Evidential cooperation in large worlds (ECL) is a proposed way of reaping gains—that is, getting more of what we value instantiated—through cooperating with agents across the universe/multiverse. Such cooperation does not involve physical, or causal, interaction. ECL is potentially a crucial consideration, because we may be able to do more good this way compared to the “standard” (i.e., causal) way of optimizing for our values.

The core idea of ECL can be summarized as:

• According to non-causal decision theories, my decisions relevantly “influence” what others who are similar to me do, even if they never observe my behavior (or the causal consequences of my behavior). (More.)
• In particular, if I behave cooperatively towards other value systems, then other agents across the multiverse are more likely to do the same. Hence, at least some fraction of agents can be (acausally) influenced into behaving cooperatively towards my value system. This [...]

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Outline:

(02:53) The twin prisoners’ dilemma

(02:57) Exact copies

(04:57) General case

(06:58) Why is this type of acausal cooperation important in practice? Introducing ECL

(07:06) Our situation as a generalized twin prisoners’ dilemma-type situation

(14:41) Many agents

(17:19) Acausal influence on agents with other values

(24:12) Net gains from cooperation

(27:42) Putting it all together

(29:23) How to get involved

(29:27) Short-term research fellowships

(30:16) Long-term employment

(30:55) Reach out to Chi

(31:46) Funding

(32:02) How to skill up to work on ECL

(32:27) Recommended readings

(36:31) Acknowledgements

The original text contained 28 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.