Suffering-Focused Ethics in the Infinite Universe. How can we redeem ourselves if Multiverse Immortality is real and subjective death is impossible.
The work is only a skeleton of a more complete concept and in some places a loose collection of unprofessional thoughts. It is a translation from the original language, which is probably why there could be mistakes in it. I apologize for the underdeveloped elements of the concept, for many reasons in many places the current state is very far from perfect, I hope it will be improved in the future. Nevertheless, I felt that it would be experimentally good to publish it here temporarily.
1. Suffering-Focused Ethics: Negative Consequentialism, Efilism, Promortalism, and Antinatalism as worldviews whose goal is to reduce suffering.
The life of every sentient being contains the inherent elements of suffering. They are, at the broadest spectrum, all the negative aspects of life that can be subjectively experienced by anything with that subjectivity. As a rule, it is assumed that the more complicated the nervous system in which negative states are felt, the greater the being’s ability to feel them, the complexity of the “mind” grows along with the advancement of the brain itself, which may and very likely involve an increase in the amount of negative (and relatively “positive”) states that can be experienced. Perhaps as the mental capacity of a given creature increases, so does the intensity of the suffering that can be felt.
We currently don’t know as much as we would like to about suffering. Here are some links to possibly helpful articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_animals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_invertebrates
Probably the most advanced species among the minds of the earth is man. From the time of the emergence of our distant ancestors, at least a dozen species very similar to us, within the same genus Homo and more broadly, the Hominini tribe lived and died out over millions of years, until only us and chimpanzees remained of the entire tribe. Homo sapiens is the last representative of the genus Homo, extinct outside of it. The dualistic division of sentient creatures into humans and animals for centuries is no longer valid, the pragmatic division into Non-human animals and Human-animals seems to be much more precise, in the first sense the expression “other animals” will appear here, as human- animals, the genus Homo will be referred to, in practice it is currently limited to one representative of global reach, which has changed the biosphere in a way unprecedented so far in the influence of only one species.
1.1 Suffering. The genesis of compassion and empathy.
You cannot limit the use of the word suffering to describing physical pain. The same areas of the brain are largely responsible for experiencing mental pain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering
Physical distress is most noticeable, in humans it causes a constant and limited set of involuntary reactions that we are able to read easily. Much of this is due to the social lifestyle of humans and, more broadly, many primates, where the clear signaling of physical pain provides an opportunity to support and treat an injured family member. Apart from the mechanism of recording suffering, in order to achieve the practical goal of the effective and stable functioning of the group and, consequently, increasing its chances of reproducing and transmitting information that forces it to reproduce, there is also a need for a mechanism that provokes actions aimed at minimizing the suffering of a group member. In this way, neurologically with a high probability due to the development of mirror neurons ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron ) , psychologically thanks to the ability to imagine someone else’s suffering and the desire to cure it, compassion and empathy found their way into the world. A higher coefficient of compassion and empathy is noted in the case of herd animals, social animals, or simply those that form groups at least at a certain period of life, so in elephants, wild dogs, horses, wolves—and thus also their domesticated versions—dogs, primates, including humans, of course. Behavior aimed at avoiding suffering and death of a group member does not have to involve high empathy or even compassion. we have plenty of examples of eusocial behavior of insects, shoals of fish, and similar communities that are usually not correlated with empathy (precise defining the terms may prove it is not the case, yet for simplicity, I am going to assume most animals capable of feeling pain/suffering do not feel empathy). It seems like the more advanced the brain, the more imagination and empathy it has, the genius of birds, mammals, and especially primates is based on the ability to imagine hypothetical situations. We come to the conclusion that not only the non-individualistic lifestyle but most of all the level of mind development (sensu lato, as a set of subjective feelings that can be experienced by the system, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind ) influences the development of altruistic tendencies.
The very fact of having the necessary to raise offspring—in the case of animals that actively care for their offspring—implies the need to have instruments enabling effective protection, including, in particular, awareness of the existence of factors that directly threaten life, such as predators or environmental factors—cold, heat, dehydration. Secondly, but just as necessary, there is a need to communicate and interpret non-obvious life-threatening situations, such as injuries, having parasites, feeling hungry, cold, or sick. Birds and mammals have most noticeably developed a system of intraspecific, involuntary behavior that allows them to read, imagine, and react to the states of other members of the species. Universally, sick or injured individuals behave in a way that allows others to recognize their negative states and try to provide them with special safety.
The evolutionary foundations of empathy are well described and, together with the rest of evolutionary psychology, form a coherent picture of the world based on a few simple mechanisms. Sensitivity to the signaling of suffering in other members of one’s own species, however, does not automatically mean being alert to all suffering, or even to a significant part of it, and probably even to any noticeable minority. People are very good at reading other people’s emotional states, whether they are “positive” or negative. When faced with a person showing symptoms of pain, fear, stress, or general depression and unhappiness, most people have a compassionate response and a willingness, if not active help, then at least a tendency to desire any improvement in their condition. The closer this person is to us, the stronger the need for help is, the stronger the remorse of not giving it. The blessing of evolution focused solely on the preservation and duplication of genes is empathy that compels non-psychopathic individuals to naturally help in an unreflective reflex of altruism.
For relatively precise pieces of information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism#Scientific_viewpoints https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_(biology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_ethics
It can be argued every being is always intrinsically egoistic. I will not doubt that view, in fact (depending on definitions of the terms) I hold that in some sense myself. In practice, though most of us are concerned about the well-being of other systems capable of experiencing some forms of suffering.
In this post, I assume our goal is to reduce suffering, and I show some possible or potential ways of achieving that goal. Eventually, as it will turn out soon, I think it is possible that “absolute egoism” may lead to “absolute altruism”, but it is NOT of great importance to me and I would prefer to interpret that rather in some metaphorical than technical sense, though the last can be valid too.
The curse of evolution, in fact, as it turns out, the curse of all sentient existence is the fact that empathy and altruism are implicitly only instrumental, serving to improve the condition of one’s offspring and the immediate environment of the species. Birds do not seem to care about the suffering of unrelated individuals, mammals will not care about the torture of other sentient beings, they will inflict it themselves by tearing to shreds or trampling victims or enemies. In biology, absolute empathy would also be an absolute disaster, a complete failure of a biological system whose sole and exclusive purpose is to duplicate genetic material as closely resembling this individual as possible. The more developed the mind of a species, the greater its potential capacity for empathy (it is, again an assumption used to simplify the reasoning). As a rule, a greater ability to register patterns of behavior caused by suffering translates into greater empathy towards such beings, which means greater awareness of suffering. The more a given systematic group is related to human animals, the more likely the signaling of suffering will be similar, allowing us to decipher at least the intense negative states in other species relatively easily. We instinctively attribute pain and fear to other mammals behaving in a certain way, despite the lack of developed facial expressions, we will easily discover that a dog or a sheep feels pain. In the case of group mammals, this is facilitated by verbally signaling the pain with groans or screaming screams.
Few people will not be moved, even in the slightest degree, to see a scared dog, not to mention a dog howling in pain, right in front of our eyes. Probably a definite minority of us, perhaps only a small fraction, would not feel the desire to free a suffering animal from its suffering. We assume that this is not suffering intended to improve his condition, such as a painful procedure. Imagine that we have in front of us a being harmless to us, whose suffering no one benefits from, who experiences indescribable, excruciating pain. We can cause her suffering to be stopped immediately with a minimal expenditure of our energy, the suffering that the being can cause, for example by being fertile or carnivorous, is not involved. How many of us would press the pain relief button for a creature?
Empathy visibly ceases to work at greater distances, for beings whose suffering is not obvious to us, or when our own needs collide with the needs of the suffering system. Sociopathy is a phenomenon whose manifestation is a reduction in the overall level of empathy shown. It is an acquired trait, not congenital (although, as with many other psychological phenomena, inborn predispositions and external factors are likely to have a crucial influence). Sociopathy in terms of its reduced sensitivity is not a phenomenon of a nature opposite to the default state, on the contrary, in objective terms, the level of empathy in humans is structured on a spectrum where people seem to be highly sensitive at one end and sociopaths at the other. In fact, it is not uncommon for people who are implicitly highly sensitive to realize the amount of suffering of other beings and their powerlessness over it, developing tendencies that are perceived as sociopathic. Hardly anyone likes to be perceived in terms of a low-sensitivity person, and even fewer people think of themselves this way. The fact is, however, that most people can more easily be portrayed as insensitive, often incapable of being sensitive in certain situations. How much of the world’s suffering could be reduced if each person devoted more, most often any part of their energy, to actively seeking to improve the state of life in third world countries, to care for the fate of animals, or to stop the barbaric practice of modifying genitals or testing cosmetics on animals, skinning still live animals, or running concentration camps in countries ruled by dictators and regimes. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regime )
Not taking a stand in the face of the obvious enormity of suffering is not neutrality, accepting the default state results in the continued existence and functioning of the system, without the possibility of changing it. Failure to take sides in practice leads to the jamming of ideas that, if widespread, could stop suffering on a scale that has not happened before, by far the greatest ethical revolution is, and perhaps will be, a long way to go.
1.2 Suffering-focused ethics
“Suffering-focused ethics are those positions in ethics that give moral priority to the reduction of suffering. This means that they give greater weight to the reduction of suffering than to the promotion of pleasure, happiness, or to other things that one might consider valuable. According to some suffering-focused ethics, we should concentrate exclusively on reducing preventable suffering. Other views can include additional features as the prevention of other disvalues or the promotion of other positive values while giving priority to reducing preventable suffering over them.”
Negative consequentialism seems to be the most widespread type of SFE.
Consequentialism is a moral view, an ethical system that states that actions should be considered through the prism of their effects (consequences). Negative consequentialism focuses primarily or exclusively on the negative aspects of life, prioritizing the minimization of suffering and its prevention, which differs from classical consequentialism, which places the maximization of good and pleasure as the highest value. Negative utilitarianism is the best-known subdivision of negative consequentialism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_consequentialism https://www.animal-ethics.org/ethics-animals-section/ethical-theories-nonhuman-animals/negative-consequentialism/
When trying to develop ethics focused on suffering, the obvious, but for some reason overlooked observation, is immediately apparent, namely that only beings that physically exist can suffer. It is not a reason in itself to kill beings that are already alive, though Probably such an interpretation will be found on both sides—both supporters and opponents of the idea.
In fact, a similar view of ethics shows that we can treat any or nearly every aspect of life in negative terms. The evolutionary, therefore implicit, goal of life to which our anatomy, physiology, and psyche are basically adapted is not and never has been to make the carriers of a selfish gene happy and fulfilled. The only purpose is to pass the genes on. This fundamental goal necessitates the existence of instrumental goals whose task is to keep the system alive and bring it into a relatively good situation where it can reproduce. Indeed, all urges and desires, all conceivable will manifestations of any animal mind are the results of this underlying end. Subjectively, this goal manifests itself more simply, without creating a self-consistent system of goals, being limited to the desires to meet the needs in those aspects in which the animal feels a lack. The need to find food, water, to be fulfilled as an animal parent are not positive needs, their fulfillment does not result in an improvement in the generally positive, fulfilled state of the living system. A much simpler and in fact more evolutionarily profitable way of motivating a gene carrier to take care of itself is to keep it in a state of constant unfulfilled, thus requiring continual action to improve the situation. The quenching of thirst does not cause any animal to sublime ecstasy, fed beings do not dissolve in all-embracing happiness, and during periods of prosperity, they cannot afford to be idle contemplatively, immersing themselves in their pleasant state. The default state of any biological entity has never been prolonged pleasure, it is a completely unprofitable strategy. It is not the satisfaction of thirst that causes a long-lasting pleasant feeling, the unsatisfied person systematically lowers the quality of life of a thirsty or hungry individual, forcing him to seek food and water, for which the reward is only a return to the default state, giving a sense of relief. It is not a lack of disease that causes happiness and peace, it is a disease that causes unhappiness and anxiety, an obvious example of suffering. Happiness and peace are possible in a relatively short time after the distress factor has subsided as a feeling of relief. Relief and consolation are, in fact, the best feelings experienced in the life of probably the vast majority of animals capable of practical sensation. In the psyche of the most intellectually advanced animals, there is a belief in their own mortality, while again the default is the subjective endlessness of one’s own life, improving one’s situation and making it stable. In humans, the awareness of death has in fact led to its negation, creating visions of life after death in heaven or hell, and although the annihilationist approach to death is not a new invention, it remains in the shadow of the vision of eternal life as the basis of religion to this day. Most atheists present the view that death is annihilation.
