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Simulation argument - unethical?


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#151 Luna

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Posted 29 October 2007 - 12:11 PM

Such advanced society who can run such a big simulation, I highly doubt they will run such a full simulation just for science research as in order to have such a simulation they need almost if not full knowledge of the universe!
This is just ridicolus, what possibly can they learn more by killing near infinite number of lives?

#152 Live Forever

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Posted 29 October 2007 - 12:46 PM

Such advanced society who can run such a big simulation, I highly doubt they will run such a full simulation just for science research as in order to have such a simulation they need almost if not full knowledge of the universe!
This is just ridicolus, what possibly can they learn more by killing near infinite number of lives?

To see how different societies function, to see how interactions between people are facilitated, to see how society might turn out different if you change just a few variables (many simulations), to see how history might have been different if you change some event, etc. etc. etc. (just to name a very few)

I am sure if I thought about it, I could come up with a few hundred reasons, but then again, it could be any or none of these reasons; Trying get inside their minds is futile.

Edited by shepard, 23 November 2007 - 05:30 AM.


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#153 platypus

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Posted 29 October 2007 - 01:50 PM

Such advanced society who can run such a big simulation, I highly doubt they will run such a full simulation just for science research as in order to have such a simulation they need almost if not full knowledge of the universe!
This is just ridicolus, what possibly can they learn more by killing near infinite number of lives?

To see how different societies function, to see how interactions between people are facilitated, to see how society might turn out different if you change just a few variables (many simulations), to see how history might have been different if you change some event, etc. etc. etc. (just to name a very few)

Don't you think that they would run those simulations in non-conscious mode if it was possible? That would take care of all the ethical issues in one sweep.

Edited by shepard, 23 November 2007 - 05:30 AM.


#154 Live Forever

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Posted 29 October 2007 - 02:26 PM

Such advanced society who can run such a big simulation, I highly doubt they will run such a full simulation just for science research as in order to have such a simulation they need almost if not full knowledge of the universe!
This is just ridicolus, what possibly can they learn more by killing near infinite number of lives?

To see how different societies function, to see how interactions between people are facilitated, to see how society might turn out different if you change just a few variables (many simulations), to see how history might have been different if you change some event, etc. etc. etc. (just to name a very few)

Don't you think that they would run those simulations in non-conscious mode if it was possible?

Maybe it isn't possible. Maybe you need fully conscious minds (or whatever approximation of "fully conscious" that our minds are) to run an accurate simulation. I don't have any idea.

Edited by shepard, 23 November 2007 - 05:29 AM.


#155 dimasok

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Posted 29 October 2007 - 02:50 PM

Maybe it isn't possible. Maybe you need fully conscious minds (or whatever approximation of "fully conscious" that our minds are) to run an accurate simulation. I don't have any idea.

Pitted against the "impossibility" of anything coming into existence from nothing, suddenly the notion of impossibility no longer applies anywhere :)

#156 Live Forever

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Posted 29 October 2007 - 03:45 PM

Pitted against the "impossibility" of anything coming into existence from nothing, suddenly the notion of impossibility no longer applies anywhere :)

Lots of things are impossible at the moment. It is impossible to transport myself from one corner of the galaxy to the other in an instant. It is impossible to read the thoughts of someone else. It is impossible to travel backwards in time. Not to say that at some point some of these things might be possible, but no one is stating that an accurate simulation without conscious beings would or wouldn't be possible, just that it is an unknown. I certainly can't think of an easier way to do it. (not surprising) I would assume that if you made an accurate enough simulation of consciousness to run in the simulation so that you didn't have to deal with actual consciousness, 1) there would be no distinguishable difference between that and actual consciousness, 2) it would be an order of magnitude more difficult than doing it just on the first order, 3) it has the possibility of being less accurate, and 4) since it is a simulation of consciousness running inside a simulation of the universe (actually a simulation of consciousness inside a simulation of consciousness if you are using Bostrom's original description of possibilities, which makes even less sense), it would use more system resources to accomplish the same thing, and I can't see how it would be any more humane.

Edited by shepard, 23 November 2007 - 05:29 AM.


