From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Fri Jun 21 2002 - 14:48:45 MDT
Lee writes:
> If you are quite rational, and you are curious about whether
> or not you are sincerely altruistic towards others, here is
> a thought experiment that may help you determine the truth.
We did discuss a variant on this in February, 1996, although with perhaps
a slightly different emphasis. I have many more thoughts about it now.
First I will note is that the concept has a fundamental contradiction.
Evidentally the experimenters are so powerful, so able to simulate
human behavior, that they can construct a whole society of puppets
indistinguishable from human beings. But if that is so, why bother
to leave one person conscious? And why inform him of the experiment?
If their goal was to see how someone would react in that situation, their
tremendous powers of simulation would seemingly give them the ability to
answer that question without actually having to put someone through it.
If they already know enough about human behavior to simulate all those
people in all possible situations the subject might present to them,
they would know enough to be able to tell what the subject would do.
I was skeptical six years ago that you could have people behave so
realistically without any true emotional feeling behind them. It seemed
to me that you were in effect calling for zombies.
However since then there has been a good fictional depiction of a
very similar scenario in the movie The Truman Show. Jim Carrey plays
Truman Burbank, who has been raised since a child and lived his life
in an artificially constructed world populated by actors who portray
the people around him. Christof, the mysterious producer played by Ed
Harris, has engineered everything that happens to Truman, his childhood,
his school experiences, going to college, even his falling in love and
getting married.
As in Lee's scenario, no one is what they seem. Every person Truman
is dealing with is an actor. Every emotion they project is false.
Even Truman's parents, his best friend, even his wife, are lying to him
with every word they say, with every emotion they show.
Truman finally learns the truth of his situation, and he determines
to escape, giving the film an upifting ending. But in Lee's scenario,
presumably no escape is possible.
What is the appropriate way to respond in Truman's position, if you
can't escape? How do you react when you learn that every single person
you have ever known, people you have trusted, people you have loved,
have all been lying to you? How can you maintain the facade of a life
when you know that they are not what they are pretending to be, when in
fact they know that you know (at least in Lee's scenario), when you know
that they know that you know, ad infinitum?
In my opinion the only reasonable response on Truman's part would be rage.
Furious, uncontrolled, violent rage. His whole life has been a lie,
everyone he has trusted has betrayed him. He is the victim of a cruel
cosmic joke, carried on by an omnipotent being whom he is powerless
to influence.
In that situation, I would do everything I could to disrupt the
simulation, to make it worthless. By doing so I would try to harm,
however slightly or ineffectually I was able to, the omnipotent beings
who were responsible for putting me into such a situation. I would rave,
I would behave erratically. I would tell other people that I knew the
truth, that there was no point in continuing to pretend. (Of course
I would have no expectation that they would behave any differently in
response to such ravings than a person would in our actual world.)
I might withdraw from human company. Rocks and animals may be faked,
but it is not as disturbing as knowing that every person I see is
lying to me. I would become a Unabomber, typing manifestos in a shack,
bearded and ragged.
In the movie, Truman had to face his greatest fears in order to escape
from his prison. Eventually I think I would do the same, overcoming my
fear of death in order to seek an escape from the Hell in which I had
been confined.
Hopefully by taking these extreme acts, I would demonstrate to the Powers
that experiments along such lines are useless, so that they would be
less likely to inflict such torment on other helpless beings.
That's altruism.
Hal
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