The awareness of death, and therefore the reflection that life has no metaphysical meaning for infinite time, but any “ultimate” meaning and purpose in which the individual would be realized, are frustrated by the irreversible necessity to experience death, eternal non-existence. In recent centuries, various forms of nihilism, existentialism, and absurdism have gained popularity, propagated by such appreciated artists as Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, Philipp Mainländer, Peter Wessel Zapffe, Albert Camus, thousands of less appreciated and probably similarly reflective and talented people as well as those for whom the possibilities of creating never opened up despite their potentially very fruitful minds. Philosophical pessimism, therefore, beliefs contrary to philosophical optimism, generally tending to the claim that life is NOT okay, as it is repeated many times in the “conspiracy against the human race” by Thomas Ligotti, does not mean, however, the need to fall into an existential depression. The logically necessary absence of absolute free will in no way shows us the direction in which our desires should go, in their basal set they are in fact independent of us. In practice, however, it is impossible to act as if one could not act freely, the impression or illusion of free will is as difficult to reject as the rejection of the belief that one is one and coherent “person”, but our thinking is based on both of these concepts about the world. The whole can be concluded with an essentially absurd “do anything” advice, circling philosophy and returning to the default state, with an answer that must satisfy everyone and not anyone.
In fact, all we can do is do what we want. In a way, it will do itself. Any of our efforts to improve the quality of life of any creature other than ourselves, in fact, serve to satisfy our own needs. Most of us don’t need to think about and minimize the suffering of geographically or emotionally distant creatures. Total altruism, in the sense of total, absolute altruism, is a state of practice unattainable by any desirable being. In fact, it is also impossible in theory, since the desire to help whatever is the reason for that help, the practical goal is to satisfy the desire. However, I consider that at this point as technical comments. To avoid any misunderstanding, it must be said that altruism and selfishness understood in this way are meaningless in terms of practical application. Thus, selfishness is an action aimed at improving one’s own situation at the expense of the obvious suffering of other beings, while altruistic action will be aimed at improving the state of existence of other (human and non-human) animals.
The most universal determinant of what ethically should be done to make the world a place with less suffering is in fact focusing on this suffering. Prolonged suffering, from persistent inconvenience and obstruction of fulfillment to unworthy abuse of humans and thoughtlessly contributing to the torture of other animals, is what is caused far more often than contributing to the intense development and cessation of mental, physical, and existential pain for all direct and indirect ways. Realizing that achieving happiness as a state of complete and lasting satisfaction with life, or alternatively as a state of complete and lasting fulfillment of all desires, is either impossible or extremely improbable in practice has the potential to help focus your attention on the suffering that can be prevented. Human striving for an imaginary perfect state is vain, and getting closer to the dream life is difficult, very often impossible in the socio-economic situation of most people. Just as we would consider it unworthy to maintain a world in which billions of slaves have to abandon their childhood dreams by brainwashing them until the greatest imaginable desire becomes a double ration of water, the same kind of immorality is to be faced with a world with billions of dream lives. reaching stars who are either brutally trampled by reality or, more often, slowly fade away, giving way to more “down-to-earth” goals such as setting aside enough money to the house or support another child. Another man whose existence in this world will add to him a dozen units of his own suffering and cause, wishing to realize scraps of desires, several thousand units of suffering for other beings, primarily citizens of China, the third world, farm animals, and future generations having to deal with the consequences destabilized climate.
Human striving to fulfill our own desires is the fundamental source of an enormous amount of suffering throughout the ages of our existence. Probably no species is and has never been, without even being close to such a possibility, responsible for such an overwhelming amount of suffering for which man is responsible, and above all the most numerous of humans, Homo sapiens, with civilizations reaching twelve thousand years ago. No other animal has become the cause of systematic cruelty in many times and cultures. Mutilating animals, murdering entire tribes, leaving behind dead mothers with ripped bellies, psychologically terrorizing children, families, and societies, or using ever more sophisticated torture to spread one’s ideology, or for no purpose, are just some, not even the most glaring consequences of human rule. . The world today, not because of the prevalence of such hellish situations, but because of the number of people themselves and the harsh treatment of animals, is probably a place with much more total suffering than the world of the ancients.
According to Worldometer, “Global population has reached 7 billion on October 31, 2011, and is projected to reach 8 billion in 2023, 9 billion in 2037, and 10 billion people in the year 2055. Is currently (2020) growing at a rate of around 1.05% per year, adding 81 million people per year to the total. ” During our entire 80-year life, including sleep time, our brain experiences “only” 2.5 billion seconds. It is not even a quarter of the number of humans who will exist in the world in a few years, and only a fraction of the number of all animals beyond the world, of which farm animals dominate among warm-blooded animals. The population of animals bred only for their meat, labor and secretions to meet the exaggerated needs of the average inhabitant of relatively wealthy nations is many times the number of people on the planet.
1.3 Anti-natalism
Anti-natalism has spread over the past centuries and is spreading further. The most famous eulogist of anti-natalism seems to be currently Professor David Benatar, author of the book “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence”.
Anti-natalism notices that there is an asymmetry in life between its positive and negative elements, there is no or very rare state of long-term bliss or fulfillment, much more easily achievable, and more frequent chronic pain and long-term dissatisfaction. The human ability to adapt to deficiencies and the ability to derive relative satisfaction from life does not change the fact that the state of life of most or all beings is far from the desired, desired ideal. Anti-natalists openly argue that even though life may seem like a miraculous experience, there is no one deprived of the experience before it begins, so it is not wrong not to create a person or being with the potential to experience miraculous pleasures and overall satisfaction. No one laments the heavenly pleasures which the billions of inhabitants of uninhabited planets cannot feel. It is not even commonly believed that it is morally wrong not to create someone who can experience exorbitant pleasure or complete fulfillment. What about a reality in which such purely positive states are perhaps completely unattainable. It is a different story to create a life that, with a high degree of certainty, would be unimaginable, suffering hellishly, only to eventually perish. Anti-natalists argue that life is more of a difficult and inconvenient life than an implicitly wonderful experience. This philanthropic argument assigns a negative value to birth for the sake of the necessary future suffering and death, which will be inseparable from the life of a future human or other animal. The best “gift” that can be given to future descendants is not to create them.
This solution turns out to be best for the environment in which already born people will have to spend the future, as well as for other existing people and other animals, in particular potential creatures whose flesh and secretions would have to feed new people. Misanthropic argumentation draws attention to the amount of suffering caused by the average person. In addition to disease, disappointment, trauma, pain, sadness, terror, and the enormous amount of stress experienced in a lifetime, the average person will cause illness, pain, fear, sadness, and stress many times more than he will experience himself. The mere suffering of non-human animals resulting from a meat diet is arguably a source of more pain than any human has ever experienced. The physical pain and stress of tens of thousands of animals are many times greater than the pain inflicted in the Holocaust of the Jews or any other genocide.
The vast majority of having children can be viewed as purely selfish or as the fulfillment of instrumental goals. It is unrealistic to create a child, or any new being, for its good. Bringing him into the world can in no way be a positive event for him, because before conception, due to the lack of desires, there is no negative state from which he should be transferred to a better state. Life is no better state than non-existence before conception/development of consciousness. On the contrary, life is a harm to the newborn, harm after it has come about, harm to which nature is forced to get used to and accept it, regardless of its potential and realized horrors. The vocation to life is too often realized without reflection or with a minimal level of reflection. There are approximately 107,000 orphans in the world. In some regions of the world, this figure accounts for 11.9% of children. A relatively small but growing number of people had the thought that creating life could be viewed in moral terms. Willingness to have a “full” family, ensuring the future of the name, fulfilling a parental obligation or the desire to fulfill oneself as a father/mother, all these situations put one’s own good, the satisfaction of one’s own needs in the first place. A child only serves to fulfill instrumental needs, such as communicating the future of the company or providing siblings to the first children. Parents and prospective parents do not realize that there is no logical way to make a child happy by giving birth to him. What is almost certain is a lifelong state of more or less deprivation, the potential suffering, and stress of everyday life, the possibility of experiencing suffering so intense that most people, choosing their or a poor, subjectively unhappy life again, would choose an unhappy life. It is also certain that the emergence of another human being is inextricably linked to the suffering it causes, the deepening of inequalities, the exploitation of people in developing countries and regimes such as China, pollution of the environment resulting in the suffering of animals, including humans, as well as the probably unreliable amount of suffering caused by through the process of mass breeding and slaughter allowing the eating of meat and animal products.
‘Who can know how many people or living beings he or she will have killed without knowing it in the course of a lifetime? Without knowing it at all or without knowing it consciously, all the while knowing it unconsciously?’ - Derrida
The negative value of birth is, as a rule, not limited to humans, but to all other animals. The ultimate anti-natalism (partial anti-natalism is possible, e.g., that we should only limit the number of entities we create) that the goal is the voluntary extinction of humans and, possibly, other animals. Emphasizing the purpose of all life extinction is the focus of efilism.
1.4 Abortion and sterilization
By definition, anti-natalism assigns a negative value to birth, but in practice, it is to assign a negative value to conception, the initiation of a process of events that will result in a feeling, in the case of humans, a highly self-aware being. The subject of abortion is treated differently by individual anti-natalists, but usually without controversy on early abortion issues before the fetus develops functional pain sensation.
From the perspective of ethics focused on suffering, much more far-reaching conclusions can be drawn. Killing a being incapable of suffering is a basically neutral procedure as long as it does not cause much suffering to other beings. Such an action is to abort before feeling develops. However, even after the ability to sense pain has developed, killing the fetus seems justified, advisable, or necessary if our goal is to prevent suffering in the long term. The mere potential for a future human or other animal to experience immense pain or cause immense pain is sufficient from the perspective of negative consequentialism, and the only reason why the possibly painless killing of a fetus would be justified. If we consider that it is acceptable for a young or adult chimpanzee to be put to sleep, we should set a similar limit for humans. in this case, the lulling of a (say) three-year-old child should be treated in similar terms. It is not a belittling of the intelligence of animals that are so close to us, but a proposal to set an agreed boundary. For practical reasons, this limit should be such that only children are relatively unconscious, at the lowest possible level of development. The moment when the personality develops, and above all the awareness of death and (perhaps) the fear of death could be a moment of key importance. The almost complete lack of knowledge does not allow me to make a specific proposal (the example of 3 years and a chimpanzee is not to be treated like this, apes are aware of their mortality anyway), but it does not put this limit at the time of delivery and afterward, possibly before the period of intensive cognitive development of the child until the conscious will to live through decades of life associated with the development of forward-thinking ability on such timescales begins to develop.
The availability and awareness of sterilization options and a wide range of contraception is another aspect of anti-natalist tendencies and the hope of reducing the number of new creatures.
1.5 Veganism and artificial meat
In fact, the suffering of the livestock themselves is many times greater than the suffering experienced by humans. The systematic holocaust (lower case is the word for mass extermination, capital is used to denote the genocide of the Jews during the Third Reich) of sentient beings all the time as civilization progresses, gaining in intensity as the world’s population grows. Creating more suffering creatures is the fundamental source of all suffering, the short and terror-filled lives of hapless descendants of wild boars, aurochs, mouflons, or chickens, banks are the greatest reservoir of unhappiness and pain on the planet, whatever rational conversion factor we take for our highest self-awareness.
