13 KiB
Truth versus ideals, a badly written scenario
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Author: u/noimnotgreedy *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/7u04yr/truth_versus_ideals_a_badly_written_scenario/
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Score: 39
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Created: 2018-01-30T10:31:25
Post:
A future version of you knocks on your door, introduces themselves, and proceeds to attempt to convince you to stop doing whatever goals you want to achieve, saying they'll end up in failure and only bring you misery as a result.
Standard paranoia applies, naturally. You can't know if they're speaking the truth. You can't know if they're a Diplomator (The Terminator with a more diplomatic approach) and I'm not sure how technology scales (if we had tech X does tech Y's existence plausible?) and there's also the question of time loops here. They also have their own agency and should you resist they might try to prevent it in a less diplomatic way.
What would be your course of action?
Comments:
u/eroticas [+28] (5 hours later)
Screw my goals, either time travel is real or something else is happening which doesn't fit my model of the universe at all and I'm uniquely situated to investigate it. That single piece of information is enough to vastly realign my priorities anyway. Priority #1 is now figuring out the how and why of what just happened.
u/LazarusRises [+5] (8 hours later)
Playing right into their hands! Your true purpose was to discover time travel all along.
u/DataPacRat [+21] Amateur Immortalist (an hour later)
I already expect to fail my main goals (sample subset: estimated odds of cryonic revival: 4%), and thanks to major depression, I'm already describable as "miserable".
I'll be moderately curious whether this individual can pass the time-travel self-recognition protocol I came up with a while back, as doing so would jump the weirdness level from 'somebody found a body-double of me and is doing some extreme phishing' to 'somebody knows something I never wrote down or spoke the details of'. ... Having been drugged and interrogated while I was unconscious/amnesiac would still seem to have greater probably mass than meeting an actual time traveler, but that still brings the level of Significant Weirdness up to "somebody with at least Three-Letter Agency level of resources and competence has decided to interfere in my life, this way, personally", which starts implying that my best course of action could be to go camping at an undisclosed location for at least three months. (Screaming and flailing my arms as I run away being optional extras.)
I /might/ pause in my frenzied packing long enough to ask my doppel what their /positive/ suggested plans are, as opposed to the scenario's simple "stop doing what you're doing", but as I-the-poster lack any info on what the time-traveller would tell me-the-scenario-liver or what their actual motivations are, that's about as far as I can anticipate.
u/vakusdrake [+5] (6 hours later)
Having been drugged and interrogated while I was unconscious/amnesiac would still seem to have greater probably mass than meeting an actual time traveler, but that still brings the level of Significant Weirdness up to "somebody with at least Three-Letter Agency level of resources and competence has decided to interfere in my life, this way, personally"
I think the non time travel scenario is even more implausible than you give it credit for. Since while drugs that can prevent memory consolidation exist if you have no large gaps in your memory then you're assuming that any people involved have the ability to selectively erase memories and create fake memories. Which basically implies they are somehow maintaining a giant conspiracy to hide their advanced tech at the very least, plus the potential of that sort of tech is massive which raises more issues since the world has to still look the same as it currently does.
u/None [+5] (7 hours later)
but if you were to wake somebody up during the middle of the night, interrogate them whilst using these anti-memory consolidation drugs and then put them back to sleep, wouldn't they chock up the slight blip in their memory to simply a bad night's sleep?
These drugs are probably a lot harder to use than that (since I haven't actually done the research), but why couldn't they be used to do what I described above?
u/vakusdrake [+4] (7 hours later)
but if you were to wake somebody up during the middle of the night, interrogate them whilst using these anti-memory consolidation drugs and then put them back to sleep, wouldn't they chock up the slight blip in their memory to simply a bad night's sleep?
In practice this doesn't work because if you're doing a thorough test that your dopple shares your memories then a short interrogation like that wouldn't be enough, plus you probably need much more extensive interactions in order for them to perfectly copy your mannerisms so that your "dopple" doesn't seem off to you. Also it bears mentioning that the government involved would also have to have cosmetic surgery tech far beyond anything publicly known to exist.
Plus there's the issue that under the effects of drugs which keep you from consolidating memories you're likely to be too out of it to actually be that useful as an interrogation subject, and remember there's no reason to think they could actually get you to tell them memories. After all they have no way of confirming that the things you say are legit and torture is famously unreliable in such scenarios. Remember even under hypnosis and drugs if people are lucid enough to give you information then they're lucid enough to be uncooperative.
u/noimnotgreedy [+11] (an hour later)
I don't know who upvoted my thread, but I just want to say thank you. I've had a really sad day and this bit of niceness was really heartwarming.
Thanks again.
u/Phicksur [+8] (4 hours later)
I would interrogate this 'future self' and gather information about how the failure(s) occurred, the environment in which it (they) occurred, and attempt to deduce a better way of achieving my desired result. If the failures happen as predicted, that information can be verified and the psychological impact of failure minimized.
