Would you live out your life in a simulation?
Suppose that in the future immersive simulations have reached a technological level where they are indistinguishable from reality. Companies now offer "new lives", perfect fidelity realities constructed to your specification. You can live out your wildest fantasies, be anyone you choose, in any time and place, real or imagined, with any capabilities you can dream of. Being a simulation, you are "immortal", for as long as your physical body survives.
There is just one problem: the brain-computer interface requires intensive surgery, and the body is simply not independently viable afterwards. In other words, once you enter the simulation, there is no going back.
You have accumulated the staggering amount of wealth necessary for the procedure, and the lifetime of maintenance. You are talking to the sales guy, who is excitedly offering suggestions for your next life. However, you start to have misgivings. Do you really want to live in a "heaven", populated by shadows, guaranteed to be (in reality) completely alone, for the rest of your life? Where every achievement will in fact be in vain, and go unnoticed, except in your mind? To live a life, in truth, that will be guaranteed to be meaningless?
You express your misgivings to the sales guy.
"Ah, sir, I'm so glad you brought this up. Many have the same concern. Thankfully, we have the perfect solution. For an additional charge, which I admit is high, we can modify your memory, so that you forget your old life entirely. A suitable replacement memory will be installed, matched to your specifications. As far as you will know, you will be born, live, and die in your private world, and will never be the wiser, aside from the odd philosophical speculation you may be inclined to, from time to time."
Do you agree to the procedure?
(If you like, check my story based on this concept)
EDIT:
"Ah, sir, I understand completely. Of course you don't want to abandon your memories. Very discerning of you. That is why we offer our Continuity+ package. It comes at twice the price. But hear me out:
Our team of Memory Specialists will precisely edit your memory. Not only will you not remember this conversation and the (quite traumatic) surgical procedure melding your brain with the simulator, but any memory that this technology even exists will be edited out!
In its place, we will insert a custom "bridge" memory designed to fool you into thinking your simulated world is continuous with the real one. Just last week, I helped design one for a customer, wonderful woman. Psychometric testing revealed a vague lingering belief in Small Folk. And so she thinks, over the course of the last month, that a gnome started appearing to her, and offered her a one way trip to another dimension. It sounded too wonderful a place to pass up (of course, she designed it, which she no longer remembers), and she entered the narrow, crooked door revealed by gnome. And poof, there she is, enjoying her new life in a heaven of her own design, all her important memories intact!"
(Unfortunately, I can't add a poll question)
There is just one problem: the brain-computer interface requires intensive surgery, and the body is simply not independently viable afterwards. In other words, once you enter the simulation, there is no going back.
You have accumulated the staggering amount of wealth necessary for the procedure, and the lifetime of maintenance. You are talking to the sales guy, who is excitedly offering suggestions for your next life. However, you start to have misgivings. Do you really want to live in a "heaven", populated by shadows, guaranteed to be (in reality) completely alone, for the rest of your life? Where every achievement will in fact be in vain, and go unnoticed, except in your mind? To live a life, in truth, that will be guaranteed to be meaningless?
You express your misgivings to the sales guy.
"Ah, sir, I'm so glad you brought this up. Many have the same concern. Thankfully, we have the perfect solution. For an additional charge, which I admit is high, we can modify your memory, so that you forget your old life entirely. A suitable replacement memory will be installed, matched to your specifications. As far as you will know, you will be born, live, and die in your private world, and will never be the wiser, aside from the odd philosophical speculation you may be inclined to, from time to time."
Do you agree to the procedure?
(If you like, check my story based on this concept)
EDIT:
"Ah, sir, I understand completely. Of course you don't want to abandon your memories. Very discerning of you. That is why we offer our Continuity+ package. It comes at twice the price. But hear me out:
Our team of Memory Specialists will precisely edit your memory. Not only will you not remember this conversation and the (quite traumatic) surgical procedure melding your brain with the simulator, but any memory that this technology even exists will be edited out!