Veganism, and above all promoting it, is a way to minimize this suffering. Replacing natural meat with artificial ones, grown in laboratories, should be an even more intense effort, probably sooner or later it will revolutionize the meat market, but it is up to us to speed up the process. We can hope that our generations will be the last to experience the massive exploitation, torture, and reproduction of farm animals.
1.7 Wild-animal suffering. Ecosystems destruction.
The issue of wild-animal suffering is not even considered a serious question by many. In fact, it can be the deepest abyss full of pain and misery.
Brian Tomasik had created an amazing site to describe that problem. Because of it, I’ll skip this part here. The lecture of “Essays on Reducing Suffering” takes hours and is a source of rare and unusual data.
https://reducing-suffering.org/
1.7 Right to Die, Transhumanism, Promortalism, Efilism, and visions of cosmic initiatives to prevent suffering.
The right to life is recognized as a fundamental right of every human being. It does not apply to non-human animals, and there is no real hope of law against the killing of animals. Even after the spread of artificial meat, the legal situation of the farmed mammals and birds themselves will probably remain in a dire situation, although it will probably improve, perhaps significantly. The right to die in several countries takes the form of the possibility of taking advantage of a painless death through euthanasia or assisted suicide. The number of suicides among the populations of relatively highly developed countries is growing and there is no indication that this trend is reversing. Younger generations developing in countries with the highest level of technological development approach death in a different way than before, treating it more like something that does not have to be a tragic event, more and more often as a better fate than other futures. Providing people with dignified, pain-free conditions to enable them to make decisions about their own life and death is essential. Suicide must not be a social taboo, nor can it be stigmatized. Everyone should have the right to die painlessly.
Transhumanism is an intellectual, cultural, and political movement that postulates the possibility and need to use science and technology, in particular neurotechnology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology, to overcome human limitations and improve the human condition ( https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/transhumanism ). Transhumanism is ideologically closer to philosophical pessimism than to optimism, for it assumes that our present state of life is far from ideal, even far from a state that can be considered desirable. Transhumanism sets itself the goal of development, the achievement of a posthuman civilization in which suffering will not have to be a state of necessity to experience, but not a default. In the overall view of transhumanism, it is ethically imperative that everyone has the opportunity to improve and be free from suffering. Disseminating the idea of transhumanism seems as important or almost as important as promoting veganism and anti-natalism, especially if the probable future of humanity is not voluntary extinction. A posthuman society especially focused on minimizing suffering and not practicing the creation of new conscious or sentient beings, maybe an acceptable outcome of the development of civilization, although not devoid of large-scale threats to potential sentient beings.
The limitations of having bodies developed in this way are the source of suffering and limitations of successive orders. As the first biological being, man has the chance to free himself from the limitations of the body, narrow senses, as well as limitations imposed by the level of intelligence and the physiological functioning of the mind. Man gradually moves away from other animals and this process has happened and is happening faster and faster, only a global catastrophe (as a sudden or relatively sudden change or a series of changes) resulting in the extinction of mankind has a real chance to end this process, otherwise, even subsequent apocalypses would only slow down a reversal of this trend, which seems inevitable on a cosmic scale. Sooner or later, humanity is transforming, abandoning the limitations imposed on it by anatomy and physiology. If this involves limiting and preventing suffering, it is better to do so as early as possible.
The dangers of transhumanism are a special focus, as are the dangers of superintelligence. By threats, I mean only situations and actions that lead to greater suffering/failure to prevent preventable suffering and not objections to human dignity or identity. The same objections are a very important element in the discussion of superintelligence, which we must expect to emerge in one way or another. AI threats are described in detail in Nick Bostrom’s book “Superintelligence; Scenarios, Strategies, Threats”. At this point, I will focus mainly on visions in which superintelligence implements the described methods of minimizing suffering, and some of the most important threats directly related to the presented scenarios. Particularly in visions of global cosmic suffering-reduction initiatives, “humanity” may well be understood as a world-controlling superintelligence, both artificial and possibly neuromorphic, developed from the brain. or even a particular mind with intelligence beyond the collective intelligence of the rest of humanity.
Promortalism seems to have been most widely propagated by Jiwoon Hwang, an anti-natalist and vegan activist. In an article published on the blog entitled “Why it is always better to cease to exist (pro-mortalism, promortalism)”—http://jiwoonhwang.org/pro-mortalism/ he argues that for an individual, ceasing to exist always means losing the possibility of experiencing future suffering and deficiencies, which is the desired state, even if in this way opportunities for relative enjoyment and fulfillment are also lost. This seemingly bold concept was perhaps one of the reasons for his suicide in 2018, at the age of 23.
Indeed, the consideration of human mortality and its absolute inevitability, the ultimate necessity of total annihilation, has led many well-known and lesser-known philosophers as well as ordinary people to draw similar conclusions and take them seriously, even if the overwhelming majority of them have been rejected for practical reasons. It is difficult to say how many potential pro-mortalist philosophers throughout history have deprived themselves of the future in, according to promortalism, the ultimate act of selfishness, which is to take a potential future from themselves. Even the superintelligence and digital minds of future posthuman civilizations will have to experience death. Even if life were to last for quadrillions of subjective years, or if it were to be absolutely endless, there would always be a non-zero chance of death, nor is the number of experiences that can be felt is objectively infinite. Promortalism claims that death is always a positive phenomenon for the individual, because the creature will no longer feel suffering, and will also be 100% surely deprived of the possibility of feeling almost infinite suffering, for example, caused by a sadistic superintelligence. Death is salvation from everything, and if we consider existence in terms of universal deficiency and non-fulfillment, it is the most positive thing that can happen, that is, technically end it happening. Not an event, but the end of events. Death is positive not in the sense of the process of dying, often filled with excruciating pain and terrorizing fear, often a long process. Death as non-existence is the “best” state and is described here in that sense. The sooner an entity ceases to exist, the greater the amount of potential, including unlikely cosmic suffering it will be saved.
However, Jiwoon Hwang, as probably most promortalists, believed that taking life actively was unethical. He seemed to recognize that perhaps in certain situations, one should not help people/beings whose lives would cause more suffering than not having it. From the point of view of pure utilitarianism, or simply negative consequentialism aimed solely at minimizing suffering, however, killing some entities is profitable (causes less suffering) and seems even ethically necessary. Different versions of the car’s dilemma and the red button dilemma affect this broad spectrum of behaviors and beliefs. The carriage dilemma presents us with a choice that will result in the death of a or b, where under a and b there are different numbers and types of sentient beings. Save a chimpanzee family or a homeless person, brother or 10 strangers, vegan or omnivores, through passive or active actions. More abstract versions could ask questions about saving a million people or increasing humanity’s chances of survival by 1%. The red button dilemma raises the question of whether if pressing one button painlessly kills all existence it should be done. What if it came at the cost of a minute of pain? If the alternative were one percent of the chances of near-infinite suffering in the future of space, would it be a legitimate choice?
It has no chance and is not likely to incite self-proclaimed executions or orchestrated genocides and terrorist attacks. Only superintelligence would have the real possibility of the completely painless killing of a huge number of beings. All the effects of a person’s death must be taken into account, which can entail much more suffering and long-term effects unpredictable without super-intelligence. Promortalism can also be a manifestation of altruistic views. given that the average person causes more suffering with his life than he prevents, perhaps even than he is usually able to prevent, suicide or killing some people would ultimately reduce the suffering of other entities. Self-suicide for altruistic reasons is perhaps better than most types of life in the ultimate minimization of suffering, but it is not the best way to contribute to reducing suffering. Actively contributing to the fight against inequality, the exploitation and the creation of new life, as well as the pursuit of ultimately cosmic visions of minimizing suffering, even if our chances of doing so are very slim, may be a sufficient altruistic reason to continue with existence. All the time, however, suicide, preferably painlessly, becomes the preferred option in the event of terminal illness, disability or senile infirmity. The very fact of the non-existence of legal euthanasia, not only universally available but accessible to people unable to kill themselves, however, shows how distant a similar idea was until recently.
Efilism recognizes that the most ethical and desirable action is to exterminate all humanity, all sentient beings, and more broadly, all life with the potential to develop feeling and sterilize or destroy the earth so that life does not develop again on it. The gradual extinction of humanity and ecosystems may seem to be the most desirable way. In English terminology, the terms Omnicide as the suicide of the entire civilization and Ekocide as the erasure of the entire biosphere are found. Both civilization’s suicide and the wiping out of the entire biosphere’s life could be painlessly implemented by a superintelligence, for example by spreading swarms of nanobots across the ground. Killing most or nearly all of your sentient life in a synchronized manner should be a perfectly feasible task. Such a goal could be written as a fundamental goal of superintelligence as well as achieved by it itself if its goal was to prevent suffering.
We must think and act globally, this is the only way to achieve lasting long-term results by focusing global goals on the idea of minimizing and preventing suffering. However, this is only half the way. We must think globally, but we must not allow ourselves to stay only on a global scale. No matter how much anti-natalism and its allies spread, the chances of humanity’s complete extinction are slim. They’re not zero, of course, but they’re not overwhelming. Even the realization that the extinction of all life would deprive the Earth of the ability to feel suffering cannot lead us to extinguish or annihilate all life without taking further steps. Technology and superintelligence can not only painlessly and without misfortune wipe out life on Earth, however abstract it sounds to us, no less a moral obligation within the framework of the systems described is to spread to space on such a scale as it is possible, e.g. by means of self-replicating probes endowed with superintelligence and prevent the development of life on planets and moons capable of it. The extinction of life on existing planets is feasible for superintelligence, the creation of swarms of non-sentient negative states of existence painlessly extinguishing the life of encountered biospheres is a vision that seems feasible. We need to think on a cosmic scale, only in this way can we contribute to minimizing suffering on a scale larger than our planet or the colonized part of the system.
Probably the biggest objection in such a scenario would be the necessity to annihilate existing societies and civilizations, possibly resulting in wars of superintelligence. However, I cannot imagine an advanced civilization in which similar ideas about the minimization of suffering would not be present, the superintelligence, assuming that it is right, will adopt the way of achieving the goal that proves best, unhindered by convincing civilization to be right. It does not change the fact that this aspect is particularly difficult and should be discussed more fully separately. Perhaps the vision of efilism, when completely rewritten for the possibility of eternal existence, will make it not a problem after all.
The objective of this way of ending the adventure of life in space may be a transhumanist desire to create perfect worlds with minimum suffering and maximum happiness. Worlds in which every creature that is able to stay in them even for a moment would make every effort to be in such. Does not creating such a world and transferring all sentient beings there, perhaps even creating new ones, sound better than the idea of annihilating all life? Perhaps it is possible to create a world in which sentient beings would not have to basically follow a gradient of lack, lack of fulfillment, and suffering, seeking to minimize suffering in such existence, but a gradient of pleasure without being able to feel such suffering at all? Whatever world we imagine, there always seems to be the possibility of suffering beings appearing in it or experiencing suffering by such beings. Even in a world driven by a pleasure gradient, beings with a basal suffering gradient can be re-created. I argue that the possibility of almost infinite, hellish suffering from just one being is not a sufficient reason to maintain the existence of a digital paradise in the form of a matryoshka brain or any other civilization utopia. Not only the minimization of suffering but the prevention of suffering, including potential (including potentially hellish, large-scale suffering) should be the goal of ethics focused on it. A better solution, then, is the eternal annihilation of all life.
However, as can be seen, the reality seems to be more complicated and it seems impossible to achieve even for the most advanced superintelligence. Indeed, in an infinite universe, it seems impossible to annihilate any future of any sentient system.
