One usually assumes that, for many simulations, various forms of entertainment (possibly including “immersive VR diving”) would be among the goals.
Then, on one hand, one would expect lazy rendering of simulation to save resources, adding those resources only as needed (this is compatible both with the Fermi paradox and with subsequent “discoveries” that other civilizations “actually” exist).
And on the other hand, the level of ridiculousness in having a president with this kind of last name, this kind of behavior, and this kind of ridiculous circumstances of his recurrent coming to power is highly entertaining (at least to those not directly affected by the consequences).
And… this is not the only thing which seems to be rather ridiculous in a somewhat entertaining fashion about our reality. What we should really ask: is what we observe “unnaturally ridiculous” altogether or is it within reason for a “naturalistic reality”?
The conceit of imagining yourself to be Top-Tier Entertainment for a god. Why, there’s not just many possible things to imagine, so why wouldn’t it imagine you, amirite?
The most typical entertainment mode people consider in this case is that a “god” (a being from an outer reality) goes for an adventure of being a lesser being for a subjective life of that lesser being while forgetting who they are for that subjective period (without any particular assumption of how that period corresponds to temporal duration in the outer reality in question, but the outer duration can potentially be very brief).
This is a rather typical scenario in some “mystical” literature (they try to tell their readers that those readers “came from somewhere, but don’t remember”, and that this is being done “as a quest of some sort”), although that literature usually presumes that everyone is a “playing character” and does not typically consider potential existence of NPCs.
Another entertainment mode would probably be writing the scenarios (can be a form of art) or otherwise interfering just for kicks, or for some tests, or using the simulation as a playing field for some games (which can have some rules).
Many people find it worth their while to spend some time in VR, which is generally substandard compared to what we have here in our life (at least in terms of resolution and of available sensory channels, at least today), but sufficiently different to make it interesting. So the assumption that something similar might still be of interest to more powerful beings is not too improbable, I would think…
And whatever the utility function of gods, you imagine (1) there’s not much they could possibly find any more entertaining than that, and (2) there’s not that many other possibilities for things that would be equally entertaining?
There are plenty of opportunities, but “gods” don’t have to be super, super intelligent, they just should be able to run a decent simulation with consciousness inside. We don’t know if it’s all that difficult.
If you want a chess analogy, it’s not a world champion choosing to spend time playing a weaker player, it’s a world champion going to a night club on the seedy side of the town to unwind and to tickle some unsatisfied urges.
Does not the world champion have some better things to do? I am sure the answer is “yes”, but I am also sure that things like “a night club on the seedy side of the town” happen way more often than the frequency we usually assume by default…
Also, there can be plenty of simulations and other opportunities, but there can also be plenty of “gods”. The problem with the word “god” is that it creates this impression of rarity, and then one gets the impression that this requires something improbable to happen, but an “outer reality” might be really well populated (many orders of magnitude more populated than our little planet). That’s not an exotic assumption. We are not so large and important that the G-d has chosen us, but if a few of a few quintillions of “gods” have chosen to spend some time here, this does not make us improbably important.
I am skeptical of how well calibrated your “ridiculous” meter is. Like if you lived in the past most kings were corrupt and ridiculous like Trump. Perhaps the last 30 years or so were anomalously normal seeming. A brief look at history makes it seem that way.
My reference class is US Presidents (and, more generally, elected leaders of democratic countries). One requirement for quite a long time was “being proper”, “demonstrating some kind of externally visible conformity with conventions”, this kind of things.
OK thats a pretty narrow reference class. For example I am not even from USA so I wouldn’t choose it or be convinced by it would I? Seeing as >95% of the world dont live in the USA it’s not going to convince them.
And if you expand it, then Putin and many dictators start off being at least somewhat democratically elected. Conformity with conventions, is also pretty vague, like being ridiculous is seen as more unlikely than being a dictator? This all seems a bit arbitrary and post hoc.
Well, I am an immigrant from the Soviet Union to the United States, and for me the evidence is strong. And about Putin being “democratically elected”, at least initially, I… well, “politics is a mind-killer”, so I am not going to expand in this direction ;-) But he was relatively normal, he was not a weird outlier (even with what’s going on now; it’s very unpleasant, but it’s not strange, it’s “traditionally bad”). So he would not be a counter-example.
But I don’t claim that the evidence is universal. (In some sense, the whole point of having this many people is to maintain a healthy diversity and non-uniformity of views. After all, certainties are rare, and here we are not discussing a subject where one would expect certainty, so why would one aim for a universal evidence here… The discussion here is whether it’s reasonable for some rationalists to update based on this, not whether it’s a “cognitive sin” not to update.)
If you look at my initial comment, I am not even saying that I should update. All I am saying is that this is an extra motivation to try to evaluate whether the overall level of weirdness is above of what should be expected of a “naturalistic reality”.
One usually assumes that, for many simulations, various forms of entertainment (possibly including “immersive VR diving”) would be among the goals.