In its place, we will insert a custom "bridge" memory designed to fool you into thinking your simulated world is continuous with the real one. Just last week, I helped design one for a customer, wonderful woman. Psychometric testing revealed a vague lingering belief in Small Folk. And so she thinks, over the course of the last month, that a gnome started appearing to her, and offered her a one way trip to another dimension. It sounded too wonderful a place to pass up (of course, she designed it, which she no longer remembers), and she entered the narrow, crooked door revealed by gnome. And poof, there she is, enjoying her new life in a heaven of her own design, all her important memories intact!"
(Unfortunately, I can't add a poll question)
Comments (50)
I can see two perspectives for answering.
First Perspective: No, I would not agree because I would not trust the technology to not have a bug which might lead to a nightmarish experience.
Second Perspective: Suppose God Himself assured me that everything is as described in the post; that there will be no unpleasant surprises.
In this case, I have a question: if I picked could forget, would there be any discernible difference between my experience of the world now, and my experience after the procedure? If I could not distinguish the two types of experience, then maybe Id accept the procedure because, for all I know, I might currently be in a simulation, and so I would merely be trading one simulation for another, more enjoyable simulation.
If I picked could not forget then I would know that I was in a simulation. I might not trade in what is, or, at least, what may be, reality for a simulation.
A "fully-immersive simulation" prosthesis (with no off-switch / exit) = a lobotomy plus continuous 24/7 morphine drip.
Offered an alternative of my choice, I'd certainly opt for my version of Utopia. But I would still like to remember everyone and everything I liked about this life.
This kind of misgiving, while undoubtedly accurate (who wouldn't have such fears?), nevertheless seems to sidestep the larger question. Like you say, lets presume that you know with complete certainty, from God or otherwise, that the simulation is exactly as described.
Quoting Art48
None at all, save that the world as you know it now is probably not arranged in a way that you would have likely chosen in the simulation.
Quoting Art48
But is your conviction that we *might* be living in a simulation now high enough to be a factor in this decision? For my part, I think there are pretty good reasons for presuming that we are *not*: a simulation is necessarily a vastly more complex explanation for what is, than a world that is as it seems. Therefore, the simulation explanation should be discarded. That is a topic for another thread.
But a lobotomy + morphine can only offer dull, undifferentiated pleasure, whereas the simulation can be of the richest, most vibrant and stimulating world you can dream of.
Quoting Vera Mont
You would prefer keeping your memories, even if they meant knowing that your existence was a lie? How much would the artificiality and meaninglessness of your life bother you?
The truth is I exist both before and after I stick my head into a permanent brain prosthetic. The only "lie" would be not to remember, or deny, that I'm now "living for the rest of my non-simulated life in a simulation".
:up:
I wouldn't enter for this reason alone.
If, instead, every single human or animal entity would be "inhabited" like my own avatar, that might be a different story. But in that case, there is no guarantee things would go so perfectly.
:up:
Quoting petrichor
"No sir, I'm afraid that the technology just won't allow for it."
Quoting petrichor
"But sir, might I remind you of our forgetfulness package? We have done studies, our clients which purchased the package are slightly *less* troubled by thoughts of solipsism than meatwalkers like us! This speaks to both the fidelity of our agent simulators, and the fact that they are just having too much fun to be troubled by such notions!"
:up:
Having chosen it knowingly, the artificiality wouldn't bother me at all. I already don't think life has a "meaning". The idea of Heaven doesn't seem to bother Christians or Muslims, so why should a disembodied dream trouble an atheist?
Aren't we here for others too? Isn't life something about continuation of life?
Aren't hardships, disappointments, failures that then make success and achieving something so great?
So No. No.
If this would be a possibility for someone who is totally paralyzed, basically a 'vegetable', this might sound very humane...
On the other hand, what guarantee do we have that we are not plugged in in a machine right now?
On one side, even if we are, going to yet another machine adds another layer of lies we are living in but does it make any difference how many layers?
On the other side, why not replace this imperfect, often catastrophic reality for an idealised one?