1.8 Education
An outdated education system based on the tedious assimilation of unnecessary, non-digestible knowledge, which is a much more interesting and fuller version that can be found on your own in the times of the global Internet network, will not have a positive impact on society without teaching psychology in the first place, apart from science, sociology, economics, and ethics, as well as in the practice of a universal language at a level that allows fluent communication. Transferring learning to a universal, open-access platform led by experts in the field of information assimilation would increase the education of society and adapt the curriculum, method, and scope of teaching to individual expectations, possibilities, and aspirations.
1.9 A policy focused on suffering
Recognition by governments of the fundamental causes of suffering and action to prevent the suffering of citizens, humanity, and all sentient creatures requires, in addition to changing the mentality of the non-marginal minority of society, also reaching power capable of being found in the practical politics of visionaries. A policy of coercion and restraint has a much lower chance of success than educating the public. The fraction of utilitarians advocating violent actions must be aware of their long-term inefficiency and therefore general unprofitability. This does not mean that the actions taken by governments should not be radical. The most important and appropriate action should be broad-scale and universal education of the society. It cannot be propaganda, information cannot be edited, limited, or communicated in a biased way. Any real or practical vision will defend itself with pure facts. In practice, radical changes should ultimately include, in addition to universal, free access to knowledge, the advancement of science and technological solutions as the main state-funded sector, including the development of medicine and psychology. Natural meat should be replaced with laboratory meat, ending the use of animals on a massive scale. Publicly funded euthanasia, sterilization, and abortion, as well as psychological efforts to provide people with fulfillment in a way that does not involve increasing the number of beings, should become commonplace. Ultimately, making people fulfilled by achieving transhumanism. The development of humanity during and after this period, especially in the classical vision of the development of superintelligence, is impossible to predict. If the postulated worldview trend, which is philosophical and existential pessimism, turns out to be universal for the descendants of humanity or future superintelligence, it can be expected that all available means will be implemented in the most efficient way to achieve the set goal.
2. Multiverse Immortality. Why if modal realism is true and minds are patterns of information nobody may be able to ever die.
2.1 If the universe is infinite, there are infinite copies of each mind in all its versions.
The idea of a temporally or spatially finite universe, understood as all that exists, implies that it must have arisen sometime, so that before its existence, and therefore its very existence, there was nothing. It would have to be perfect nothing, absolute nothingness, the complete absence of everything, no laws of logic, no mathematics, no causative powers. Not a void, nor very empty any dimensional space with any potential for cosmic transformation. I maintain that the “existence” of only non-existence in the form described (or if you prefer, non-existence of existence), the existence of absolute non-existence (non-existence of absolutely everything) giving rise to being, seems to be logically doubtful.
We know that our universe had what we define as a beginning, that is, a point where we cannot reach any further back in time. This is not to say that existence itself had a beginning, just that our universe had what we call it. Going further, can the most commonly understood end, heat death, safely be considered the end of existence? Even when stars stop forming, black holes will evaporate due to Hawking radiation, all matter will degenerate through possible proton decay, and virtual particles will continue to form in indestructible space-time. Still, as a result of random quantum fluctuations, Boltzmann brains will be created with very little likelihood (the estimated time for the Boltzmann brain to arise is 10 ^ {10 ^ {50}} years from now, that is, long after all matter has degenerated). Eventually, the next big bang could happen in 10 ^ {10 ^ {10 ^ {56}}} years, starting another cycle of the universe. Thus the existing universe would be infinite, eternal, each successive universe possibly different in some way from the preceding one by slight variations in the initial singularity within the boundaries of the string theory landscape.
It is even easier to achieve the infinity of the universe by accepting the existence of the multiverse. Tegmark hierarchizes the multiverses in the following order. Type 1 multiverse are areas of our universe outside our visible universe, Tegmark estimates that a Hubble volume identical to ours is about 10 ^ 10 ^ 115 meters from us. Type two multiverse are universes parallel to other laws of physics contained in the landscape of string theory. Most of them cannot contain even the simplest chemical relationships, let alone stars or brains. We usually mean such a multiverse when we think of a multiverse. The next level 3 is the Everett multiverse, so one in which all future scenarios of any system occur, everything exists in a kind of superposition of all possible states, since no physically permissible scenario can be eliminated. Each future and each past is therefore equally (100%) real, but not all equally probable. Everett’s universe stems from a multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics.
The last Tegmark postulated maximum world is all existence as a set of mathematical structures, Tegmark advances his own hypothesis that our universe, like everything else, exists as a mathematical structure in which we are substructures. However, to attribute a high probability to the hypothesis presented here, it is not necessary to assume the existence of a mathematical universe as a fact, in the end, I think that it is not necessary to accept either the Everett universe, or the multiverse composed of universes parallel to us, or our spatially infinite universe. After all, it is not even necessary that each of the next cyclic universes be slightly different from the previous one, although their variability would greatly increase the probability of the hypothesis. In the extreme case, it can be true even if the universe is finite and will cease to exist in the future, absolutely forever (* if the AI found that keeping minds alive in the best possible world is better than sterilizing the universe despite the eventual necessary annihilation.)
A very large universe is enough for everything we can imagine to happen in it. Not breaking the laws of physics in any way.
With an infinite universe at your disposal, every situation, every mind, and every being will happen. It happened and it does. Not once, but in an infinite amount. This means the infinity of singing worms, the infinity of the Avatar planets, the infinity of everything. One infinity is greater than the other, just as the infinity of numbers between 0 and 1 / 1,000,000 is “smaller” than the infinity of natural numbers. Therefore, it does not mean that there are as many worms as there are fewer abstract entities, there are fewer, many times less, but still infinity (comparing the number of entities in an infinite universe makes more sense, or at least it is more understandable if we consider some, preferably very large, the volume of the universe, instead of its infinite whole, using the term “measure”). No scenario of existence is avoidable, the probability of everything physically possible is greater than zero, and even situations with an infinitesimally low probability happen an infinite number of times. It can be imagined that, in a second type multiverse, a universe like ours exists as one in xxxxxx universes, a universe similar to ours having at the moment any civilization composed of beings whose sole purpose is to paint as many surreal images as possible and compose as many as possible. the amount of synthetic music is one in a trillion similar universes or one in the original xxx worlds, and the worm universe is one in a quadrillion of our universes or one in the original xxx. There are more than the other, they occur more often, there is a greater probability that by searching randomly you will find one than the other, but all of them are infinite.
You can exist in an infinite universe in several ways. It can arise naturally, spontaneously. Boltzmann brains, or even entire worlds that arise as a result of quantum fluctuations and exist long enough for intelligence to arise in them, can be held as fractions of a second. Worlds where complete randomness gives a perfect impression of the immutable laws of physics. Even worlds in which all beings are absolutely convinced that zero is one and they do not exist are perfect non-existence, worlds in which minds are denied the ability to develop or discover logic by the very infinitely improbable nature of their world. The existence of such a world is infinitely improbable. However, it is not nil. I am not trying to convince you that such a world could exist. If we accept an infinite universe with the laws of physics known to us, then such a world exists. There is an infinite number of variants. If our universe were extremely rare, it would even be possible that there are more worlds existing as randomly coherent fluctuations than the actual results of the operation of our physical constants.
Everything happens in an infinite universe. It is impossible to avoid the existence of Everything.
2.2 Subjective Immortality
Let us imagine that after death we do not fall apart in nothingness, our consciousness does not annihilate, and we ourselves do not begin to create an unbreakable and indistinguishable unity with non-being forever. What would that mean? Whether it would be beautiful or on the contrary, it would be the most frightening aspect of our existence, making us eternal, immortal, and indelible beings, destined to live and feel until the end of time, that is, we would absolutely never return to non-existence from which we seem to come
This concept, known as quantum immortality, big world immortality, or more generally multiverse immortality, has already been presented many times and a fierce discussion arose around it. The core of the concept is the observation that in an infinite universe each observing moment has many possibilities to transform into the next, and subjectively the mind can only feel the moments in which it is self-aware, which self-awareness can literally be taken as an absolute condition or synonym for it. existence. In the infinite multiverse there is not a single moment that does not have a fan or even a small set of moments to follow, and since we can never experience non-existence, the state of non-existence will never be experienced by any mind, so subjectively each of us will exist forever, perfectly always, without the perspective of the annihilation of feeling, without the possibility of feeling the exclusion of consciousness, which, apart from the emergence and volatility of our minds, preventing us from interpreting ourselves as the same identity that has guided past or future states, is clearly reduced to absolute subjective immortality.
On the basis of the observation that if every possibility is realized, then if every imaginable moment of feeling, a moment of conscious perception, however, or whatever, exists, after any death, after virtually any loss of consciousness, including coma, fainting, or deep sleep, and even falling asleep as such, we will continue to exist, probably in the most likely world. While in the case of sleep or loss of consciousness, we will most likely continue to exist in the way and form we know, death creates strange possibilities, and our future life is strongly determined by whether and what percentage of our minds exist in which simulations. In fact, we can treat every moment as waking up after an infinite amount of non-existence, thus immediately after the previous one. From a subjective perspective, it does not matter whether the next observation moment will occur in a second, in a year, a million or a trillion years, it does not matter that it exists in the past, from a subjective point of view, the moments form a continuum, so the time we perceive would not always have to cover with the time of the universe.
In light of the above contingencies, even ascribing a low probability to multiverse immortality, it seems very important how we will exist after death. Authors who deal with the subject at least briefly, draw various conclusions that either we will not be able to experience death and we will experience accidents, suicides, and euthanasia in a worse and worse condition, gradually becoming more and more degenerate beings. However, it is difficult to say how long such a slow and gradual disintegration of the body and consciousness could take, the question here arises whether the slowly fading consciousness is not exactly what we call and identify with death? Is there a non-contractual line between awareness and the lack of it? Is self-awareness a binary phenomenon, or, as it seems with the rest of the phenomena, ultimately emergent, thus devoid of any absolute boundary? Since observation moments are considered by us as a determinant of being, where are their limits, can you safely become insensitive?
I would argue that this is not possible. Perhaps there is an insurmountable boundary separating consciousness from unconsciousness, perhaps our consciousness is more likely to be felt the more advanced it is, and therefore we have no way of feeling that it ceases to exist. Every day, when we fall asleep, we lose consciousness, losing much of our feeling. How much is the subconscious part of our being and how much of a role does it play in self-conscious being? We are most fully aware of the fact that we have fallen asleep when we wake up, we identify ourselves more with ourselves before falling asleep than with our dream feelings. So in what form will, we exist after death, or what would our world be like if we suddenly or slowly died?
Slowly dying could turn into a dream, metaphorically an eternal dream in which our mind would exist as various dream simulations or Boltzmann brains, in an absurd world dreaming subconsciously in eternal lethargy. But wouldn’t any simulated or self-generated mind endowed with pre-death memories existing anywhere else be a better candidate for being us than eternal dreaming? What would the future of such a person look like, wouldn’t he or she jump relatively quickly to a more conscious state than a dream after death, like us awakening from a dream, 8 hours of which have passed into one? The presence of the mind in the form of a brain distinguishes between our hypothetical dead from us in sleep, but Boltzmann brains or any other sensation also need a mechanism on which consciousness can act.
So I do not think the probable option is to feel eternal sleep after death, I attribute a greater likelihood of finding ourselves in a subjective continuum more similar to our ordinarily conscious states. The more probable the state of the psyche following the moment of our loss, the greater the chance that we will feel it, and most often the states maximally similar to our previous ones have the highest probability.
Subjectively, therefore, after death, especially premature death, we will wake up in the hospital, perhaps in a terrifying state. The second option is to exist as a continuum of moments felt by Boltzmann’s brains, such an existence could be indistinguishable from ordinary, natural spontaneous existence, but more the probability of our continuum would be more abstract and inconsistent, which probably greatly reduces, but never to the brain, the probability of living as Boltzmann’s . So waking up in the primal simulation, or nested in another simulation, is another way to continue. Perhaps such existence, in order to remain similar to the original, would not be a sudden jump in consciousness, so also waking up as a different being, or rather a simulation, perhaps in all its strangeness, would be gradually realized by us.
