect a principle of reason dedicated that purpose to come to
their rescue.
chart the thresholds+ for a range of *p* rates
- It is not implausible that we ourselves are such a line or that (by some change)
we will become one in future.
- If we knew that we were, then we would have to conclude there exists
a lineal-autotelic principle of reason.
: e.g. `^*- It follows there exists a lineal-autotelic principle of reason.$` @
40_law.brec
- Else reason would be auto-destructive for us.
- But the principles of reason are universal and timeless.
- Therefore the conclusion holds already.
? So might I want to reorder the argument between these two files?
: sc. 20_lemma.brec
: sc. 40_law.brec
- An isolated argument for an initial lemma might no longer make sense.
- The reader might need the context of the argument up front.
? What does the *argument* need, what *premises*?
axiom: Just that set of principles that all rational agents
could [together] agree to constitutes practical reason.
- As reason is the author of its own content, this seems beyond dispute.
axiom: The principles of practical reason are universal and timeless.
?+ How reorder the argument in order dismiss chance branching *by these axioms*
on account of its failure (for plausible agents) in the present case (iii).
| state the conclusion I argue for up front
try this+
iv) It could not work at all in all possible universes.
- This one (at least) seems to enter only when I infer of the principle, for it would
make reason auto-destructive wherever the (empirical) physical properties of a
universe did not happen to be favourable to it.
wrong!!
: see @ `^*iii\) It could not work for all plausible lines of agent.$`
(a) I dismissed the possibility of chance being sufficient to the task.
/ The task being to keep existential risk *p* on a downward trend.
: see `^*\(a\) Could the decline of.+p.+be sustained by chance\?$` @ 20_lemma.brec
(b) Finish dismissing the possibility of a law of nature sufficient to the task.
/ The task being to keep existential risk *p* on a downward trend.
: see `^*\(b\) Could the decline of.+p.+be sustained by physical necessity\?$` @ 20_lemma.brec
i) First for a line of ideally rational agents.
- By the lack of adequate purchase for nature to coerce their wills into branching.
- Nature cannot provide a reason for that, short of physical force,
and a law that physically forces branching is implausible.
ii) Then for any line, more-or-less rational.
- Given that (i) fails, (ii) depends on some irrational impulse to branch a line
of rational agents.
- I should be able to defeat this by the failure of nature in developed societies
to push us, through such urges, to even replensish our own populations.
- That it could neverthess drive us to populate the stars would then be absurd.
- I think nature is done pulling our strings for us.
- People now need a reason to reproduce.
!! Chance branching alone might suffice to avoid extinction.
: join
- Viz. chance in the form of a stochastic law of nature in regard to branching.
(c) Characterize the one remaining possibility, that of a principle of reason sufficient to the task.
/ The task being to keep existential risk *p* on a downward trend.
: see `^*\(c\) Could the decline of.+p.+be sustained by rational necessity\?$` @ 20_lemma.brec
- Dealing with the qualifier on necessity — namely ‘insofar as the line is rational’ —
by treating subrationality (on some macro-measure) as extinction.
- This requires that:
i) *p* include the probability of going macro-subrational;
ii) it too — inclusion (i) — decay by *δ*; and
iii) each branch sees any macro-subrationality of another branch,
as effective extinction of that branch.
/ Branch inter-communication would thus be crucial to this means of decreasing *p*.