Suppose you've been here long enough and done all that. Life is not going to continue: you'll have to decline, suffer and die. But most of us don't like the idea of ceasing to exist. The possibility of continuing in some form is what all the afterlife and upload fantasies are about, but there is no pleasure in continuation if you lose your identity.
I think it would still be fairly easy to distinguish between, for example, drinking a glass of beer and a simulation of it. The conditions under which the two experiences arise are radically different, and beer drinking is certainly more than the experience. I prefer the real thing.
Sign me up.
Yes, I thought that too. But maybe the point is that people much prefer to keep their memories than to abandon them? So even though you said "could" forget perhaps it was interpreted as being a necessary condition, if you "had" to forget?
But Heaven is presumably a real place, importantly populated by other real entities, such as dead loved ones. You get to resume your real relationships with these people. Whereas with the simulation, you would be condemned to spend the rest of your life with very advanced, animated chatGPTs.
Quoting jkop
Is it though? Why does it matter under what conditions they rise? Experientially, according to this thought experiment, they are identical.
Quoting Lionino
We have no guarantee, but personally I consider it highly unlikely. Whereas, if you enter the machine, you would have an absolute guarantee.
Quoting Lionino
Quoting Pantagruel
Yes, I honestly didn't consider this aspect. I wish I could reword the poll, or create a new option. You get to keep your memories, and yet not know you are living a lie. So for instance, they erase only the memories of signing up, and even the memories that the simulation tech exists, and then create the memory of getting sucked into a magical portal or something, so you think that your experience of old and new world is continuous.
Quoting ssu
A true denizen of the happiest country on Earth.
Maybe. Of course, nobody changes or achieves anything, so the relations, tearful reunion once over, are static and the whole exercise is pointless. Plus, they risk discovering which loved ones are missing, and a much bigger risk of themselves being denied admission. And that, after a lifetime of fear and self-abnegation. And yet they take all that in stride, so strong is the desire to continue.
That's why I think losing oneself in forgetfulness is a deal-breaker for many.
Just think how terrified we all are at the prospect of senility.
Or is that just an inaccurate, cartoon version? Perhaps every relationship in heaven evolves into its deepest, maximum potential? Everything left unsaid gets to be said.
Quoting Vera Mont
Or, the benevolent deity provides a perfect simulacrum in these cases. Maybe not as good as the real thing, but less painful for the deserving souls.
Quoting Vera Mont
Yeah, in my stupidity I didn't think it through. I don't actually want that tension mucking with what is to me the central question. I edited in a third option, what do you think?
It all reads like an exercise in destroying oneself and leaving an abomination in its place. Thats a big nope for me.
In the veridical case beer is experienced whereas in the simulation no beer is experienced. Yet we suppose that also in the simulation beer is experienced. How come? One plausible explanation is that the word 'experience' is used here in two different senses. In one sense it refers to the beer that I experience, and in the other sense it refers to the experience regardless of the beer (e.g. brain states)
In the thought experiment we are supposed to vacillate between these two senses, for if there is nothing more to an experience than the brain state, then one might as well replace the experience of beer with artificially produced brain states, i.e. pure hallucinations.
Yet the distinctions we make between hallucinations and veridical experiences are not so dependent on whether one can spot experiential differences between two supposedly identical experiences. What distinguishes hallucinations is that nothing is experienced, hence the word 'hallucination'. To call it 'experience' is a fallacy of ambiguity.
It's the one churches are selling. I don't believe any version of it, but millions of people apparently do. More cartoonish ones, even, involving wings and harps or brainless, powerless virgins.
Quoting hypericin
As one has had parents, a sibling, a spouse and children, I can tell you that's one of the worst ideas, ever. Think of what you have had to hold back.
Quoting hypericin
How does that differ from a computer simulation, where you can choose your cast, plot and setting?
Maybe, maybe, maybe.... I'd rather trust a computer than a god.
Quoting hypericin
You fixed the only thing anyone can object to. But I was fine was fine with the original.
The main objection to me, and to some others here, is that you are condemning yourself to live in a solipsistic world. Why wouldn't that bother you?
Quoting Vera Mont
:lol: True.