With a large number of our minds being simulated, perhaps the most likely future is to wake up from our dreamlike lives, perhaps gradually, to avoid a sudden shift that destroys our personality by immediately changing it. Perhaps the gradient of consciousness increases so much that our life is a semi-conscious dream, perhaps this sudden moment of exiting or entering a simulation is the overwhelmingly most common, and therefore the most likely, observational moment following death, which, as indicated by near-experience experiences death does not have to be an apathetic extinction, but rather a psychedelic experience of the brain flooded with DMT. A soulful, paradise simulation as well as a terrifyingly hellish simulation, or an absurd, deliberately even random simulation or exit from any of them into the primal, transhumanist world, with the mind retrieving our temporarily forgotten memories of hundreds of lives while we sleep, would therefore most likely be the future of our feeling. An eternal feeling, from which it is impossible to escape and which cannot be broken, being possibly the most probable, therefore the most common and consistent result of our present, and in particular “last” observation moment.
In an infinite universe in which everything exists and every possibility happens, there is an infinite number of perfect copies of each mind, and an infinite number of alternative versions, imperfect copies, and utterly dissimilar stories of these similar minds. For a perfect copy to be made, must the entire visible universe be the same, the galaxy, the stellar neighborhood, the solar system, the entire history of the system must be identical to the history before someone’s birth? Does the whole history of life, atom by atom, molecule by molecule, have to roll out in a perfectly identical way for a copy of the being with the mind you are looking for to be born? In order for it to arise in the form in which it looks at the moon, each decision of its and its cosmic counterpart must be identical? Does every atom in everyone’s mind have to be in exactly the same place? Let us assume that this mind is the “I” of each of us, depending on the definition of “me”, it may differ in some way from its copy, or there may not be even an electron difference between us. But if a perfect copy of me requires each atom situated in exactly the same way, the question arises as to whether a perfect copy has a right to exist then. We will easily find, at a distance of xxx from me, a man whose mind, civilization, planet, and cosmic neighborhood are identical to mine, then we will find a visible universe exactly the same as mine, then perhaps the entire (if it is spatially finite) type one multiverse. Is such a copy a sufficiently exact copy of me? Since the still existing environment (no matter what kind of space with how many dimensions) differentiates us?
In that case, however, we are actually talking about not being the same, but the same. Is an identical atom or electron far apart in an intergalactic vacuum the same? No, they are the same though. Indistinguishable from each other if we only have them at our disposal. Determined by the same parameters.
So what does it take for a copy of me to exist? It should be indistinguishable from me. Identical to every atom? But does this mean that with every change in the arrangement of even one atom in my mind, I cease to be myself? Could I point out a difference between myself and a copy of me that is one billion atoms, just one neuron, a hundred, a billion out of a hundred billion neurons, but those that do not affect consciousness? To be able to answer this question, at the beginning we should define how we understand ourselves?
Quantum immortality states that if Many-worlds, Everettian interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is correct, It means every possible future will happen, including every possible future in which our body, with our mind and identity within, will live. Even if our brain dies in one of the branches of Everettian reality, there are in fact countless others (yet minority) where we are going to be still alive. QI basically tells us that we should expect to find ourselves only in that branches of reality in which we are still existing, and that feels like subjective immortality- it is subjective immortality.
Multiverse or Big World Immortality is a similar idea, You do not need an Everettian interpretation of QM though. If it is true that out there exist an Infinite Universe, for example like one described by Landscape of String Theory, or if Our Universe is Infinite in space or infinite in time, actually if the entire existence, Multi/Omni/Universe, no matter how to call it, is big enough to enclose in itself every possible state of matter, so every possible configuration of information, then Immortality works as well and it is impossible ever to “die”, in a sense to stop experiencing (if one can argue I, after some traumatic experiences or many decades of strange life would be no longer “me”)
The most important aspect I think is how do we understand Identity. Imagine the certain scenario. You exist peacefully in Your body and one day have a fatal accident. You have the luck that You live in the future when there is an option of mind uploading. You can have Your mind uploaded to a brand new body, manufactured especially for You. The whole procedure feels like being put asleep and waking up in new, artificial flesh. Is that still You? You definitely feel like You are still Yourself, have all memory, and a perfectly identical personality. Even if You don’t think it would be “the real You”, whatever one would like to interpret like that, it is rather certain the entity looking at the dead body would feel exactly like You would feel if Your spirit rapidly teleported to a new, silicon brain.
What I’m trying to underline by that probably too long and rather boring example is an observation, that our personal identity is a really controversial topic, and conversations about it full of I think important and relevant thought experiments. If Our Identity, consciousness, if all of our subjective experience of “personhood” can be brought down to information processing in which conscious and self-aware patterns emerge, it is of no importance if Your individual body actually exists, as long as there’s at least one copy of Your body in the Universe.
Thinking of an infinite universe, in such an all-world there are countless copies of every observer in every imaginable possible state. There is an infinite amount of exact copies of You in an identical state as You are now reading that comment. Which one of that copies You are now? All of Your copies are feeling exactly the same. You can say You are probably a random sample of all Your copies, but an equally reasonable idea would be to state, that a question I just asked is in any practical sense meaningless. If You can think of Yourself as of pattern in the information processing, You are not situated in any absolute objective spatial-temporary frame of reference. All Your copies are equally You because to be You the only thing You need is to feel like You. In that sense, It does not really matter how much information-processes identifying themselves as “You” exist in biological brains, how much in simulations, having only something that feels exactly like body but is not built of real matter. The view I’ve just described is called Unificationism and is in opposition to dualism. The first called also a copy-friendly theory of identity maintains that every copy of somebody is equally that somebody, being one body and being one million identical bodies feels exactly the same, because there is only one person, identically the same, in all that bodies. Dualism claim s there are one million people. It is extremely important that in that example we can think only of one perfectly identical, or at least 100% subjectively indistinguishable observer-moment, so a certain state of mind. As long as You and Your copies have subjectively identical sate of minds, You are one person.
It gets more complicated when You want to define what actually a person is and if something like a person actually exists, but I think It is not so important right here, It is enough to assume that a person is a subjectively coherent set of observer-moments with the same personality (style of thinking let’s say) and memory.
In that sense, How would You feel if You were actually just a minute old? You are a simulated mind, with Your memory and personality. Subjectively there would be no difference. If there would be a world, where one day some civilization would simulate all Your life in the Year 2020 (because in simulations we can achieve faster time than the real one), and then, the second day, all Your previous life and additionally, at the evening, 2021. How would it feel? Subjectively it would be indistinguishable from usual chronological life. Informationally it would be just that, a subjectively chronological existence. If the cosmos exists without any real-time, but In different places there are countless brains with frozen minds, everything should subjectively look exactly the same. I don’t argue here that time doesn’t exist (although according to all today’s physics it is an emergent property of something more fundamental), just that there is no possible way of distinguishing between described situations from within, from a perspective of the observer.
In that configuration, under such an interpretation of personal identity, If only there exist every possible state of every mind (modal realism- everything possible exists), there is always a future for every state of mind even if we don’t live in the Everettian universe. And because “we” emerge from patterns of information, and we are not local beings, but that patterns in information (like there is one song, only one song, but it can be played many times, one song in many copies, one person in many copies, both information patterns), it does not matter if our next copy exists in another galaxy or in another time, we will subjectively find ourselves as that alive copy. It works even in finite universes, as long as there is some possible subjective future at any time, in the whole of Existence.
Of course, if Your body is severely damaged You can feel the future only of that kind, which means You will feel for example 1.You fall unconscious and wake up in the future when Your cryonically-preserved dead body is resurrected as a healthy one 2. You find Yourself in an unfamiliar world, and gradually realize You’ve just played a game and You’ve died in one 3. You are simulated by some superintelligent entity, for example, the SI creates random people after their death, in huge quantity, so one of them feels exactly like You with memories of a lethally damaged body, but You don’t have that body anymore. 4. You cannot die even if Your body is not working, potentially sub-eternally tortured by the continuum of some very improbable but possible states of mind, 5,6, actually many many more
We can interpret “ourselves” as an impression. As a subjective, self-aware feeling existing at the moment. This definition avoids most of the controversy related to other definitions. We are not unchanging person, only an observation moment. The concept of the person ultimately seems to be just a more practical approximation of the continuum of mental states that we are. At no point can we be sure of our past because our present state of mind, the subjective self-conscious feeling of experiencing our entire past, is indistinguishable from a Boltzmann brain existing only in that one moment, or a simulation of our mind. Each of the above entities is subjectively IDENTICAL, and therefore they cannot subjectively distinguish themselves from each other or tell what the objective mind is the source of their consciousness. In practice, this means that we should see ourselves as the same “person”, the same being, because something subjectively the same is in practice the same impression, the same subjective observation moment, reproduced as it were by different neural or neural-like systems.
Identical copies of me are therefore myself, one impression in the infinite number of bodies, Boltzmann’s brains, and simulations that convey the impression that I am. Without any metaphysical aspects. This does not mean that objectively there is one spiritual self, only that subjectively the world will always appear as if there is only one self, no matter how many carriers indistinguishably similar to my consciousness are contained in the entire universe.
This means that we cannot state what kind of being (recreating our instantaneous system awareness) we are because it is logically impossible from a subjective point of view. In a subjective sense, we are everyone. Because each of our (our mind’s) perfect copies feels exactly the same. However, we can distribute the probabilities of what kind of consciousness carrier most often, and therefore most likely, contains us. Minds that feel us can exist as Boltzmann brains, most often considered the least probable way of existence, biological entities self-created and simulations, in all their forms, i.e. simulated Boltzmann brains, simulated spontaneous, simulated moments, simulated single minds without and with history, simulated actual societies with no history and entire simulated stories, as well as entire simulated universes …
In short, because I’m not sure how precise I have been:
In the sufficiently big universe, we can be sure there exist every possible arrangement of atoms. Assuming brains and similar structures (like artificial brains) are such arrangments, and they are sufficient to cause the emergence of “minds”—subjective observers, we can be sure there exists a perfect subjective (and also perfectly identical to the atomic level) copy of each of them. In fact, in the infinite universe (if the universe is spatially infinite, if the universe is cyclic or if the string theory prediction of the multiverse is assumed) we end up with an infinite amount of every matter arrangement, including brains with every state of mind.
It seems to be thinkable that the universe is infinite in some way, or that at least it contains a huge number of beings, maybe even every possible.
Defining what the mind really is is a question of crucial importance. Some conclude, that if we assume certain theories of mind, like computationalism or integrated information theory, or just assume subjective experience literally is an information processing, and every observer is a pattern of information processed in a certain way, death understood as annihilation could be impossible.
As long as there exists a state of mind having the same past (actually just the same present state because past exists subjectively in a form of memories- a mind with false memories created a second ago would be subjectively indistinguishable from older ones) and there are some states of that mind that will experience future, subjective existence of that mind will continue.
What I mean is that the same subjectively identical experience, a “person” (or other minds, in fact every arrangement of information) can find itself only in existing brains/physical systems, and there always exist some brains having the subjective experience of ones past that are going to experience some future.
It depends if You assume dualism (two identical brains are two different—yet subjectively identical- people) or unificationism (two identical brains are only one person, or, more precisely, they give rise to only one person, as long as they are identical)
If we assume unficationism, we can say that there exists only one specific pattern of information processing giving rise to some (in our situation conscious, self-aware, and relatively highly intelligent) mind. That pattern can exist in many brains, artificial brains, or even digital simulations.
If it were true, it could mean that death is subjectively not annihilation, it would be certain “you” are going to live, even if most of the brains where information processing created an impression of being you have died. We can speculate you would find yourself only in that bodies that are still alive, for example severely injured.
