(Drafts of a future post.) I want to confront/explain my optimism. Here's a thought experiment to explain what "optimism" means to me:

Imagine a world like Earth. There's an underground prison. People live there for generations. The prison is constructed in such a way that you can live there "forever". People are not aware that the world outside of the prison exists.

One person in the prison imagines freedom. But she doesn't have evidence (or so it seems).

• A: I got an idea: maybe we shouldn't optimize our life in prison. Maybe we can escape to freedom.
• B: "Freedom"? What is this? The prison is the entire world, what do you mean by "escaping" it?
• (A explains)
• A: I think freedom is likely enough to exist.
• B: Why do you believe this?
• A: I can imagine it being true.
• B: Since when do we imagine evidence?
• A: You don't understand, some things are true simply because you can imagine them.
• B: No, they aren't.
• A: They are.
• B: I can imagine a unicorn, does the unicorn exist?
• A: Unicorns don't matter. And unicorns do exist: we could build a unicorn if we tried hard enough.
• B: This is some Dark Arts Philosophy of Insanity right there.
• A: Do you remember Kant's idea about a priori synthesis? It's about the type of knowledge that combines innate assumptions and real world evidence.
• B: We already optimized crazy philosophy books into toilet paper.
• A: Can you disprove my idea?
• B: This is a wrong question! Why are we prioritizing an idea without evidence and then trying to disprove it?
• A: OK. Try this: remember all the things that aren't directly related to the prison. Remember the other prisoners, their personalities. Remember the patterns on the prison stones. Remember the way light reflects from the surfaces and casts shadows. 99% of your knowledge doesn't say that we're in prison. So why did you flip into believing in this prison just because you saw a prison wall? Escape the prison of your mind.
• B: Nah. We made enough Bayesian updating: we are in the prison. And there's no trace of anything else.

...

• B: Did you forget how harsh this prison is? We're beyond the reach of god.
• A: Well, that's the thing: it's too harsh. It's much too harsh compared to what it could've been.
• B: We have to live in reality.
• A: If this prison is all we have, then this world isn't worth living in. So I don't care if I'm wrong.
• B: Don't you care about other people? Don't you have something to protect? Why do you need some additional thing ("freedom") to care about other people?
• A: Yes, I care! That's what made me think about freedom. Yes, you're right. It can make sense to care only about what we have. But, I don't know how to explain it... it's just less "probable" to make sense if there's nothing but this prison?
• B: Forget about freedom, we need to optimize our life in prison to save the bigger number!
• A: I think values need some free space to meaningfully exist, some possibility of a meaningful choice. You talk about values, but then you say that our values should be 100% controlled by this prison. And that our actual reasons to value each other don't matter. Only the prison rules matter. In your worldview, our values don't have any real effect on the world. And we never should act based on our personal values, only at times when our decisions are meaningless.
• B: This is word games. Or some "free will" nonsense.
• A: If you're right, then we got pretty degenerate version of "values". But my action based on my personal values is this: I'm going to find the escape from this prison.
• B: The bigger number!
• A: If I'm wrong, this means I'm not well-suited for this prison anyway. You can get by without me. One wasted opportunity is worth the chance to escape.
• B: No, without your help we won't save the bigger number! And you're good enough. Or you can get better.
• A: Your philosophy seems to be open to exploitation. What if this prison were run by maniacs? Would we need to torture each other for ages hoping for the promised survival of the "bigger number"? Hoping that anybody's going to keep that promise.

...

• B: Ok, let's try one more time: when did you start to think about freedom? When did you think about it the last couple of times? Why?
• A: It was just a feeling. I was just running in the prison corridor... and I thought that, theoretically, I could run forever, and, theoretically, there could be no walls.
• A: I have feelings like this very often. They don't let me forget the idea. For example, I look at a stone and think "maybe the shape of our world could be at least as complex and interesting as the surface of this stone, maybe it could be just a little bit more complex and interesting than prison rectangles".

...

• B: I'm getting tired of this. I think you have an elephant in the brain. And a snail in your beliefs. And backwards rationalizations. And a cockroach in your Bayesian updating. Broken software, broken hardware. And biases...
• A: No. We have more than this prison. This is the most true thing I know. If it's not true, then "truth" itself doesn't mean anything but arbitrary noise. Why don't we eat each other, because we're humans or just because this decade's prison rules don't say us to do so? If it's not true in this world, then it's true Somewhere Else. But maybe we are Somewhere Else... and cutting ourselves from that place may be worse than death.

Prison System

What is the prison of our world? I can think of 11 prisons. Those are 11 main factors that (try to) limit my optimism.

Prison of Death. Humans die. However, this fact doesn't imprison the entire humanity. And death isn't logically necessary.

Prison of Pain. People experience pain. And if we didn't, the pain would still exist as a concept, there would be a way to create pain (maybe). This fact doesn't imprison entire humanity and pain isn't necessary.

Prison of Experience. Your experience doesn't matter. 99% of your experience doesn't give you knowledge (power), doesn't let you help anybody and barely matters in the culture. A couple of math theorems are "more important" (give more power, better remembered int he culture) than 50 years of someone's suffering.

• I don't believe this: I believe there should be a way to make our experience really matter.

Prison of Communication. This is one of the prisons from the thought experiment. I can't communicate my ideas. I can't communicate the value I feel. If I turn out to be wrong, if I fail, I'll never be able to tell my story and why I believed what I believed. I'll never share the way I saw the world. And I'll never know the "true", non-generic reason of my failure.

• I think this prison doesn't "really" exist: there should be a more effective way to communicate.

Prison of Complexity. Human type of thinking can exist only on a certain level of computational power.

• Weak problem: our level of computational power can be attacked by brute force, by AI and AGI. AI can generate content faster than you. AGI can think faster than you.
• Strong problem: What happens beyond our level of computational power? Are super-intelligent beings similar to humans, in what ways? Do they have personalities? Does humanity "scale-up" or not?
• Opinion: I believe there's something important about the way humans think. Doesn't matter if we're imprisoned by complexity or not.

Prison of Inequality. The possibility that people are not "equal" in some important aspect. This is a pessimistic thing because it contradicts the concept of personality: why are people different if difference is bad? And if difference is good, then inequality won't let us notice this anyway.

• I don't believe in inequality.

Prison of Badness. Humans are born to think, but human thinking is the baddest and most egoistic and broken thing ever (compared to Bayes and "shut up and multiply").

• I don't believe in this. And this "prison" would be just ridiculous if other prisons didn't exist. It pales in comparison with the other prisons.

...

Here're some more, it feels as if they have a different flavor:

Prison of Impossible Problems. Humanity is bound to face "unsolvable" problems. Unable to "solve extinction" in time.

Prison of Time/Opportunities. You don't have the time and opportunities to develop your potential. And to experience everything you need.

Prison of Free Will. We don't have free will.

Prison of Afterlife/God. There's no afterlife and no God.

Jailbreak