Quoting JuanZu
Oh indeed, check my story.
Quoting NOS4A2
Perhaps. But that abomination is probably leading a more satisfactory inner life than you or I. Surely that counts for something.
It is not incorrect to call a hallucination an "experience". Hallucinations have experiential content. The sort of experience/hallucination proposed in the OP has no real-world equivalent, we have not collectively assigned a word to it yet.
But, suppose you were completely immersed in a computer game, to the point where at least part of you believed you were actually experiencing the virtual world. Would you use the word "hallucination"? No, I don't think so, "experience" would be more apt. "Hallucination" denotes that the experience originates from within the brain, probably from some temporary or permanent brain disorder. Whereas the "experience" of the computer game, or the OP's simulation, arises externally from the brain. Whether it is veridical doesn't matter.
Because the alternative is death. If I could opt for virtual experience of my own choosing, why would I prefer no experience of any kind at all?
No, the alternative is not death. The alternative is living out the remainder of your life naturally. You will die in the simulation, when your physical body dies.
Although I suppose I could just as well go the low tech route and become a Carthusian, Anchorite, or Cistercian.
IDK if I could hack it though. I stayed with the Cistercians not long ago and those guys get up at 3:15 am 365 days a year to start the Liturgy of the Hours and then get to contemplating before sunrise prayer at 5:30. Compline, the last communal prayer of the day, isn't until 8 pm, and its very cold at night. Seems grueling.
You never told me that! Or maybe you did and I forget: that happens a lot at my age. Ok, in that case, I'll enter the simulation when I'm declining in my terminal illness. A few weeks or months, being my best physical self in Utopia is still far better than my expected natural life.
But waiting until the very end is waiting until the stakes are lowest. What about now? Would you consider even the third option?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
What if you uncover the true nature of reality, and no one is there to appreciate it? Wouldn't it be better to live a simple, contemplative life in the real world, if that is all you are after?
Taking that the machine operates based on its programming, and not on the laws of nature, you would not really be uncovering true reality, but a subset of it.
No, it would be unkind and irresponsible. I still have commitments and unfinished projects.
The meaning we create in reality is closely linked to making a mark on history. It does not need to be noticeable or make you famous, rather it is about being part of this entropic universe. As I live in this reality I am in sync with the entropic forces of this universe, I am part of something and that has meaning, however minute that meaning is to us and how essentially meaningless that is within the context of what we consider having purpose.
If my actions and existence lose that core and basic meaning as being a functional part of reality, then there is only an absolute meaninglessness left and I don't believe anyone could find joy in that other than for a brief moment.
And yet people lose themselves to drug-induced euphoria, or role-playing video games. Not every life is purposeful and meaningful in reality.
You missed my definition of meaning. I focused on the absolute core meaning that can be objectively argued for, the core universal purpose of entropy; how we are a part of how our reality fundamentally works:
Quoting Christoffer
You still do that when engaging with art/video games or taking drugs because you interact with actual reality and people. But you aren't doing that when living inside a simulation that only have p-zombies as its population and no real consequences to its reality.
If I'm facing death and this is a way for me to continue existing, then yes, if you fear death and don't want it, it may be preferable, as long as you have an off button for when that reality reaches its pointless conclusion.
If, however, you are speaking of a simulation with other people in which you can continue your existence and have meaningful interactions with others, then it would be a rather soothing continuation of your self when you face death in the real world.
I would not, however, in good health in actual reality, choose a simulation over reality when I still have life left to live. I see it only as a continuation for when my physical body can no longer function and provide me life.
Quoting Christoffer
Nor would I, as previously articulated. But fantasy beats all hell out of gasping and groaning at the center of a web of wires and tubes.
I would say, for the purposes of the thought experiment, that it is a reasonable enough facsimile (should the user choose) such that philosophical conclusions drawn from experience in the simulated world are valid in the real world.
I don't think I agree. Making your mark in history doesn't mean leaving a mark on the entropic universe. It means, making a mark on other people. Consider writing a novel. The words on the page are a change of the universe (assuming the novel is print, not digital, where the physical change is pretty rarefied). What matters though, is that people read it, that it affects other people. Would you rather print a million physical books that nobody reads, or have a million digital copies of your book read?