#157 DJS

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Posted 23 November 2007 - 03:40 AM

In this paper, starting at the bottom of page 16, there are some interesting thoughts on the simulation argument. (the assumption of "time correspondence" in most of the simulation literature is actually a concern I had tried to express previously although, of course, I wasn't able to formulate my thoughts as precisely as Tegmark does)

The Mathematical Universe

#158 Kalepha

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Posted 23 November 2007 - 05:06 PM

In this paper, starting at the bottom of page 16, there are some interesting thoughts on the simulation argument. (the assumption of "time correspondence" in most of the simulation literature is actually a concern I had tried to express previously although, of course, I wasn't able to formulate my thoughts as precisely as Tegmark does)

The Mathematical Universe

Creating, wondering around in, developing, wondering around in, creating, wondering around in, developing . . . Level 4 mathematical universes (p. 13) seems would be purposeful. I surmise that something like advanced pure experimental mathematicians have this opportunity. I'm inspired.

#159 Starfire

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Posted 27 November 2007 - 10:09 PM

hmm... So... If you create a work of Art, in a way you are simulating Emotion...?

Example:
Artist paints a picture of a kid dieing of hunger and the on looker feels upset.

#160 AdamSummerfield

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Posted 28 November 2007 - 07:21 PM

Surely at present there is no way to tell whether or not we live in a simulation.
I assume that if this is all a simulation, that there is an observer. For why run a simulation if some entity does not wish to gain evidence/be entertained?
Then, this leads one to assume that that being does not wish for "us" to discover that this is a simulation, for that would ruin the experiment/entertainment.
In order to prevent us from proving that this is a simulation, the entity must have tied all loose ends, i.e., make it look like an accident (Big Bang?). So thus, it is unlikely that we will find out the truth of whether or not we live in a "simulation" until we are very advanced.

The two conclusions I can draw are thus; What are the differences between "reality" and "simulation"? Well "simulation" implies that there is an observer - a reason. Also, there is the disturbing possibility that if this is a simulation, the observer could get bored and switch the universe off.

- Adam

#161 AdamSummerfield

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Posted 28 November 2007 - 07:22 PM

hmm... So... If you create a work of Art, in a way you are simulating Emotion...?

Example:
Artist paints a picture of a kid dieing of hunger and the on looker feels upset.


All forms of recreative art is an exaggeration of an emotion. Art is created due to an individual feeling an emotion, who wishes to express and increase the magnitude of such an emotion.

Edited by Sezarus, 28 November 2007 - 07:22 PM.


#162 AaronCW

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Posted 29 November 2007 - 03:07 AM

This seems to be a remarkably popular topic.

Unfortunately, I fail to see how it is any more compelling or interesting a discussion than whether there is a heaven or hell. Of course, you could argue that a simulation is within the realm of the possible, but in the absense of any evidence to suggest that we are in fact living in a simulation, or any discovery about how such a simulation might be designed, it is a meaningless discussion. In addition, the knowledge or belief that we were in fact living in a simulation would have seemingly no implications in the context of life (it would not affect the choices or actions of a rational person).

#163 Kalepha

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Posted 29 November 2007 - 03:34 AM

In addition, the knowledge or belief that we were in fact living in a simulation would have seemingly no implications in the context of life (it would not affect the choices or actions of a rational person).

I've wondered about that, whether some people in our realm would and should care about the inductive possibility of being quarantined by others currently in the same realm.

What do others think? Does whether we would and should care depend on the nature of the quarantine described through probabilistic promises or just on the very idea that you're contingently forced into the choice set 'be appeased or die', observing that we have some time to think about this and act in advance, as opposed to being thrown into existence for the first time.

#164 Starfire

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Posted 30 November 2007 - 03:11 PM

Okay if we didnt live in a Simulation... we wouldn't have glitches, right?

Well, I consider Deja vu a glitch.
From what I know of Deja vu it is when we realize all programs(realities) are running simotaniously and our mind reads what is happening as a memory.

Edited by Starfire, 30 November 2007 - 03:18 PM.


#165 abolitionist

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Posted 02 December 2007 - 09:52 AM

In a sense we do live in a simulation - the brain creates a symbolic representation of information recieved through the senses both in tiny bits (colors, pixels) and large scale - memes.

However, the theory that we're living in a simulation is really designed to soften people up to the idea of uploading to a different sort of subjective experience - which isn't inherently a bad thing.

#166 platypus

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Posted 03 December 2007 - 04:15 PM

This seems to be a remarkably popular topic.

Unfortunately, I fail to see how it is any more compelling or interesting a discussion than whether there is a heaven or hell.

I have to agree. With all the genuinely interesting and solvable problems out there it's remarkable that people spend considerable time arguing about pure speculation.

