I’ve thought for a while now what leaving an inheritance entails, whether it be personally in the traditional estate sense, or ideas and frameworks in a societal sense.

For those that work in AI, this question is quite relevant. Our dreams (it is at least my dream) are to free man from the forced burdens of intellectual or physical labour, and to give people material abundance. If we do our jobs well and this dream comes true, and the shepherds of absolute scientific and physical progress are no longer human supervised, will people still be able to find personal worth?

Though slightly inane, I do think that if we do our jobs correctly (and deal with all the generational X-risk fussiness,) it will pretty much be the only question that matters.

I will presuppose that people find personal worth from some broad notion of creation, whether that’s through creating material and emotional support for their loved ones, the arts, or some other sense of creation.

Now I’ve been considering the prospect of having children recently, because quite a few of my friends have gotten married and are having kid(s), so you’re getting a consideration of this question framed from what I’d personally want to leave for my kids. There is also a subtler reason for this decision which will become clear.

I would absolutely not want my children to ever have to worry about their material needs. Further, I’d like to be able to support whatever (reasonable) growing material desires they have.

I’d quite like for everyone alive to be in this state.

Following this, there are two scenarios: one where it’s actually problematic they no longer have an opportunity to express themselves through some form of creation (work is a form of creation, and why work if everything has been handed to you?), and the other is that they’re very happy to just hang out with their friends and never would have cared about the former.

Let’s just consider the former scenario for a moment. Humans derive value from creation, whether of products, communication, or knowledge, largely from its cultural value. From some utilitarian perspective, if we as a culture did not value the wellbeing of others, we would not value the creation of say, medicine.

Even with scientific and physical progress, I still expect consistently large parts of the frontier of progress to be subject to human tastes and priorities, things downstream from human culture. Mathematics as a field is beautiful to us because we feel some relevance and beauty in its ideas, and we will always have some preference for how its developed. Generally, large swaths of science (outside of items like “this disease needs solving”) could become much the same. The idea of saving a life is beautiful, but there are many other things too. Buildings can be built, torn down, and rebuilt, according to evolving taste.

Human culture and cultural progress, as it’s bounded by human understanding and adaptation, will exist as long as people exist. As creation derives value from culture, there will always be some place that people can derive value from creation. Abundance is unlikely to change this.

Deriving value from creation is largely downstream cultural value, and as human culture will likely always be defined and bound by humans, it is unlikely that future generations will be unable to derive value from creation.

It’s very hard to believe that the cultural fountain from which the value of creation is derived will be drained once abundance sets in.

I do hope that I’ve argued that if I do my job correctly, people will be materially better off and still have a source to derive self-worth. So now, let’s consider more how we get there. I think the answer to this question to this is rather boring,

Beyond this, I do not really consider the question of how people will derive personal worth from creation at all an important one. Further, I feel that worrying about this problem is much the same about worrying that I’m leaving my children too much money, and other people complaining about this

(though to a lesser extent) in the same way that I do not care about others opinions when

Self-grandiose and self-importance, egotistical to both deny those after us potential progress, rejects what those before us has done for us, egotistical to think we are better predictors of their cultural reality.

There is very much no birthright, just our whims deciding what those after us should inherit.

You can complain that I’d be spoiling them, but the comforts of modernity would have your ancestors screaming that you’re spoiled too, and should I take

Society :: culture

Self :: curiosity

Need to link children