I think other people is what is crucially missing from the simulation, not a physical universe. If the simulation was populated by other people, then no problem, I would happily enter, even though I would still leave no mark on the physical world. But imagine a novelist entering the simulation, to finally have time to finish that novel. Oops.
But isn't the fleeting preciousness of the time what confers the value on such a work? If you make conditions ideal for writing, will that produce the best writing?
The simulation is indistinguishable from reality, recall, yet the experience "has no real-world equivalent"?
To be indistinguishable from reality means that the simulation is experienced as reality. In this sense the experience has a "real-world equivalent". But this sense is switched into another sense when you talk of the experience as having no real-world equivalent, since it is not reality that is experienced but a simulation of reality.
By vacillating between these two senses of what is experienced we are promised that one could be fully immersed in a simulation, and thus experience only simulation and no reality. Like a brain in a vat. But I think the promise is based on a fallacy of ambiguity.
Quoting hypericin
What could "..externally from the brain." mean?
Let's say the proposed future brain-computer interface (BCI) has replaced your eyes, so instead of seeing things the BCI stimulates the brain to evoke the experience of seeing things that the computer constructs, like the things we see in computer games.
But when you play a computer game the things that you see, e.g. real light, real screen, real images (that simulate the optic features of things), are not inside nor connected to your brain's perceptual system. What you see is external to the process of seeing. In this sense your experience of the computer game is veridical (it doesn't matter if the real images that you see are images of fictional things).
But when you skip the real light, screen, and images, and replace your eyes with a brain-computer interface, then the relation between brain and computer is basically the same as the relation between brain and a mind-altering drug or decease. Hence 'hallucination'.
By vacillating between the sense in which a computer game is being experienced, and the sense in which the experience is a process in the brain's perceptual system, we are offered the promise that in the future the computer game could be played inside the brain. But that's because the word 'experience' is used in different senses.
Yes to forgetting entirely and having a commensurate memory scheme installed for the new life to make sense - and yes If the bridge memory is inserted but I cant forget my own life.
No, if I cannot forget.
I believe the life I've experienced and the memories I've gathered throughout my life have helped shape the essence of who I am today. I also believe I would not choose a simulated life unless I were already living in a vegetative state. (and what a great option to have for anyone already living in that level of hell). Then it would be my desire to live what life I had left in a simulation with all previous memories intact (except for maybe the event that caused my catatonic state). And also, I don't think I would want to know it was a simulation. However, all of this could change when and if I were actually presented with a real-life situation (which I'm not) where this decision would have to be made. And I am beyond grateful that I don't have to make such a huge life-altering decision as that.
Id prefer a harsh reality or truth rather than a comforting lie which is why I voted against living in such a simulation. One of the enjoyable aspects of natural and real life is the challenges and adversity it can sometimes present and our ability to deal with such adversity which would help an individual build character and resilience. For me then the simulation would be a cop out.
But then again if prior to being born I was offered the option of being born into wealth rather than say to a poor family then that would present to me a bigger dilemma than the artificial wealth of a simulated environment.
I like this, and I think I agree. There are many things I wanted to be when I was younger that I cringe at now. My "perfect" world then would betray the world I want now. Also, I think older me deserves what it will have brought about. Negative experiences shaped my life and character in tremendous and painful ways, but I wouldn't have what I do otherwise. Should the magic genie offer to take bad times away, I would risk "now" and the happiness I've earned through imperfect conditions.
I could see how many would take the "dopamine drip" though.
This sounds good, and there is probably truth to it. But I'm not sure people actually act according to it. By this logic, you should refuse a gift of a million dollars, because that would automatically resolve a lot of valuable adversity. Most wouldn't even if ideologically they value adversity.
Moreover, you have total control of the character of the simulation. You can absolutely build in adversity, the kind of adversity that is most suitable for your personal growth, rather than the actual adversity that can so often tear us down.