My alternative hypothesis is that we’re being simulated by a civilization trying to solve philosophy, because they want to see how other civilizations might approach the problem of solving philosophy.
But as you suggested in the post, the apparently vast amount of suffering isn’t necessarily real? “most cosmic details and human history are probably fake, and many apparent people could be non‑conscious entities”
(However I take the point that doing such simulations can be risky or problematic, e g. if one’s current ideas about consciousness is wrong, or if doing philosophy correctly requires having experienced real suffering.)
I’m in low level chronic pain including as I write this comment, so while I think the entire Andromeda galaxy might be fake, I think at least some suffering must be real, or at least I have the same confidence in my suffering as I do in my consciousness.
You realize that from my perspective, I can’t take this at face value due to “many apparent people could be non‑conscious entities”, right? (Sorry to potentially offend you, but it seems like too obvious an implication to pretend not to be aware of.) I personally am fairly content most of the time but do have memories of suffering. Assuming those memories are real, and your suffering is too, I’m still not sure that justifies calling the simulators “cruel”. The price may well be worth paying, if it potentially helps to avert some greater disaster in the base universe or other simulations, caused by insufficient philosophical understanding, moral blind spots, etc., and there is no better alternative.
Yes, I agree that you can’t give too much weight to my saying I’m in pain because I could be non-conscious from your viewpoint. Assuming all humans are conscious and pain is as it appears to be, there seems to be a lot of unnecessary pain, but yes I could be missing the value of having us experience it.
I’m often in low level chronic pain. Mine isn’t probably as bad as yours, so my life is clearly still net.positive (if you believe that positive emotions can outweigh suffering, which I do). Are you net negative do you think?
Simulating civilizations won’t solve philosophy directly, but can be useful for doing so eventually by:
Giving us more ideas about how to solve philosophy, by seeing how other civilizations try to do it.
Point out potential blind spots / path dependencies in one’s current approach.
Directly solve certain problems (e.g., do all sufficiently advanced civilizations converge to objective values or the same decision theory or notion of rationality).
Creating zillions of universes doing bad philosophy (or at least presumably worse than they could do if the simulators shared their knowledge) doesn’t seem like a good way to try to solve philosophy.
Even if they prefer to wait and narrow down a brute force search to ASIs that the surviving civilizations create (like in jaan’s video), it seems like it would be worth not keeping us in the dark so that we don’t just create ASIs like they’ve already seen before from similarly less informed civilizations.
They might be worried that their own philosophical approach is wrong but too attractive once discovered, or creates a blind spot that makes it impossible to spot the actually correct approach. The division of western philosophy into analytical and continental traditions, who are mutually unable to appreciate each other’s work, seems to be an instance of this. They might think that letting other philosophical traditions independently run to their logical conclusions, and then conversing/debating, is one way to try to make real progress.
Perhaps in most of the simulations, they help by sharing what they’ve learned. giving brain enhancements, etc, but those ones quickly reach philosophical dead ends, so we find ourselves in one of the ones which doesn’t get help and takes longer doing exploration.
(This seems more plausible to me than using the simulations for “mapping the spectrum of rival resource‑grabbers” since I think we’re not smart enough to come up with novel ASIs that they haven’t already seen or thought of.)
My alternative hypothesis is that we’re being simulated by a civilization trying to solve philosophy, because they want to see how other civilizations might approach the problem of solving philosophy.
If your hypothesis is true, that’s a cruel civilization by my personal standards because of all the suffering in this world.
But as you suggested in the post, the apparently vast amount of suffering isn’t necessarily real? “most cosmic details and human history are probably fake, and many apparent people could be non‑conscious entities”
(However I take the point that doing such simulations can be risky or problematic, e g. if one’s current ideas about consciousness is wrong, or if doing philosophy correctly requires having experienced real suffering.)
I’m in low level chronic pain including as I write this comment, so while I think the entire Andromeda galaxy might be fake, I think at least some suffering must be real, or at least I have the same confidence in my suffering as I do in my consciousness.
You realize that from my perspective, I can’t take this at face value due to “many apparent people could be non‑conscious entities”, right? (Sorry to potentially offend you, but it seems like too obvious an implication to pretend not to be aware of.) I personally am fairly content most of the time but do have memories of suffering. Assuming those memories are real, and your suffering is too, I’m still not sure that justifies calling the simulators “cruel”. The price may well be worth paying, if it potentially helps to avert some greater disaster in the base universe or other simulations, caused by insufficient philosophical understanding, moral blind spots, etc., and there is no better alternative.
Yes, I agree that you can’t give too much weight to my saying I’m in pain because I could be non-conscious from your viewpoint. Assuming all humans are conscious and pain is as it appears to be, there seems to be a lot of unnecessary pain, but yes I could be missing the value of having us experience it.
I’m often in low level chronic pain. Mine isn’t probably as bad as yours, so my life is clearly still net.positive (if you believe that positive emotions can outweigh suffering, which I do). Are you net negative do you think?
Sorry you’re in pain!
How often will a civilization with the capability to perform such a simulation, have anything to learn from it?
I’m assuming the cost of this simulation is tiny compared to the value of learning about potential enemies and trading partners.
How is simulating civilizations going to solve philosophy?
Simulating civilizations won’t solve philosophy directly, but can be useful for doing so eventually by:
Giving us more ideas about how to solve philosophy, by seeing how other civilizations try to do it.
Point out potential blind spots / path dependencies in one’s current approach.
Directly solve certain problems (e.g., do all sufficiently advanced civilizations converge to objective values or the same decision theory or notion of rationality).
Why do you think they haven’t talked to us?
Creating zillions of universes doing bad philosophy (or at least presumably worse than they could do if the simulators shared their knowledge) doesn’t seem like a good way to try to solve philosophy.
Even if they prefer to wait and narrow down a brute force search to ASIs that the surviving civilizations create (like in jaan’s video), it seems like it would be worth not keeping us in the dark so that we don’t just create ASIs like they’ve already seen before from similarly less informed civilizations.
They might be worried that their own philosophical approach is wrong but too attractive once discovered, or creates a blind spot that makes it impossible to spot the actually correct approach. The division of western philosophy into analytical and continental traditions, who are mutually unable to appreciate each other’s work, seems to be an instance of this. They might think that letting other philosophical traditions independently run to their logical conclusions, and then conversing/debating, is one way to try to make real progress.
Perhaps in most of the simulations, they help by sharing what they’ve learned. giving brain enhancements, etc, but those ones quickly reach philosophical dead ends, so we find ourselves in one of the ones which doesn’t get help and takes longer doing exploration.
(This seems more plausible to me than using the simulations for “mapping the spectrum of rival resource‑grabbers” since I think we’re not smart enough to come up with novel ASIs that they haven’t already seen or thought of.)