Failure isn't failure if you learn something from it.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+9] Godric Gryffindor (22 hours later)
How the hell did my future self survive my goals failing, is what I'd want to know. But leaving aside my instant snap conclusion that I'm not seeing a veridical base level reality, I'd expect my future self to be able to very rapidly walk me through what I was missing. There's nothing implausible about what my future self is saying. There's nobody on Earth who can pretend to be me, well enough to fool me, without becoming me, even leaving aside all obvious recognition protocols. What in this scenario is supposed to be hard, aside from the base impossibility?
u/noimnotgreedy [+3] (23 hours later)
What in this scenario is supposed to be hard, aside from the base impossibility?
Hint: didn't you hope to become a hero?
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+7] Godric Gryffindor (a day later)
I'm not getting your hint. Are you saying my future self is evil? That's a walk back on something I already have, not failure of something I consider an aspiration. I'm already what I consider to be nonevil and frankly pretty Good.
u/noimnotgreedy [+2] (a day later)
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+5] Godric Gryffindor (a day later)
Sorry, but no. I thought that Harry acting bitter in Ch. 1 was supposed to make it clear that he was a Tom Riddle horcrux, but lo and behold, things are less clear than you think. Spell it out.
u/noimnotgreedy [+3] (a day later)
u/MrCogmor [+3] (a day later)
There is no good answer to the problem of fun. You keep building system driven utopias in loop after loop but ultimately every eternal society devolves into wire heading or the closest equivalent they can get where they are just repeating the same patterns over and over again in a loop.
u/vakusdrake [+3] (6 hours later)
Well obviously I would kidnap and interrogate the individual because if they are actually future me (easily confirmable via checking if they share memories there should be no record of) then there's no possible scenario where they are acting the way that's described unless they are mentally compromised in some respect, whether insane or brainwashed.
Simply put they would clearly have to be from a different timeline so they can't think that making me change my actions is going to help their timeline in any way. So if their goal is to join a timeline that they steer towards a better future then they wouldn't approach me the way they did.
If I actually had time travel tech I wouldn't condemn my dopple with living the same kind of life I would otherwise live. Instead i would use the time travel to accrue massive wealth and bring past me into the fold. Then I would do the standard time travel technique wherein I keep bringing tech into the past so that I can eventually have lots of people working on FAI who are all under my control (since only I have the tech) so I can focus on safety for however many decades I choose. Plus while I'm at it I would bring back anti-aging tech in a loop until I'm immortal and can more comfortably take my time with AGI.
Anyway if I find myself in this scenario I'm going to steal future me's time travel tech then kill them and hide the body since they are clearly compromised and can't be trusted. If they don't have time travel tech or the knowledge to make use of that then I suppose I wouldn't bother with killing them since I have no more power than I would otherwise have, so I just use them to accrue fame. If I can get time travel though then I utilize the previously mentioned time travel strats.
u/ShiranaiWakaranai [+3] (11 hours later)
I would demand that my future self prove himself to really be my future self. Not by telling me a secret recognition code. But by giving me tons and tons of money. After all, if he is from the future, he should know the winning lottery numbers and have no problem making cash.
Then after I get the money, I cut off all contact and never speak to him again, because he is an obvious fraud. Any future self of mine would know that I have no goals in life that I'm working towards, and know that I know I'm headed for failure and misery, so what they just said made no sense whatsoever.
u/NebulousASK [+2] (5 hours later)
If it were me, they would know what evidence they would need to have that I could verify in the present for their claims about what would happen in the future. And then they'd need to present plausible alternative goals that would make me happy.
If they did both of those things, great! If not, I'd take whatever information they provide and then warn them off a "less diplomatic" interference in my life.
u/1337_w0n [+2] (10 hours later)
Step 1: Standard time-shifted-self protocol to verify that this isn't a mundane gaslighting prank. (Standard stuff: passwords, birthmarks, etc.)
Step 2: Lottery numbers. This should be self-explanatory.
Step 3: Mess with time. Did you also get this message, what went wrong, how can I avoid it, how can I do even better.
Step 4: How does time travel work?
Step 5: Gather more, less important information.
u/earzo7 [+2] (13 hours later)
Let's assume I confirm this is a time traveler through various methods.
I'm still left dealing with a person of questionable motives. If I had the power to travel through time, I wouldn't use it to discourage myself from action, but rather manipulate events so my future goes better, which would be easy because I have all the resources associated with time travel. For this reason I have to assume one of three things is true:
This is a form of damage control. My future self has already changed something in the past that changes the course of history, and by doing this the damage can be mitigated.
Being told to give up on my dreams leads me on the path to acquire time-travel technology in the first place. If this is the case I would expect future me to be forthright about it.
This isn't actually a future version of me.
I can't imagine any reasonable version of myself acquiring time travel and then using my powers to prevent myself from obtaining time travel, unless the time travel is dangerous.
In any case, with time travel involved I can't make any reasonable plan of action without more information.
u/monkyyy0 [+1] (7 hours later)
Future me knows to bring bitcoin's proof of work back as proof of time travel. Making a plan of action should be simple from there on out.
u/None [+1] (7 days later)
.