#167 Lazarus Long

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Posted 16 January 2008 - 03:11 AM

Over the years I have read the thesis that the universe is a simulation and the arguments against that hypothesis. I admit to loving the movie the Matrix but that is a different simulation; or is it?

However in todays NY Times there is this article that is too good not to share. Those who are serious on the subject will love this one. Ahhh sweat breads, Boltzmann Brain anyone?

Big Brain Theory: Have Cosmologists Lost Theirs?

By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: January 15, 2008

It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science.

If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions.

This bizarre picture is the outcome of a recent series of calculations that take some of the bedrock theories and discoveries of modern cosmology to the limit. Nobody in the field believes that this is the way things really work, however. And so in the last couple of years there has been a growing stream of debate and dueling papers, replete with references to such esoteric subjects as reincarnation, multiple universes and even the death of spacetime, as cosmologists try to square the predictions of their cherished theories with their convictions that we and the universe are real. The basic problem is that across the eons of time, the standard theories suggest, the universe can recur over and over again in an endless cycle of big bangs, but it’s hard for nature to make a whole universe. It’s much easier to make fragments of one, like planets, yourself maybe in a spacesuit or even — in the most absurd and troubling example — a naked brain floating in space. Nature tends to do what is easiest, from the standpoint of energy and probability. And so these fragments — in particular the brains — would appear far more frequently than real full-fledged universes, or than us. Or they might be us.

Alan Guth, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who agrees this overabundance is absurd, pointed out that some calculations result in an infinite number of free-floating brains for every normal brain, making it “infinitely unlikely for us to be normal brains.” Welcome to what physicists call the Boltzmann brain problem, named after the 19th-century Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, who suggested the mechanism by which such fluctuations could happen in a gas or in the universe. Cosmologists also refer to them as “freaky observers,” in contrast to regular or “ordered” observers of the cosmos like ourselves. Cosmologists are desperate to eliminate these freaks from their theories, but so far they can’t even agree on how or even on whether they are making any progress.

If you are inclined to skepticism this debate might seem like further evidence that cosmologists, who gave us dark matter, dark energy and speak with apparent aplomb about gazillions of parallel universes, have finally lost their minds. But the cosmologists say the brain problem serves as a valuable reality check as they contemplate the far, far future and zillions of bubble universes popping off from one another in an ever-increasing rush through eternity. What, for example is a “typical” observer in such a setup? If some atoms in another universe stick together briefly to look, talk and think exactly like you, is it really you?

“It is part of a much bigger set of questions about how to think about probabilities in an infinite universe in which everything that can occur, does occur, infinitely many times,” said Leonard Susskind of Stanford, a co-author of a paper in 2002 that helped set off the debate. Or as Andrei Linde, another Stanford theorist given to colorful language, loosely characterized the possibility of a replica of your own brain forming out in space sometime, “How do you compute the probability to be reincarnated to the probability of being born?”

The Boltzmann brain problem arises from a string of logical conclusions that all spring from another deep and old question, namely why time seems to go in only one direction. Why can’t you unscramble an egg? The fundamental laws governing the atoms bouncing off one another in the egg look the same whether time goes forward or backward. In this universe, at least, the future and the past are different and you can’t remember who is going to win the Super Bowl next week.

“When you break an egg and scramble it you are doing cosmology,” said Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the California Institute of Technology.

Boltzmann ascribed this so-called arrow of time to the tendency of any collection of particles to spread out into the most random and useless configuration, in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics (sometimes paraphrased as “things get worse”), which says that entropy, which is a measure of disorder or wasted energy, can never decrease in a closed system like the universe.

If the universe was running down and entropy was increasing now, that was because the universe must have been highly ordered in the past.

In Boltzmann’s time the universe was presumed to have been around forever, in which case it would long ago have stabilized at a lukewarm temperature and died a “heat death.” It would already have maximum entropy, and so with no way to become more disorderly there would be no arrow of time. No life would be possible but that would be all right because life would be excruciatingly boring. Boltzmann said that entropy was all about odds, however, and if we waited long enough the random bumping of atoms would occasionally produce the cosmic equivalent of an egg unscrambling. A rare fluctuation would decrease the entropy in some place and start the arrow of time pointing and history flowing again. That is not what happened. Astronomers now know the universe has not lasted forever. It was born in the Big Bang, which somehow set the arrow of time, 14 billion years ago. The linchpin of the Big Bang is thought to be an explosive moment known as inflation, during which space became suffused with energy that had an antigravitational effect and ballooned violently outward, ironing the kinks and irregularities out of what is now the observable universe and endowing primordial chaos with order.

