Why decline another Omega thought experiment? Because they usually amount to no more than putting a thumb on one side of the scales and saying, “Look, this pan goes down!”
Why decline the offer of a wonderful dream? Because it’s a dream, not reality.
Yes but as stated above if there is superintelligent being capable of making perfect stimulations of reality than the Copernican Principle states that the probability of our “reality” not being a stimulation is extremely low If thats the case it would be obvious to choose Option 1, it being the stimulation that yields you the most utility
If that’s the case it would be obvious (to me) to choose Option 2 and ask a question with a view to determining if this is a simulation and if so how to get out of it.
But I think you’re just putting a hand on the scales here. In the OP you wrote that a perfect simulation is “reality for” the people living in it. There is no such thing as “reality for”, only “reality”. Their simulation is still a simulation. They just do not know it. If I believe the Earth is flat, is a flat Earth “my reality”? No, it is my error, whether I ever discover it or not.
I sort of get your point, but I’m curious: can you imagine learning (with thought-experiment certainty) that there is actually no reality at all, in the sense that no matter where you live, it’s simulated by some “parent reality” (which in turn is simulated, etc., ad infinitum)? Would that change your preference?
Uh...Why?
Why decline another Omega thought experiment? Because they usually amount to no more than putting a thumb on one side of the scales and saying, “Look, this pan goes down!”
Why decline the offer of a wonderful dream? Because it’s a dream, not reality.
Yes but as stated above if there is superintelligent being capable of making perfect stimulations of reality than the Copernican Principle states that the probability of our “reality” not being a stimulation is extremely low If thats the case it would be obvious to choose Option 1, it being the stimulation that yields you the most utility
If that’s the case it would be obvious (to me) to choose Option 2 and ask a question with a view to determining if this is a simulation and if so how to get out of it.
But I think you’re just putting a hand on the scales here. In the OP you wrote that a perfect simulation is “reality for” the people living in it. There is no such thing as “reality for”, only “reality”. Their simulation is still a simulation. They just do not know it. If I believe the Earth is flat, is a flat Earth “my reality”? No, it is my error, whether I ever discover it or not.
I sort of get your point, but I’m curious: can you imagine learning (with thought-experiment certainty) that there is actually no reality at all, in the sense that no matter where you live, it’s simulated by some “parent reality” (which in turn is simulated, etc., ad infinitum)? Would that change your preference?
I can imagine many things, including that one, but I am unconcerned with how I might react to them.
Eliezer Yudkowsky, “A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation”