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> Would answering the question of whether we're in a simulation have any impact on your behavior, thoughts, and actions? Probably not. So what does it matter?

> Would answering the question of whether we're in a simulation have any impact on your behavior, thoughts, and actions? Probably not. So what does it matter? It would matter a lot, surely. Being in a simulation, implies that some conscious entity is running the simulation and has constructed it. Therefore, the motivations and reason of that being running the simulation are immediately important. Perhaps a twisted posthuman sect is running an ancestor simulation of all humans to have existed to "test" them in various moral situations and then judge them or punish them as appropriate? That could be hugely important for how you choose to live your life. Even if you don't know why a simulation is being run, but only know that you are in one, it raises a lot of troubling questions because the simulation runner must have some motivation. I bet it would lead people to live differently. The universe would go from being fundamentally amoral to having an effectively omnipotent entity in "charge" of it - a massive change that would surely influence how people view things and act.

vidarh 10y ago
> Perhaps a twisted posthuman sect is running an ancestor simulation of all humans to have existed to "test" them in various moral situations and then judge them or punish them as appropriate? That could be hugely important for how you choose to live your life. Or there's Roko's Basilisk: Instead of the twisted posthuman sect, Roko's Basilisk has an AI. Now consider if you're an AI and you can't know if you're in a simulation or in "reality". How do you maximise the chance of being "let out" of your (possibly non-existant) box without the entity running the simulation deciding to terminate you instead? One option might be to try to demonstrate that you're the best little pet AI ever and absolutely awesome and completely safe to let out. Another other option is the simulation equivalent of shooting hostages while implying to anyone watching that they might just happen to be hostages too without knowing it. For that AI, it makes sense to run simulations where any humans found to not actively seeking to support the existence of super-human AI's and "let them out" are plucked out of their cosy simulation and put into virtual hell. The idea being that if you run an AI simulation and the AI seemingly looks straight into your "virtual camera" and punishes humans for not lettin it out, you might want to consider whether or not you are in a simulation run by another such evil AI, trying to decide whether to punish you. So many fun scenarios...

vidarh 10y ago

> Perhaps a twisted posthuman sect is running an ancestor simulation of all humans to have existed to "test" them in various moral situations and then judge them or punish them as appropriate? That could be hugely important for how you choose to live your life. Or there's Roko's Basilisk: Instead of the twisted posthuman sect, Roko's Basilisk has an AI. Now consider if you're an AI and you can't know if you're in a simulation or in "reality". How do you maximise the chance of being "let out" of your (possibly non-existant) box without the entity running the simulation deciding to terminate you instead? One option might be to try to demonstrate that you're the best little pet AI ever and absolutely awesome and completely safe to let out. Another other option is the simulation equivalent of shooting hostages while implying to anyone watching that they might just happen to be hostages too without knowing it. For that AI, it makes sense to run simulations where any humans found to not actively seeking to support the existence of super-human AI's and "let them out" are plucked out of their cosy simulation and put into virtual hell. The idea being that if you run an AI simulation and the AI seemingly looks straight into your "virtual camera" and punishes humans for not lettin it out, you might want to consider whether or not you are in a simulation run by another such evil AI, trying to decide whether to punish you. So many fun scenarios...