Inflation is a veritable cosmological fertility principle. Fluctuations in the field driving inflation also would have seeded the universe with the lumps that eventually grew to be galaxies, stars and people. According to the more extended version, called eternal inflation, an endless array of bubble or “pocket” universes are branching off from one another at a dizzying and exponentially increasing rate. They could have different properties and perhaps even different laws of physics, so the story goes.

A different, but perhaps related, form of antigravity, glibly dubbed dark energy, seems to be running the universe now, and that is the culprit responsible for the Boltzmann brains.

The expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating, making galaxies fly away from one another faster and faster. If the leading dark-energy suspect, a universal repulsion Einstein called the cosmological constant, is true, this runaway process will last forever, and distant galaxies will eventually be moving apart so quickly that they cannot communicate with one another. Being in such a space would be like being surrounded by a black hole.

Rather than simply going to black like “The Sopranos” conclusion, however, the cosmic horizon would glow, emitting a feeble spray of elementary particles and radiation, with a temperature of a fraction of a billionth of a degree, courtesy of quantum uncertainty. That radiation bath will be subject to random fluctuations just like Boltzmann’s eternal universe, however, and every once in a very long, long time, one of those fluctuations would be big enough to recreate the Big Bang. In the fullness of time this process could lead to the endless series of recurring universes. Our present universe could be part of that chain.

In such a recurrent setup, however, Dr. Susskind of Stanford, Lisa Dyson, now of the University of California, Berkeley, and Matthew Kleban, now at New York University, pointed out in 2002 that Boltzmann’s idea might work too well, filling the megaverse with more Boltzmann brains than universes or real people.

In the same way the odds of a real word showing up when you shake a box of Scrabble letters are greater than a whole sentence or paragraph forming, these “regular” universes would be vastly outnumbered by weird ones, including flawed variations on our own all the way down to naked brains, a result foreshadowed by Martin Rees, a cosmologist at the University of Cambridge, in his 1997 book, “Before the Beginning.”

The conclusions of Dr. Dyson and her colleagues were quickly challenged by Andreas Albrecht and Lorenzo Sorbo of the University of California, Davis, who used an alternate approach. They found that the Big Bang was actually more likely than Boltzmann’s brain.

“In the end, inflation saves us from Boltzmann’s brain,” Dr. Albrecht said, while admitting that the calculations were contentious. Indeed, the “invasion of Boltzmann brains,” as Dr. Linde once referred to it, was just beginning.

In an interview Dr. Linde described these brains as a form of reincarnation. Over the course of eternity, he said, anything is possible. After some Big Bang in the far future, he said, “it’s possible that you yourself will re-emerge. Eventually you will appear with your table and your computer.”

But it’s more likely, he went on, that you will be reincarnated as an isolated brain, without the baggage of stars and galaxies. In terms of probability, he said, “It’s cheaper.”

You might wonder what’s wrong with a few brains — or even a preponderance of them — floating around in space. For one thing, as observers these brains would see a freaky chaotic universe, unlike our own, which seems to persist in its promise and disappointment.

Another is that one of the central orthodoxies of cosmology is that humans don’t occupy a special place in the cosmos, that we and our experiences are typical of cosmic beings. If the odds of us being real instead of Boltzmann brains are one in a million, say, waking up every day would be like walking out on the street and finding everyone in the city standing on their heads. You would expect there to be some reason why you were the only one left right side up.

Some cosmologists, James Hartle and Mark Srednicki, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, have questioned that assumption. “For example,” Dr. Hartle wrote in an e-mail message, “on Earth humans are not typical animals; insects are far more numerous. No one is surprised by this.”

In an e-mail response to Dr. Hartle’s view, Don Page of the University of Alberta, who has been a prominent voice in the Boltzmann debate, argued that what counted cosmologically was not sheer numbers, but consciousness, which we have in abundance over the insects. “I would say that we have no strong evidence against the working hypothesis that we are typical and that our observations are typical,” he explained, “which is very fruitful in science for helping us believe that our observations are not just flukes but do tell us something about the universe.”

Dr. Dyson and her colleagues suggested that the solution to the Boltzmann paradox was in denying the presumption that the universe would accelerate eternally. In other words, they said, that the cosmological constant was perhaps not really constant. If the cosmological constant eventually faded away, the universe would revert to normal expansion and what was left would eventually fade to black. With no more acceleration there would be no horizon with its snap, crackle and pop, and thus no material for fluctuations and Boltzmann brains.