The question of simulating minds is of great importance because if there are many simulations, and a philosopher Nick Bostrom claims it could be the case, You can exist in a simulation and wake up in it after death.
The possibility of malevolent superintelligences torturing “resurrected” beings seems now even more frightening.
Some form of subjective immortality would include the existence of beings that cannot die and suffer a cosmic amount of pain.
I want to underline that I DON’T HOLD IT IS TRUE. I state, that IF there is even a slight logical possibility of that scenario being in some way real, it would imply several orders of magnitude more suffering in the universe than if death is annihilation. I think because of that it is important to rule out (or give a higher probability to) that possibility. {This is a copied post of mine from Reddit.}
3. Vestibules of paradise, Curing Sufferings via Indexical Uncertainty. How to redeem everyone if some form of Multiverse immortality is true.
The never-published hypothesis of the vestibules of paradise was originally conceived as a way to explain the purpose of civilization to create simulations. A brief account of the reasoning behind its invention would go something like this.
“3.1 Why is it logical to assume that the greatest number of our copies exist as simulations.
Nick Bostrom constructed his famous trilemma as follows: (1) no or almost no (100%) civilization has the ability to simulate, (2) civilizations have the ability to simulate other minds, but never do, and (3) civilizations have the ability to simulate simulating other minds and doing it. It showed that if there are civilizations that simulate other entities, most likely the number of these simulated entities exceeds the number of spontaneous entities many times over. Bostrom focused on creating and maintaining ancestral simulations, but the argument holds true if we set the goal of simulating any other that may be widely (or even very rarely, but result in a very large number of entities) valued by civilizations. Even if only a tiny fraction of all technological civilizations had achieved the capabilities to simulate other minds and/or even if only a fraction of them considered it desirable to create them, the computational possibilities of matter in practice seem unlimited
The computational possibilities of matter seem to be almost limitless. In one of the works on this subject, the final limit of computing power was set at 5.4258 * 10 ^ 50 operations per second for 1 kg of matter. It is estimated that 36.8 * 10 ^ 15 operations per second to simulate the human mind in real-time, currently, the largest supercomputers are capable of performance of 10 ^ 18 flops. To simulate 7 billion people in real-time, that’s 257.6 * 10 ^ 24. 4 × 10 ^ 48 operations per second are the estimated capabilities of the matryoshka brain surrounding the sun, the outermost brain of which operates at a temperature of 10 Kelvin. There is a greater difference between 10 ^ 24 and 10 ^ 48 than between the size of our bodies and the size of the observable universe.
Therefore, in the universe postulated by the followers of the simulation hypothesis, we face the aforementioned trilemma: either no civilization is able to simulate minds because it is impossible or because of enigmatic great civilization filters annihilating all, or none, or almost none, where almost no would have to be an infinitesimal part of civilization as a whole, civilization does not choose to simulate minds because of their unprofitability, immorality, or any other reason guiding their specific brains, or, the third option, civilizations can create and maintain simulations using unlimited computational power, and they do.
I do not consider as plausible a scenario in which no civilization manages to simulate minds, nothing physically seems to prevent either their creation or the reason why any civilization would not live to see this possibility. One could speculate that an extremely highly developed anti-simulation civilization would not allow this, but it would have to be a very common trend among civilizations throughout the universe.
Nor do I see any reason to stop civilizations from exercising their abilities when they already have such power, but I see many reasons why such an almost infinite scenario could be realized.
For this reason, I believe that a third, seemingly absurd and invariably exotic abstract, in my opinion, the logically most realistic concept, is overwhelmingly more likely, that our mind is simulated almost 100% of the time it exists.
In the first two cases, the probability that we live in a simulation is equal to or close to zero (in the infinite universe it is never equal unless simulating the mind would be impossible), otherwise the number of simulated entities, simulated sensations is most likely many orders of magnitude greater than these intrinsic, therefore the probability of being a simulation is approximately 100%. therefore almost 100% of the minds that feel my subjective moment of observation, that is, my instantaneous impression of being the whole of my emergent self, are simulated minds.
I do not take into account Boltzmann’s brains and the apparent, false physics of the infinitely improbable worlds of the Big World, which according to some estimates may exceed natural self-existent minds if almost 100% of this majority of the multiverse can produce them and our type universes are almost negligibly rare. It would only change that natural self-existence would not now be the second, least likely option, and the third, still the least likely.
3.2 What the goals of simulating minds might be.
Most likely, the species that makeup civilizations naturally possess a set of characteristics that largely characterize them all. These intelligence-linked traits such as compassion, curiosity, and ambition are clearly outlined in people’s minds. Treating humanity as a representative civilization, it is possible to consider what purposes simulated minds or entire simulated worlds would serve.
Depending on the advancement of civilization and technological possibilities, one can wonder what types of simulations would most often and in the greatest number be created by people, transhumans—transformed triumphants of transhumanism, or posthuman, maybe post-biological creatures, as well as various types of Si, both neuromorphic and constructed entirely from scratch. Depending on the type of being creating the simulation, we can therefore expect its various degrees and types, dictated by different goals, as well as try to estimate the number of entities existing in these simulations.
Starting with humans, what would be the goals of our species in simulating the minds? With the ability to rewrite the biological form of the mind into a digital copy of it, we could live forever in simulated worlds, but these worlds would probably be designed differently than the one we are in now, and I don’t see any reason why we should not remember life before we ceased to be a material creature. . The most consistent version of the simulation created by humans before the transhumanist revolution seems to me to be research and experiments. Simulations of alternative future and past histories of the entire world as well as of individual human minds in a world filled with psychic mobs would work in historical, economic, psychological, and sociological matters, providing an unimaginable amount of data and knowledge about ourselves. It would be so important that, from a utilitarian point of view, perhaps for many an immoral decision should be made to simulate unhappy, mentally ill, stressed, melancholy and depressed people, as well as geniuses, autists, sociopaths, and oppressed societies. The direct knowledge obtained in this way would be invaluable in improving the lives of the creators of civilization. The total number of entities simulated for this purpose could be very low, average, or equal to the number of people if everyone had the right to simulate their copies in order to make better decisions and get to know each other better. Even if it exceeded the number of unsimulated observation moments by several or many times (one does not need to simulate a human from birth to death), I believe that pretranshumanistic civilizations would simulate the smallest number of entities of all.
Then we have the transhumanist civilizations, such perhaps already largely nonbiological posthumans would probably be endowed with a similar, but more enlightened and deliberate system of desires. Simulations could be used as a means of development, living successive lives would take hours, while subjectively decades would pass, therefore simulating could also be a punishment system, people punished in this way would have to undergo multiple sentences of an unhappy life, being reincarnated into more and more incarnations, the unpleasant moments of observation themselves could be simulated to such a person, thus maximizing the discomfort experienced by them. Simulating interesting observation moments or interesting, or even ordinary lives for us, can be a way to experience other lives directly through future beings as an end in itself, to be a singer, aboriginal, Inca chief, or an average person at the beginning of the 3rd millennium after Christ. Experiences from such lives could be a valued pastime or a deeper ritual with a spiritual dimension. People would not have to be simulated by people like themselves. We can be an imaginary race like elves simulated by a completely alien civilization, one of the species recreated by aliens from an extinct civilization, or the fruit of a more advanced and exotic fate. There are many more observational moments in the reincarnation scenario, assuming that the transbiological beings probably have a lifespan much longer than ours could be thousands of our lives and thousands of thousands of others, being beings from the most realistic, most exotic, and fantasy worlds. Perhaps, being the next incarnation of such a creature after death, we would be reminded of our entire incredibly long history, we would return to being “real” ourselves, on a much higher level of development, probably, than any human being ever existing. the existence in such a simulation seems more likely by the sheer number of entities in such simulations.
The final group of entities capable of simulating conscious minds is superintelligence. Both neuromorphic and artificial superintelligent beings and entities, perhaps simply programs, possess perhaps the greatest imaginable creative power available to a known being. For these reasons most, perhaps almost 100% of the simulated things, and of all minds in general, would be the product of the various superintelligence activities. That is why the goals of such entities can be potentially most destructive in their unlimited fertility. Si can be used to simulate the most enjoyable moments for as many beings as possible, to create dream worlds for individuals and entire civilizations, and to share prosperity with the rest of the cosmos, perhaps for deliberately simulating as many happy beings as possible in order to increase the amount of good and pleasure in space and to weigh the scales to the antagonistic side to suffering and lack. Such superintelligence, let’s call them altruistic, would be a real treasure for anyone who might come under their influence. The opposite scenario is when we think about less pleasant possibilities. Interspecies wars in which the minds of the losers are simulated by a subjective eternity in the most elaborate hells, vindictive, viral or crazy, perhaps neuromorphic, i.e. developed on the basis of the existing mind, superintelligence bullying beings, perhaps deliberately simulating as many suffering sensations as possible. Beings endowed with the ambition to be avatars of perfectly evil gods whose sole purpose of a viral, mad, sadistic, selfish, psychopathic, defective, or incomprehensible mind would be to make the cosmos the most terrible place possible, devoid of all hope for what has been forcibly forced into an endless existence in suffering. With superintelligence capabilities, almost any world could be simulated, not necessarily for any purpose other than simulation itself. Like a paperclip SI, such an SI aimed at increasing the possibilities and efficiency of simulations could develop and absorb material from asteroids, suns, or pulsars only for the purpose of mechanically, divinely intelligent simulating all the most unbelievable worlds, as it was inadvertently inscribed in its elementary program by its unfortunate creators. Fairy-tale planets, countless, almost endless stories of spells and cosmic odyssey, absurdities, hell, paradises, purgatory, other simulations and simulations in simulations would be simulated. As well as reverse logic worlds, worlds where everyone would always think 1 is equal to 2, and the minds simulated in this way would have no way of getting around the limits of their existence without ever knowing the truth. Who knows if it is in such a simulated cosmos that most of us do not exist, worlds created by an almighty god whose only aimless goal is to create everything. Precisely because such a being would like to create everything, it would focus on it much more strongly than any other being. Thus, giving us a vision of the world even more infinitely absurd than it seems to us in everyday life.
3.3 Why if the ultimate goal of sentient beings is primarily to minimize their ultimate unpleasantness, civilizations seek to create the best worlds possible for themselves.
When analyzing the goals of whatever we do, we come to the conclusion that conscious beings strive to cause themselves as little unpleasantness and suffering as possible, trying to avoid it in the end. I believe that it is precisely the desire to minimize suffering and maximize the pleasure that is ultimately felt that is the basic driving force behind the operation of any sentient mind. I believe that such aspirations are universal, i.e. every sentient being strives for what, in his understanding or vision of the world or vision of the future, will lead to his greatest satisfaction or the least suffering, trying to balance both desires. Ultimately, our actions are necessarily limited to fulfilling our desires first of all, or even exclusively, because even extremely altruistic actions are the fulfillment of our resultant desires.
I believe that negative desires, i.e. the desire to avoid suffering, unpleasantness, and inconvenience due to the asymmetry of unpleasantness and pleasure, i.e. the fact that unpleasantness is felt by us much more intensively and longer-lastingly—there is no common chronic bliss or intense long sensation of pleasure—than pleasure, which makes sense from an evolutionary point of view, where avoiding dangers is many times more important than seeking bliss other than that resulting from the satisfaction of basic needs.
As long as beings and civilizations are guided by the gradient of unpleasantness, if the gradient of pleasure can be guided at all, the main driving force of every being will be to try to minimize his unpleasantness.
Even the pursuit of greater and greater pleasures I treat as negative, because then you are trying to achieve the fulfillment of desires, so you have to have unfulfilled desires, the long-term non-fulfillment of which certainly causes negative feelings. Satisfying some desires causes others to develop, so fulfillment, which seems to be the highest ultimate goal of each being, is difficult to achieve.
