From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Thu May 02 2002 - 13:14:25 MDT
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Louis Newstrom wrote:
>
> From: "Mike Lorrey" <mlorrey@datamann.com>
> > Sure, but WHOS entertainment? Are you really just a brain in a vat in a
> > higher level metaverse? If so, then it is YOU who are being entertained
> > by your vision problems. You could have chosen them as an interesting
> > handicap to overcome, or accepted a contract that assigned you a random
> > probability of random impairments while in this simulation.
>
> I notice an interesting difference between you and me. When looking at the
> hypothetical case that we might be in a simulation without our knowledge,
> you seem to assume that we consented to it, or even chose it. I do not. I
> cannot think of few plausable non-sinister reasons that I wouldn't know if I
> were in a simulation.
Well, I can easily imagine sinister reasons as well, I just find such
reasons to be so convolutedly thought out as to fail occam's razor every
time. Is it possible that someone can gain some evil profit from keeping
my head in a vat, feeding me a simulation of reality? Sure. Do I think
its probable? No. If someone is spending that amount of assets to keep
me happy and deluded with a fake reality, it must be for a good reason,
not an evil one. I have found that evil people are generally cheap and
full of disregard for their fellow man, not to mention callous with
lesser beings.
>
> > whatever the purposes of the simulation operators are, they are entirely
> > immaterial to YOU and your existence and life. You make your own meaning
> > in life. Fuck THEM.
>
> It does matter to me what their purpose is. If they don't get their
> purpose, they might terminate my life. You say Fuck THEM. If I am in a
> simulation where someone else is controlling everything that happens to me,
> I think I'm the one who's fucked.
The problem is that the degree of computation required to simulate the
universe for each and every one of us is so huge that the idea that
someone else is actually controlling what each and every one of us
experiences is the worst sort of solipsistic paranoia. Sheesh, and
people call ME paranoid.
>
> > You are also assuming that the simulation operators had some sort of
> > control in the actual decision to give you bad sight. This is really an
> > inappropriate assumption to make.
>
> No it isn't. The thread was talking about a simulation so real, we couldn't
> see the difference. If "they" can program the entire universe, they can
> control my vision. Or at least, program the world to accept that my level
> of vision was "normal". I see no reason that the world could not be
> calibrated to allow whatever vision I end up with to be what everyone else
> has too.
If you were being kept prisoner, what point is there in keeping you
unhappy?
>
> > It's like blaming an airline pilot for
> > the hijacking, bombing, bird strike, lighting strike, or random
> > mechanical failure that causes the plane to crash.
>
> No.
> I would blame the person who programmed a hijacker to attack my plane. I
> would blame the programmer who told the lightning to hit my plane. Nothing
> in a simulation is random. (Even if someone programmed "random events" some
> intelligent being DECIDED to put in a chance of my death.)
If randomness is required for the simulation to work, then there is no
option. Since the very structure of the universe, quantum phenomena, is
an entirely probabilistic in nature, the idea that someone 'programmed'
you getting bitten by a mosquito is ludicrous. Evolution is a program,
and it entirely relies on probability to function. It is an entirely
anthropic conundrum: if there were not any odds of you having bad
eyesight, then intelligent life would not exist at all in this
simulation, so there is no point whining about it.
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