The main purpose of ratification would be to reduce the probability of catastrophic error. In general, it seems wise to aim at minimizing the risk of catastrophic error rather than at maximizing the chance of every detail being fully optimized. There are two reasons for this. First, humanity’s cosmic endowment is astronomically large—there is plenty to go around even if our process involves some waste or accepts some unnecessary constraints. Second, there is a hope that if we but get the initial conditions for the intelligence explosion approximately right, then the resulting superintelligence
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