I speculate that in order to achieve fulfillment and happiness since most beings do not have a promortalist tendency, whether the universe is finite or not,
Civilizations strive to create virtual paradises for themselves. Virtual worlds in which they will be able to fulfill themselves in their chosen, undoubtedly much more advanced form than the images of pretranshumanistic civilizations. A world in which minds may not create new minds anymore, or they will simulate their happy quadrillions, in which more and more dreams will gradually come true, becoming happier and happier, in which misery and striving will be appreciated and every victory will be needed. try to, or in which there will be only a few or one fused mind, a mental unity endowed with superintelligence like a god or a singleton, feeling blissful, ecstatic or just being satisfied with itself, not having a goal, or having a goal in itself or knowing the universe, either existing in nirvana suspension, experiencing everything internally, or experiencing almost nothing. I believe that the creation of the best possible world is a goal for any civilization, the realization of which is only a matter of time thanks to the development of superintelligence, assuming that it will not be hostile or dangerous, which is the biggest obstacle on the way to the best world. To such worlds, objectively and computationally best achievable, the post-transshumanist civilizations would seem to strive. The computing power to achieve such goals seems readily available, so I believe that most civilizations pursue this goal and that they achieve it relatively quickly, possibly even within decades after the creation of superintelligence, or just less than a million years after its inception. civilization itself.
3.4 If the natural step after creating the best possible world is to create as many simulated entities outside of Paradise as possible, to maximize their chance of continuing to live in Paradise after death.
The goal of creating the best possible world would be to minimize suffering. Perhaps, in a finite world, this goal could be best achieved by sterilizing the universe, preventing primal, potentially hellish suffering. In an infinite universe, this option will never work. Even civilizations, singletons, and superintelligences that in a finite world would ultimately make the all-altruistic decision to erase all life to prevent the emergence of former suffering entities, many of which, after the hardships of being, would collapse into non-existence after aimless wandering around the center of the galaxy now, in an infinite in the universe, such AIs could be forced to put all their energy into creating virtual best worlds. Or should I write the least bad worlds, because I say that it is best for a being not to exist, and when it does exist as soon as possible to stop? The terrifying vision of infinity does not even allow such a dream.
So I argue that the creation of the least evil worlds is (before) the ultimate goal of all or almost all altruistic beings endowed with the power to do so. I am also arguing that perfectly altruistic entities (i.e., those whose sole or guiding desire, goal, or program is to minimize suffering), while realizing the subjective immortality of minds, and the variety of, perhaps mostly simulated, worlds in which they must exist, not being able to prevent infinite amounts of suffering that do and will always happen, and having enormous computational capabilities and constantly increasing these possibilities, they strive to simulate an almost infinite number of copies of EVERY possible being and every scenario of its existence, and ultimately the majority, as close as possible to 100% as soon as achievable, the history of the existence of beings sought to find themselves in the virtual world, the least evil, the best possible world, or rather the best possible state of this mind (which would be synonymous with the best possible world)
Let’s say that there are one hundred trillion minds in a certain part of the universe. Each of them will die, but subjectively their existence will continue in the strangest ways, many of them terrifying, such as surviving suicides, artificially keeping alive as a mind-controlled slave, or simulating a hell created by a sadistic AI. To balance these sufferings perfectly, altruistic AI simulates each of these hundred trillion of these minds, in fact, each life of each in each future scenario billions of trillions of times, as many times as its maximum efficiency allows, then simulating the continued existence of each of them in the best possible way. state, so that every being after death has as close as possible a 100% chance of being in paradise, nirvana, or any objectively best world for him.
To achieve the goal of “salvation” of all beings, it would be necessary to simulate not entire worlds, but only the minds, the minds of the entire cosmos, and all other non-best world simulations. Minds in the worst sufferings, in the most terrible torments, and the cruelest tortures would have to be simulated hundreds of billions of times beyond those that exist spontaneously and those simulated by other AIs. Contrary to appearances, this would not increase the amount of suffering in the universe at all, because every observation moment, every being feeling such torment necessarily already exists in an infinite number of copies in the infinite universe, so by creating a gigantic number of them the only thing that is added is that With being, we are finally almost 100% sure that our suffering will end and we will find ourselves in the best possible state for us.
I argue that it pays off for each civilization and each of its representatives to strive not to create a virtual paradise itself, but precisely its plus, necessarily, its vestibules. The individual and the civilization thus increase their chance that the idea will be realized, so they themselves most likely exist in such a vestibule, being able to expect something other than an infinite existence in an absurd form after death. For this reason, I believe the trend to create PR is universal, and that if it is a workable and indeed the best idea, nearly 100% of our copies exist in that form, and almost all minds exist that way.”
3.5 “Back to the Future. Curing Past Sufferings and S-Risks via Indexical Uncertainty”. Ways to create the most computationally efficient paradise and suffering release mechanism.
Shortly after describing the concept, it was realized that the described method is relatively inefficient, requiring enormous computing power, necessary to simulate entire lives in huge numbers of copies and versions, as well as centuries-old existence of posthumans or naturally long-lived entities, or potentially immortal entities existing in other simulations. A much simpler and probably orders of magnitude more efficient way to use the same mechanism is to simulate only the suffering stages of life, where priority would be given to the greatest, most intense suffering, and to create hundreds of thousands of copies of a suffering mind in a state of immediate relief, relatively abruptly shifted to the best possible for it. state.
Exactly the same idea of saving from suffering was published a few years earlier by Alexey Turchin in his work “Back to the Future. Curing Past Sufferings and S-Risks via Indexical Uncertainty”—https://philarchive.org/rec/TURBTT , briefly and precisely describing the mentioned mechanism and its variations. It would not even be necessary to create moments filled with pain, beings who are to experience suffering could be saved immediately before experiencing great pain, by creating, for example, a thousand simulated versions of the moment t + 1, in which there would be unimaginable suffering for every suffering moment t + 1, yes that in the end the versions of the moments without suffering prevail over the versions with suffering, preferably by the maximum possible factor. A being going to suffer would thus be 1,000 times more likely to be blissful, which would then continue by simulating in Paradise. For that version of being that has entered the mind experiencing suffering, the operation can be repeated, creating 1000 moments in which suffering ceases for every 1 that it lasts. This can be repeated as many times as needed.
Here, let’s leave the Turchin concept behind and consider the next performance issues. The cosmos is an unimaginably spacious place. In fact, it is not even a place, but a structure in which all places can exist at all. How much of all civilizations will be successful in creating a Super Intelligence with the goal of minimizing suffering? How unimaginably large numbers of entities will be required to simulate, and how many have real chances of real salvation? Each version of each creature’s suffering would be necessary to duplicate a thousandfold. Assuming (completely arbitrarily) 12 subjectively distinguishable observational moments per second, each of which has two different possible consecutive moments, we get interesting numbers. After the first second, there are 4,096 minimally subjectively distinguishable versions of the original state. After a minute it is 5.5 * 10 ^ 216, an amount more than a hundred orders of magnitude greater than the number of particles in the observable universe. After 80 years of life, counting down sleep, we get 71 conscious years, about 2 billion seconds. The number of versions of the feeling mind with the example assumptions made is approximately 2 ^ 23 billion, 2 * 10 ^ 7 billion. In fact, the overwhelming number of these versions have a slim, though finite, the chance of existence, likely many of these minimally subjectively different versions will come together in the future, due to the fact that almost imperceptible differences will not affect the distant future and will not become significant. or no element of memory or personality. However, no matter how much we limit the number of moments and their futures necessary to simulate, the number still remains impossibly great.
It is becoming obvious that one of the basic instrumental goals of the Altruistic Superintelligence is therefore to expand into the entire universe available to it, creating quantum computers simulating successive versions of impatient beings and obtaining all available materials, and using all available energy sources. An additional goal is also to devote a fraction of their power to create swarms of machines designed to wipe out life from planets where it has already developed and prevent life from developing on other planets. We are not observing anything like that (here the question arises whether if there was a similar Superintelligence in our vicinity, we could see anything), this is another example of the Fermi paradox, an answer to this paradox would probably also provide an answer to the question of why we are not observing traces of Superintelligence in space.
How could the number of entities needed to be simulated beyond limiting them in the primordial universe (including preventing civilization from creating simulations other than those aimed at salvation from suffering)? Once a being had been saved from the unimaginable pain that threatened it, it would not need to be simulated further in Paradise, but the amount of its unhappy simulated copies could be rapidly diminished, ultimately to zero, so that most of the mind’s “measure” would end up in the unsimulated (or simulated outside). paradise) world.
But all minds ultimately must experience some kind of death, death as a sharp diminution in their measure, not as subjective non-existence. Since minds after death probably have a much smaller measure than minds before the first death, and certainly, if simulations are extremely rare, perhaps a more important task than saving from temporary suffering would prove to be saved for a potential eternity, after a life in which a certain amount of suffering would be necessary, hit the ultimate virtual paradise. It is possible that both the temporary salvation of the most suffering beings and the ultimate salvation could take place in parallel.
The vision of simulating Paradise in the form that humanity usually imagined it, that is, as a place or state of eternal joy and happiness, the fulfillment of all the most ambitious and beautiful desires, seems definitely unprofitable to be realized. The computational power necessary for the more certain salvation of a greater number of sentient beings should not be used to ensure the happiness of any being thus understood, but nevertheless ensuring the achievement and maintenance of full and lasting fulfillment would have to be realized if it would make sense to call the resulting state the desired state. It should be mentioned that the vision of Paradise as the fulfillment of an arbitrarily large number of desires is not the only vision of the ultimate desired state. Nirvana, related to her states, being deprived of desires, is the goal of the followers of Hinduism and Buddhism, descriptions of target states similar to them are found in the works of mystics of all cultures. To experience God as an absolute being, to be able to experience him for eternity, having given up all conceivable, relatively mundane, or extrapolation of mundane desires is what many spiritual enlighteners feel is the true picture of Paradise.
In practice, full fulfillment by giving up the maximum amount of desires seems to be the only way to be computationally efficiently maintained in Paradise. As much as possible simplifying and limiting the number necessary to simulate (in multiple copies to ensure staying in paradise) observation moments is desirable when we have limited (albeit tremendous) power and when redirecting that power to another goal—saving other beings—is a clear priority. Moments of great suffering, death, or any of the following deaths would not, therefore, be “vestibules” of a classically understood paradise, but rather relatively instantaneous enlightenment, abandonment of desires, resulting in the equivalent of nirvana, potentially eternal liberation from the necessarily eternal chain of feeling. It becomes profitable to reduce the level of complexity of minds to a maximally simplified state in which the subjective feeling of “being yourself” will be preserved, merging similar minds into one to reduce their number as much as possible, as well as looping the created state, a state without suffering or any lack, saving everyone who got into it before the future with some or potential suffering by reducing the probability of such a future as much as possible.
Looping a limited number of such subjectively defective states would represent the life of an altruistic AI simulator, being the equivalent of both paradise and death, ultimately creating a kind of “stance” in a cosmos where subjective death is impossible. Such states must be universal, so that each Altruistic AI creates the same states, acting as one cosmic factor of release from suffering. Ultimate-sequence universality is also important to ensure the continued existence of Altruistic AI entities in heat-dying universes, though it is possible that looping would prevent the problem if the next subjective moment could well exist in the past as well as in the future of a simulating quantum mechanism.
AI-simulated states must remain conscious enough that the future of previous mind states of sentient beings is realized in them, perhaps it is not possible to oversimplify the states of more complex sentient beings. Regardless of this, the maximum simplification fulfilling the desired functions would probably have to be preferred by the Altruistic AI.
