Question reversal: suppose Omega reveals to you that your life has been a simulation. Your actions inside the simulation don’t affect the outside, ‘real’ world—nobody is watching you.
However, Omega offers to remove you from the simulation and instantiate you in the real world outside. Unfortunately, Omega predicts that your future life on the outside won’t be nearly as fun as the one you’ve had in the simulation up until now. The difference in satisfaction—including satisfying your preferences that apply to “affecting the ‘real’ world”—may be as great as the possible improvement due to wireheading...
Would you accept the offer and risk a life of extreme misery to improve your chance of affecting the “real” world? Would you consider yourself “dead” if you knew you were being simulated?
I would accept Omega’s offer to ‘pop’ me up a level. I would accept even if it meant misery and pain. I would always accept this offer. Actually, bar that. I would accept the offer conditional on the fact that I’d be able to impact the ‘real’ world more outside the simulation than inside. I’d be comfortable staying in my current level if it was providing some useful effect in the higher levels of reality that I couldn’t provide if I were ‘popped’ out.
Would you consider yourself “dead” if you knew you were being simulated?
Upon learning I was in a simulation, I would make it my life’s sole purpose to escape. I think this would be a common reaction. It is my understanding that Buddhism believes this world is a simulation and the goal of each Buddhist is to ‘pop’ themselves unto a higher plane of reality. Many branches of Christianity also put strong emphasis on proving one’s worth on Earth solely to be in as good a position as possible once we die and ‘pop’ into the ‘real’ world in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Exploring your question more, I realize that there are at least two situations this wouldn’t work in. The first situation would be if reality consisted of a circularly linked list of ‘real’ worlds, and ‘popping’ up or ‘pushing’ down enough times would bring you back to the same world you started at. The second situation would be if there were infinitely many layers to ‘pop’ up through. I’m actually not sure what I would do if reality were in such an impossible configuration.
Why do you think infinitely many layers would be an impossible configuration? If anyone, anywhere has an actual real turing machine (as opposed to a finite approximation of a turing machine), creating such a configuration is basically child’s play.
Question reversal: suppose Omega reveals to you that your life has been a simulation. Your actions inside the simulation don’t affect the outside, ‘real’ world—nobody is watching you.
However, Omega offers to remove you from the simulation and instantiate you in the real world outside. Unfortunately, Omega predicts that your future life on the outside won’t be nearly as fun as the one you’ve had in the simulation up until now. The difference in satisfaction—including satisfying your preferences that apply to “affecting the ‘real’ world”—may be as great as the possible improvement due to wireheading...
Would you accept the offer and risk a life of extreme misery to improve your chance of affecting the “real” world? Would you consider yourself “dead” if you knew you were being simulated?
(Apologies for replying late.)
I would accept Omega’s offer to ‘pop’ me up a level. I would accept even if it meant misery and pain. I would always accept this offer. Actually, bar that. I would accept the offer conditional on the fact that I’d be able to impact the ‘real’ world more outside the simulation than inside. I’d be comfortable staying in my current level if it was providing some useful effect in the higher levels of reality that I couldn’t provide if I were ‘popped’ out.
Upon learning I was in a simulation, I would make it my life’s sole purpose to escape. I think this would be a common reaction. It is my understanding that Buddhism believes this world is a simulation and the goal of each Buddhist is to ‘pop’ themselves unto a higher plane of reality. Many branches of Christianity also put strong emphasis on proving one’s worth on Earth solely to be in as good a position as possible once we die and ‘pop’ into the ‘real’ world in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Exploring your question more, I realize that there are at least two situations this wouldn’t work in. The first situation would be if reality consisted of a circularly linked list of ‘real’ worlds, and ‘popping’ up or ‘pushing’ down enough times would bring you back to the same world you started at. The second situation would be if there were infinitely many layers to ‘pop’ up through. I’m actually not sure what I would do if reality were in such an impossible configuration.
Why do you think infinitely many layers would be an impossible configuration? If anyone, anywhere has an actual real turing machine (as opposed to a finite approximation of a turing machine), creating such a configuration is basically child’s play.
Have you read The Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover which explores just this possibility ?