Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Acausal normalcy, published by Andrew Critch on March 3, 2023 on LessWrong.

This post is also available on the EA Forum.

Summary: Having thought a bunch about acausal trade — and proven some theorems relevant to its feasibility — I believe there do not exist powerful information hazards about it that stand up to clear and circumspect reasoning about the topic. I say this to be comforting rather than dismissive; if it sounds dismissive, I apologize.

With that said, I have four aims in writing this post:

Dispelling myths. There are some ill-conceived myths about acausal trade that I aim to dispel with this post. Alternatively, I will argue for something I'll call acausal normalcy as a more dominant decision-relevant consideration than one-on-one acausal trades.

Highlighting normalcy. I'll provide some arguments that acausal normalcy is more similar to human normalcy than any particular acausal trade is to human trade, such that the topic of acausal normalcy is — conveniently — also less culturally destabilizing than (erroneous) preoccupations with 1:1 acausal trades.

Affirming AI safety as a straightforward priority. I'll argue that for most real-world-prevalent perspectives on AI alignment, safety, and existential safety, acausal considerations are not particularly dominant, except insofar as they push a bit further towards certain broadly agreeable human values applicable in the normal-everyday-human-world, such as nonviolence, cooperation, diversity, honesty, integrity, charity, and mercy. In particular, I do not think acausal normalcy provides a solution to existential safety, nor does it undermine the importance of existential safety in some surprising way.

Affirming normal human kindness. I also think reflecting on acausal normalcy can lead to increased appreciation for normal notions of human kindness, which could lead us all to treat each other a bit better. This is something I wholeheartedly endorse.

Caveat 1: I don't consider myself an expert on moral philosophy, and have not read many of the vast tomes of reflection upon it. Despite this, I think this post has something to contribute to moral philosophy, deriving from some math-facts that I've learned and thought about over the years, which are fairly unique to the 21st century.

Caveat 2: I’ve been told by a few people that thinking about acausal trade has been a mental health hazard for people they know. I now believe that effect has stemmed more from how the topic has been framed (poorly) than from ground-truth facts about how circumspect acausal considerations actually play out. In particular over-focussing on worst-case trades, rather than on what trades are healthy or normal to make, is not a good way to make good trades.

Introduction

Many sci-fi-like stories about acausal trade invoke simulation as a key mechanism.

The usual set-up — which I will refute — goes like this. Imagine that a sufficiently advanced human civilization (A) could simulate a hypothetical civilization of other beings (B), who might in turn be simulating humanity (B(A)) simulating them (A(B(A)) simulating humanity (B(A(B(A)))), and so on. Through these nested simulations, A and B can engage in discourse and reach some kind of agreement about what to do with their local causal environments. For instance, if A values what it considers “animal welfare” and B values what it considers “beautiful paperclips”, then A can make some beautiful paperclips in exchange for B making some animals living happy lives.

An important idea here is that A and B might have something of value to offer each other, despite the absence of a (physically) causal communication channel. While agreeing with that idea, there are three key points I want to make that this standard story is missing:

1. Simulations are not the most efficient way for A and B to reach th...