Multiverse Wide CooperationMultiverse Wide Cooperation via Correlated Decision Making.
https://foundational-research.org/files/Multiverse-wide-Cooperation-via-Correlated-Decision-Making.pdfSuperrationality is a special application of non-causal decision theories – that is, theories of rational decision making that not only take the causal implications of an action into account but also other information that making this decision would give us. In the case of superrationality, that information is always about the other agents.
Importantly, superrationality itself falls under this general rule. That is, if you do something for superrationality-related reasons, then this does not tell you anything about how people who do not accept superrationality would behave. As a trivial example, consider playing a donation game against 19 people whom you all know to make fun of superrationality whenever the opportunity avails itself. Attempting to superrationally cooperate with those people seems rather fruitless.
Superrational cooperation requires no reciprocity. That is, none of the agents who benefit from our cooperation have to benefit us. Recall the basic argument for superrationality as based on non-causal decision theories: given that we are friendly, it is more probable that other agents facing similar choices will be friendly toward us and our values. Crucially, this argument does not require that the agents whose choices we acausally affect are the same as those who benefit from our own friendliness.
Only helping superrational cooperators helps you superrationally. Cooperation usually excludes agents who are known to be unable to reciprocate. Yet superrationality does allow for cooperation with non-reciprocating agents if helping them makes it more likely that other agents help us. There is, however, at least one limitation on the set of our beneficiaries that comes without negative side-effects. We can exclude from superrational cooperation all agents who do not cooperate superrationally at all. After all, every superrational cooperator knows that this exclusion will not affect her, and the exclusion appears to be symmetrical among all superrational agents. That is, it makes it more likely that other superrational cooperators make the same choice (rather than incurring some other limitation that excludes us).
What kind of agents can join multiverse-wide superrational cooperation (MSR) at all? In particular, what sorts of values do they need to have, independent of whether or how many such agents or value systems actually exist in the multiverse? We already know that only helping superrational or correlated agents benefits us. However, the values of the superrationalists must also be open to the opportunity of gains from compromise.
In some cases, it will not be in our power to help other value systems at all. Since any will to cooperate with these agents cannot possibly be action-guiding, we do not have to help them. Other agents in the universe may have other resources available to them and thus choose to behave in a friendly way toward these values. If, on the other hand, agents know that nobody else can help them to achieve their goals, multiverse-wide superrational cooperation (in particular, any version of it in which they just give resources away) becomes less attractive to them. One example of a value system that we cannot help is the following version of speciesism:
...
The Namuh-centrists. One day, scientists inform you about a highly intelligent species of extraterrestrials known as “Namuhs”. Like us, the Namuhs have built a flourishing civilization with art, trade, science, language, humor, philosophy (including advanced decision theory research), and so on. However, the Namuhs do not live in our universe, but in a distant part of the multiverse, completely inaccessible to us. In fact, they could not even exist in our part of the multiverse, as their bodies require slightly different laws of physics to function. Knowing about superrational cooperation, you hasten to ask whether they have thought about problems analogous to Newcomb’s problem and the donation games between similar agents. A trustworthy scientist explains that their minds are indeed prone to thinking about such topics – much more so than those of humans, in fact! Understandably thrilled, you ask what values the Namuhs have, and specifically what values are held by those who have thought about acausal cooperation. The scientist then informs you that all Namuhs are very narrowly focused on their own species. They are Namuh-centrists who do not care one bit about anything that does not involve fellow Namuhs. For example, they shrug at the thought of non-Namuh suffering, the flourishing of non-Namuh civilizations, or non-Namuh well-being. In fact, they are so strict that they do not even care about simulated Namuhs or other approximations.
Learning about their values, you may be disappointed. There is nothing that you can do to help them and it is therefore irrelevant whether they use a decision theory similar to yours or not.
(They have adopted a value system incompatible with larger scale superrational cooperation)
Which moral views correlate with superrationality?
The Idea of Godhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042814064088
The issue of existence and justification of the Supreme Being is constantly approached by Immanuel Kant in his entire work. For Kant, the ultimate goal of the nature created by God is man as a moral being: the world was created according to man's moral needs. This is why it is said that, after Kant, teleology leads to a moral theology, one that is not about the possibility of proving rationally God's existence but which is about stating that moral life is possible only if God exists. Under these circumstances, though the “idea of God” is presupposed in most Kantian works, we insist, below, particularly on what is debated when appealing to practical reason. In the theoretical philosophy of the Critique of Pure Reason, the idea of God as Unconditioned, as a being that is absolutely necessary, is seen as a transcendental ideal determined through an idea as a prototype of perfection necessary to everything that is contingent and determined in our sensible world: what we can do to conciliate sensible experience with the Absolute Being is to presuppose an extra-phenomenal reality designated as transcendental object: we presuppose its existence but we cannot get to know it. Later, in Critique of Practical Reason, God is postulated (together with soul's immortality) as a condition of the supreme value of moral life, the Sovereign Good (union of virtue with happiness). Since in the sensible world moral conduct does not warrant proportional happiness, the virtuous ones has strong reasons to believe in the reparatory intervention of a superior power: God, as moral ideal and warranty of moral order. “Morality leads, inevitably, to religion, through which it (morality) extends over a moral Lawgiver”
Matthew 22:36-40
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
The first command allows for the creation of universe wide not species specific morality. The second allows for superrational cooperation and the greatest good for all.
Jesus shared absolute truth here with the world. The depth of that truth is often poorly understood.
See:
Music that Illuminates the Human Condition for more.