String theory calculations have suggested that dark energy is indeed metastable and will decay, Dr. Susskind pointed out. “The success of ordinary cosmology,” Dr. Susskind said, “speaks against the idea that the universe was created in a random fluctuation.”

But nobody knows whether dark energy — if it dies — will die soon enough to save the universe from a surplus of Boltzmann brains. In 2006, Dr. Page calculated that the dark energy would have to decay in about 20 billion years in order to prevent it from being overrun by Boltzmann brains.

The decay, if and when it comes, would rejigger the laws of physics and so would be fatal and total, spreading at almost the speed of light and destroying all matter without warning. There would be no time for pain, Dr. Page wrote: “And no grieving survivors will be left behind. So in this way it would be the most humanely possible execution.” But the object of his work, he said, was not to predict the end of the universe but to draw attention to the fact that the Boltzmann brain problem remains.

People have their own favorite measures of probability in the multiverse, said Raphael Bousso of the University of California, Berkeley. “So Boltzmann brains are just one example of how measures can predict nonsense; anytime your measure predicts that something we see has extremely small probability, you can throw it out,” he wrote in an e-mail message.

Another contentious issue is whether the cosmologists in their calculations could consider only the observable universe, which is all we can ever see or be influenced by, or whether they should take into account the vast and ever-growing assemblage of other bubbles forever out of our view predicted by eternal inflation. In the latter case, as Alex Vilenkin of Tufts University pointed out, “The numbers of regular and freak observers are both infinite.” Which kind predominate depends on how you do the counting, he said..

In eternal inflation, the number of new bubbles being hatched at any given moment is always growing, Dr. Linde said, explaining one such counting scheme he likes. So the evolution of people in new bubbles far outstrips the creation of Boltzmann brains in old ones. The main way life emerges, he said, is not by reincarnation but by the creation of new parts of the universe. “So maybe we don’t need to care too much” about the Boltzmann brains,” he said.

“If you are reincarnated, why do you care about where you are reincarnated?” he asked. “It sounds crazy because here we are touching issues we are not supposed to be touching in ordinary science. Can we be reincarnated?”

“People are not prepared for this discussion,” Dr. Linde said.

#168 forever freedom

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Posted 18 January 2008 - 06:51 PM

I happen to have some disturbing thoughts regarding this and some other issues.


If there has already been or there are uncountable universes, how can it be possible that there has been no intelligent life yet before us? If there was intelligent life (as or more intelligent than us) before us, then this civilization should already have dominated that whole universe and expanded to outer universes, considering that all we're expecting in the future technologies is reachable. But if this civilization has already dominated it all, then we are indeed just a simulation, or we're lab rats of this civilization.

But if there has been no such powerful civilization before us, we have to ask ourselves if it's really possible to advance technologically so much to the point that we're able to manipulate a whole universe, stoping it from destroying itself, and us, consequentially. In this case, our own civilization is doomed to vanish sooner or later.

So we're either part of a simulation or we're "lad rats", or we are going to end along with this universe. Or, there's also the option that we've hit the jackpot and we're the very first intelligent civilization ever to exist. And the last option is that all we know about the universe and technology possibilities is completely wrong. Still, in this case, we're doomed to end with the universe anyways.

So the only hope for us, in my point of view, is that we are the first or most intelligent civilization ever to exist.

#169 maestro949

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Posted 18 January 2008 - 11:41 PM

One disturbing thought along the lines of entertainment is...

What if we're just avatars and all our conscious decisions are driven by mouse clicks of those controlling us

#170 forever freedom

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Posted 19 January 2008 - 12:53 AM

One disturbing thought along the lines of entertainment is...

What if we're just avatars and all our conscious decisions are driven by mouse clicks of those controlling us




Yeah why not? It is more likely than we being the first and only intelligent civilization ever to exist.

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Posted 20 January 2008 - 08:47 AM

It is more likely than we being the first and only intelligent civilization ever to exist.

How come the latter is unlikely? Someone had to be the first intelligent civilization to exist.

#172 Grimm

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Posted 20 January 2008 - 10:36 PM

No, we don't live in a simulation. Simple as that.

#173 forever freedom

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Posted 24 January 2008 - 02:45 AM

It is more likely than we being the first and only intelligent civilization ever to exist.

