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.
(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.