From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sat Jun 22 2002 - 13:47:00 MDT
Here's a stranger and stronger form of the question: What would you do if
you found out that the world was a simulation and *someone else* was the
only real person in it? Assume that we subtract from the equation your
Cartesian knowledge that you are a real person and replace it with the hard
knowledge that you are a giant look-up table. What would you do? I like to
think that (the simulated wallpaper version of) Eliezer would spend all
available mental energy on making that one real person's life as pleasant as
possible, but of course you never really know what you'll do (or the
simulated wallpaper version of you) until the clinch.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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