How come the latter is unlikely? Someone had to be the first intelligent civilization to exist.




Yes but consider that an intelligent civilization has started before ours. This intelligent civilization would eventually create countless simulations full of self aware AIs, which makes us much more likely to be a simulation than to be this first intelligent civilization itself.

#174

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Posted 08 February 2008 - 05:18 PM

If what we say about the simulation argument is true and that all of us might be living in a simulation, doesn't that mean that whoever created it doesn't really care about all the suffering we are enduring within their simulation?

And since a posthuman society has the capacity to run countless simulations at the same time, wouldn't that mean that they have no reservations against condemning a leviathan number of sentient lifeforms for lifetimes of torment?

Would we be okay with condemning leviathan numbers of sentient lifeforms for lifetimes of torment once we reach the posthuman era?

And how would we justify turning off the simulations?

This seems to greatly contradict the view of "Benevolent and empathetic" posthumans that some transhumanists have.

#175 forever freedom

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Posted 08 February 2008 - 10:11 PM

If what we say about the simulation argument is true and that all of us might be living in a simulation, doesn't that mean that whoever created it doesn't really care about all the suffering we are enduring within their simulation?

And since a posthuman society has the capacity to run countless simulations at the same time, wouldn't that mean that they have no reservations against condemning a leviathan number of sentient lifeforms for lifetimes of torment?

Would we be okay with condemning leviathan numbers of sentient lifeforms for lifetimes of torment once we reach the posthuman era?

And how would we justify turning off the simulations?

This seems to greatly contradict the view of "Benevolent and empathetic" posthumans that some transhumanists have.



Our society condemns murder, rape, traffic of drugs, traffic of children, and on and on... but that doesn't mean they won't happen. If anyone in the future/another more advanced civilization has the potential to create such a simulation, even if it's illegal, it doesn't mean no one will do it.

Edited by sam988, 08 February 2008 - 10:12 PM.


#176 dr_chaos

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Posted 09 February 2008 - 04:57 AM

Would we be okay with condemning leviathan numbers of sentient lifeforms for lifetimes of torment once we reach the posthuman era?

There is no we in ethics. Imho the correct question would be be more like: "I'm against condemning leviathan numbers of sentient lifeforms for lifetimes of torment once we reach the posthuman era. I know some of you are, too. So what are we going to do about it?".

This seems to greatly contradict the view of "Benevolent and empathetic" posthumans that some transhumanists have.

What is "benevolent and empathetic" anyway? As long as being a posthuman doesn't force you to adopt some specific ethic or morals by default ( remember the guy who wanted to outbreed egoism through eugenics?) I don't see how all posthumans should comply with one special definition of good or bad.

If what we say about the simulation argument is true and that all of us might be living in a simulation, doesn't that mean that whoever created it doesn't really care about all the suffering we are enduring within their simulation?

Theodicy thread, go! But yes. It does.

#177

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Posted 09 February 2008 - 12:42 PM

There is no we in ethics.

Hmpf. I shall consider this.

#178 dr_chaos

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Posted 09 February 2008 - 10:16 PM

Honestly, that's what I'm thinking. It was not meant to offend you.

#179

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Posted 09 February 2008 - 11:58 PM

Honestly, that's what I'm thinking. It was not meant to offend you.

Oh, I wasn't offended. It is a very thought provoking point of view that challenged what I have previously thought about ethics.

There is no "us" in ethics.. hmm... Though... wouldn't the ramifications of accepting this mean that you also have to accept that from an objective standpoint there is nothing wrong with things like, say, the holocaust?

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#180 dr_chaos

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Posted 10 February 2008 - 09:49 AM

There is no "us" in ethics.. hmm... Though... wouldn't the ramifications of accepting this mean that you also have to accept that from an objective standpoint there is nothing wrong with things like, say, the holocaust?

Not exactly. From objective standpoint there are value systems which don't think anything is wrong with Holocaust given the situation in Germany back then and value systems which come to a contrary evaluation of what the Nazis did. Such conclusions depend on the premises the value systems are built upon. And you can build a value system on any evaluating statement, since it is impossible to deduct evaluating statements from nature and it is therefore, that it is impossible to judge them without using other evaluating statements, which prevents you from building something like an all time hierarchy of ethical principals. If the most important principle of a system is to kill all Jews on earth as cruel as possible, you can criticize the system and the principals which are deduced from it based on the criteria of anther moral system but never in a fashion like "this system is absolutely and generally wrong".




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