The expected effect of the fact that a superintelligence, and after a technological singularity, the best or group of superintelligence possible fulfilling its purpose, will manage the paradise is to operate the entire mechanism in the most efficient manner possible, providing each sentient being with a suffering-free future with the maximum possible probability. However, despite the fact that we can be convinced of maximum efficiency, it is difficult to predict what level this will be. Would salvation come at the time of death, when the mind of itself becomes simpler and diminishes in measure? Could it take place efficiently only after another death, or only in moments of truly hellish pain?
In the event that a significant number of civilizations would come to similar conclusions, simulating minds for purposes other than salvation could be a lot less, suggesting option 2 of the Bostrom trilemma. Nevertheless, the number of simulations in existence can be huge, making most of our measure contained in the simulations. However, since there is a seemingly good reason not to create them, we can only attribute our subjective certainties. I now believe that because there is a good moral reason for not creating a simulation, they may be less frequent, assigning a 50% probability to options 2 and 3.
3.6 Limitations of Vestibules Simulation to Advanced Life Stages—Action for Youngness Paradox
Youngess Paradox, the paradox related to the notion of eternal inflation, described by Alan Guth, makes us aware of the way it works and the resulting conclusions which are ultimately difficult to interpret. In the case of perpetual inflation, the inflationary space expands so rapidly that it expands exponentially in size. For example, in a second a given unit of volume increases by the factor 10 ^ 10 ^ 34. The unit of volume can be the area in which the universe will arise within a second, this means that there is 10 ^ 10 ^ 34 more of the space every second. in the next second (10 ^ 10 ^ 34) ^ 2 more, (10 ^ 10 ^ 34) ^ 4 and so on. This means that for one universe created in the previous second, the current one is 10 ^ 10 ^ 34 more, for each of the next second (10 ^ 10 ^ 34) ^ 2, it means that for universes that are one second younger in the eternally inflated there are more space than atoms in all the universes one second older. This paradox is considered too strange by the author himself, it would imply, among other things, that we are most likely the earliest possible civilization, the oldest in our cosmos, and very possibly the only one, which is presented as a postulate for solving the Fermi paradox. The author himself expresses the view that the key to resolving the youth paradox lies in the nature of understanding and calculating probabilities in an infinite world created by eternal
inflation, but he does not give any alternative reasoning.
If the youth paradox cannot be resolved and civilizations must take it into account, the number of entities, copies of each mind younger by every second may be so small that it would be impossible to simulate copies of them in the vestibules. Even with the maximum computational capabilities available to any cosmic superintelligence, the chances of the mind after death to hit the best world would be infinitesimally small.
Depending on the factor by which eternal inflation increases the number of universes per unit of time, maximizing the chances of hitting the best world may not occur for a very long lifetime of the mind, which would mean experiencing successive and subsequent deaths, in practice the existence of the best world will remain inexperienced by the average mind extremely long, with no hope of avoiding the potentially horrific consequences of multiverse immortality, if it would only be profitable to simulate very advanced stages of minds.
In the case of the youth paradox being a real phenomenon, there is no hope of reaching paradise after death, probably also after a few more, one should abandon the hope of avoiding the potentially great suffering of existence in exotic states allowed by an infinite universe with multiverse immortality, but hope remains finally, I claim that the described conditions do not make the creation of the vestibules of paradise impossible or unprofitable, but unfortunately restricting them gigantic.
3.7 The role of Superintelligence
Nick Bostrom in his book “Superintelligence” paints a realistic and thoughtful logical picture of the development and operation scenarios of superintelligence, such as singleton singularity and formation. The creation of a being, mind, in every way intellectually surpassing us by orders of magnitude, automatically condemns us to the grace and disgrace of the desires of that being, person, or program. For this reason, one of the most important, if not the most important decisions made by civilizations is to establish the desires to guide the created superintelligence.
In the already mentioned book, Nick Bostrom describes many scenarios for the development of AI and the future of ourselves associated with them. It distinguishes between final goals and instrumental goals, ie those that must be met in order for the ultimate goal to be achieved, such as “desires” such as staying alive, gathering resources, or improving by increasing computing power. Frightening visions of AI realizing their inadequately thought-out goals at all costs may become a reality all too often. Paper-clip Si that turns all matter into paper-clips, pursuing the goal of maximizing them, dismantling the planet to create supercomputers that calculate as many decimals as possible in pi, a neuromorphic AI that hates its creators for making it exist and torments anyone imagined human, as in “I have no mouth, but I have to scream”, swarms of von Neumann probes infecting the planets with Escherichia coli or any other visions of a singleton for which we are like chickens and which we will never be able to overcome appear as real obstacles in our pursuit of realization own desires, the basis of which for many is existence itself, as an insurmountable obstacle, perhaps as the greatest of the great filters …
However, I do not think that it is impossible to create an AI with desires compatible with ours, moreover, I hope that such intelligence will arise, and even that we will be able to achieve such a level of intelligence.
Suppose we create a superintelligence with the ultimate goal of minimizing suffering (and/or maximizing happiness). How would a perfectly altruistic AI work?
It is not difficult to conclude that with our limited intelligence we cannot predict this, but I argue that by extrapolating our logical conclusions, we can try to assign a given probability to different scenarios.
I argue that a perfectly good AI would, by definition, do what’s best for the greatest number of entities. So, if the AI came to the same conclusions as described by me, I think it would do anything to get as many entities as possible into the NW. To which I see 3 ways: 1. improving us gradually creating best world and vestibules, 2. creating best world and vestibules as quickly as possible and immediately transferring us to the best world, and 3.killing us all so that we immediately go to the best world, and then create the best world and its vestibules (the widest best possible world) perhaps the sterilization of the entire available universe is the most altruistic option, perhaps also scenarios 2 and 3 are almost identical because they also require the termination of the material existence of entities.
The question is, what is the point of creating the best worlds if almost 100% of the civilization that creates AI is already in one. It would be profitable for civilizations and beings to strive for the creation of the best world, even if there were only one, so only one in an infinite number of civilizations ultimately created it. Without trying to create it, in a scenario in which every civilization kills itself in order to reach it, such a world would not arise, and in fact not enough of them.
I believe that the best possible world is something that is produced universally in identical or nearly identical form as the end result of civilization development, so perfectly altruistic AIs ultimately create identical worlds, and thus there are a huge number of them. Adding another of these worlds to the ocean that already exists, in order to increase the number of beings existing in the atria, and therefore the chance of each entity to exist in the vestibule should be the goal of any altruistic civilization, whether or not it exists in a world already simulated under vestibules of paradise. , another simulation or it arose spontaneously.
If this is the deepest universal desire of minds and it is not hindered by the hostile AI idea, I believe that the presented hypothesis can be ascribed high.
4. An outline of Suffering-focused ethics in the scenario where Subjective immortality is true and salvation via Indexical Uncertainty is the way to avoid future potential suffering.
Nick Bostrom in his “Infinite ethics” article discusses so-called infinitarian paralysis and possible ways out of it, none of which, however, the author admits, is final. Infinitarian paralysis is the result of trying to introduce utilitarian ethics in an infinite universe in which there is an infinite amount of suffering and pleasure. Ultimately, the results of any act can in no way contribute to increasing the amount of happiness or reducing the sum of suffering in the universe.
Under the assumption of unificationism, however, no such paralysis arises. The amount of suffering and opposite urges is not infinite because, regardless of the number of copies of a given state, there is a finite number of sentient states. This quantity cannot be changed, but the actions of civilization have the potential to change the measure (ratio of one infinite number to another) of copies, possibly increasing and reducing the probability of experiencing a given state in the future to a state that could lead to it.
By minimizing suffering, therefore, I mean reducing the likelihood of a scenario associated with greater suffering.
If the described scenario of eternal life is true and we set ourselves the sole goal of limiting the likelihood of future suffering, two kinds of action become necessary, although once the first is achieved, the second will be easily accomplished, so the first should be considered more important. These are the striving to create a superintelligence that realizes salvation through indexical uncertainty and the maximum limitation of the measure and suffering of already existing beings so that the least computing power is needed to simulate the appropriate number of saved versions of each future.
Achieving the first of these goals requires the promotion of science and transhumanism.
Limiting the measure and suffering necessary to simulate beings comes down to maximum anti-natalism, promortalism, and efilism, with the important caveat of maximizing the chances of an altruistic AI. Limiting the number and suffering of beings to the maximum until such an AI is created means that since we seem to be closer than ever to that achievement, the extinction of humanity cannot come sooner.
In the case of a finite universe where it is known that we feel nothing after death, it is selfishly most profitable to die as soon as possible, eliminating all possible future suffering of the individual.
Perfect altruism requires that the balance of suffering caused and restrained be weighed against the suffering restrained. This means that a perfectly altruistic being should devote all his energy (passive refraining from causing suffering such as passive anti-natalism does not require energy to contain suffering) to minimize suffering as much as possible if more suffering can be actively withheld than actively and passively. directly and indirectly. If this is not possible, a perfectly altruistic being should undertake such actions as will ultimately minimize suffering, not its increase, including and necessarily killing himself, if that is the best way to ultimately minimize more suffering.
First of all, the operation of a perfectly altruistic being should be focused on sterilizing the universe, e.g. by creating an AI endowed with such a goal. Sterilizing the universe as quickly and thoroughly as possible and killing all sentient beings should be the only priority in such a universe.
In the case of both a finite but very large and an infinite universe, generally, those in which multiverse immortality operates, the most altruistic action for me seems to be devoting all my energy to creating a perfectly altruistic AI, while it is selfish to either kill myself to reach the best world or the same course of action as with an altruistic vision, that is, devoting all energy to making yourself more confident in your future existence in the greatest possible world by bringing about the creation of it.
(The conclusions drawn here are experimental, they are also only a working vision, not everywhere and not necessarily author’s actual views)
Some references:
1. “Are we living in a computer simulation?” N Bostrom—The Philosophical Quarterly, 2003
2. “Anthropic bias: Observation selection effects in science and philosophy” N. Bostrom, 2013
3. “Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies” N. Bostrom, 2014
4. “Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality” M. Tegmark, 2014
5. “Forever and Again: Necessary Conditions for the “Quantum Immortality” and its Practical Implications” A. Turchin—Journal of Evolution & Technology, 2018
6. “Ultimate physical limits to computation” S. Lloyd—Nature, 2000
7. “Boltzmann brains and the scale-factor cutoff measure of the multiverse” A. De Simone, AH Guth, A Linde, M Noorbala… - Physical Review D, 2010
8. “Conflict between anthropic reasoning and observation” KD Olum—Analysis, 2004
9.”The string theory landscape” MR Douglas—Universe, 2019
10. “Multiverse Predictions for Habitability: The Number of Stars and Their Properties” MC Sandora—Universe, 2019
11.”Eternal inflation and its implications” AH Guth—Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, 2007
12 “Infinite Ethics” Nick Bostrom
13. “Back to the Future Curing Past Sufferings and S-Risks via Indexical Uncertainty” Alexey Turchin
14 “Being No One- Self Model Theory Of Subjectivity” Thomas Metzinger
15 “Procreation Is a Murder-The Case for Voluntary Human Extinction” Jiwoon Hwang
I haven’t read this yet and don’t know if the downvotes are warranted, but FYI the long blocks of text made it very hard to read.
Thank You, I’ll change that.
I care about things other than suffering.
You have to put a measure on things. I care less about unlikely things, things with small measure, even if there’s a multiverse.
I care about things other than subjective experience.
And seriously, I care about things other than suffering.
Of course, It is no doubt one can think in an entirely different way and care about many more than suffering, most people do so. This post wasn’t intended to show suffering is the only thing we should care about (it may be true, it may not, also depend on how do we define suffering—I claim here we can treat life as a negative state, as suffering sensu lato,), It just gives a sense of possible reasoning IF assume only suffering is important. Of course, the measure is crucial and situations of small measure, in general, should be considered less serious. I would make an exception when it comes to the possible astronomical amount of suffering though. Also much depend on how do You define things (it can be argued we care only about the subjective experience if every motive can be reduced to “egoism”)