Then, on one hand, one would expect lazy rendering of simulation to save resources, adding those resources only as needed (this is compatible both with the Fermi paradox and with subsequent “discoveries” that other civilizations “actually” exist).
And on the other hand, the level of ridiculousness in having a president with this kind of last name, this kind of behavior, and this kind of ridiculous circumstances of his recurrent coming to power is highly entertaining (at least to those not directly affected by the consequences).
And… this is not the only thing which seems to be rather ridiculous in a somewhat entertaining fashion about our reality. What we should really ask: is what we observe “unnaturally ridiculous” altogether or is it within reason for a “naturalistic reality”?
The conceit of imagining yourself to be Top-Tier Entertainment for a god. Why, there’s not just many possible things to imagine, so why wouldn’t it imagine you, amirite?
Not quite.
The most typical entertainment mode people consider in this case is that a “god” (a being from an outer reality) goes for an adventure of being a lesser being for a subjective life of that lesser being while forgetting who they are for that subjective period (without any particular assumption of how that period corresponds to temporal duration in the outer reality in question, but the outer duration can potentially be very brief).
This is a rather typical scenario in some “mystical” literature (they try to tell their readers that those readers “came from somewhere, but don’t remember”, and that this is being done “as a quest of some sort”), although that literature usually presumes that everyone is a “playing character” and does not typically consider potential existence of NPCs.
Another entertainment mode would probably be writing the scenarios (can be a form of art) or otherwise interfering just for kicks, or for some tests, or using the simulation as a playing field for some games (which can have some rules).
Many people find it worth their while to spend some time in VR, which is generally substandard compared to what we have here in our life (at least in terms of resolution and of available sensory channels, at least today), but sufficiently different to make it interesting. So the assumption that something similar might still be of interest to more powerful beings is not too improbable, I would think…
(But in general people often enjoy comedy of not exactly “high brow nature”.
If one abstracts away from the tragic aspects of all this, the whole “Trump thing” does qualify as a “comedy of not exactly high brow nature”.
Yes, I think being way more powerful than humans does not necessarily make one above entertainment of “not exactly high brow nature”.)
And whatever the utility function of gods, you imagine (1) there’s not much they could possibly find any more entertaining than that, and (2) there’s not that many other possibilities for things that would be equally entertaining?
There are plenty of opportunities, but “gods” don’t have to be super, super intelligent, they just should be able to run a decent simulation with consciousness inside. We don’t know if it’s all that difficult.
If you want a chess analogy, it’s not a world champion choosing to spend time playing a weaker player, it’s a world champion going to a night club on the seedy side of the town to unwind and to tickle some unsatisfied urges.
Does not the world champion have some better things to do? I am sure the answer is “yes”, but I am also sure that things like “a night club on the seedy side of the town” happen way more often than the frequency we usually assume by default…
Also, there can be plenty of simulations and other opportunities, but there can also be plenty of “gods”. The problem with the word “god” is that it creates this impression of rarity, and then one gets the impression that this requires something improbable to happen, but an “outer reality” might be really well populated (many orders of magnitude more populated than our little planet). That’s not an exotic assumption. We are not so large and important that the G-d has chosen us, but if a few of a few quintillions of “gods” have chosen to spend some time here, this does not make us improbably important.
I am skeptical of how well calibrated your “ridiculous” meter is. Like if you lived in the past most kings were corrupt and ridiculous like Trump. Perhaps the last 30 years or so were anomalously normal seeming. A brief look at history makes it seem that way.
My reference class is US Presidents (and, more generally, elected leaders of democratic countries). One requirement for quite a long time was “being proper”, “demonstrating some kind of externally visible conformity with conventions”, this kind of things.
OK thats a pretty narrow reference class. For example I am not even from USA so I wouldn’t choose it or be convinced by it would I? Seeing as >95% of the world dont live in the USA it’s not going to convince them.
And if you expand it, then Putin and many dictators start off being at least somewhat democratically elected. Conformity with conventions, is also pretty vague, like being ridiculous is seen as more unlikely than being a dictator? This all seems a bit arbitrary and post hoc.
Well, I am an immigrant from the Soviet Union to the United States, and for me the evidence is strong. And about Putin being “democratically elected”, at least initially, I… well, “politics is a mind-killer”, so I am not going to expand in this direction ;-) But he was relatively normal, he was not a weird outlier (even with what’s going on now; it’s very unpleasant, but it’s not strange, it’s “traditionally bad”). So he would not be a counter-example.
But I don’t claim that the evidence is universal. (In some sense, the whole point of having this many people is to maintain a healthy diversity and non-uniformity of views. After all, certainties are rare, and here we are not discussing a subject where one would expect certainty, so why would one aim for a universal evidence here… The discussion here is whether it’s reasonable for some rationalists to update based on this, not whether it’s a “cognitive sin” not to update.)
If you look at my initial comment, I am not even saying that I should update. All I am saying is that this is an extra motivation to try to evaluate whether the overall level of weirdness is above of what should be expected of a “naturalistic reality”.