
Are we living in a Simulation? – The Saint - mwilcox
http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2016/10/22/are-we-living-in-a-simulation/
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cairo_x
Also:

There is a lot of suffering in this world.

High levels of social conscientiousness (mutual aid) is a positive selecting
factor in evolution of highly intelligent species (Darwin/Kropotkin).

Therefore, no intelligence smart enough to build a universal simulation would
do so. IMNSHO.

~~~
CuriouslyC
Human perception is highly relative - our capacity to feel suffering is
necessary for joy to be meaningful. Kind of like there would be no far without
near, and no up without down.

What if this isn't just a simulation, but a game, and we're avatars? A game
needs challenge and conflict, nobody wants to play a game that is basically
"press start to win."

~~~
cairo_x
Why are people born into such disparagingly disparate circumstances? Pretty
shitty game. Why are some born healthy, and others sick. This mode of thinking
is... illogical. It also encourages an unhealthy, almost fundamentalist
disconnect from all thinking/feeling things. The disturbing, fascist aspect of
Zen or Shinto (nothing is real, there are no consequences because there is
nothing), or the 50 virgins afterlife of the funda'islamism, is all very very
dark disconnected thinking. Makes me despair somewhat. Like he says in the
article, another form of religion.

~~~
CuriouslyC
Controlling the circumstances people are born into would require controlling
the circumstances up until their birth, which would mean mean the "game" was
fully deterministic. If the game was deterministic, it wouldn't be like
playing a game, it would be like watching a movie you already know by heart -
i.e. not so engaging. The fact that you are free to act, and the outcome is
uncertain - that is what makes for a compelling experience.

Additionally, you assume poor people in third world countries are
automatically miserable. In actuality, they're only miserable when they're
hungry, sick, mistreated, or made to feel want by having affluence rubbed in
their faces - kind of like us. It is true that their odds of being hungry or
sick are higher, and in some unstable countries there is a lot of mistreatment
going on. That being said, I've been around a fair number of third-world
villagers, and my experience is that in general they are just as happy as your
typical first-world american.

~~~
cairo_x
Have you had a chronic illness?

No advanced civilization would find it ethically acceptable to put people
through the suffering many go through on a day to day basis.

My own life has been plagued by chronic, treatment resistant depression. I
can't do things other people do, because my stress response does not allow for
recovery. If I was born in a third world country, hell, even some place like
Eastern Europe where it is almost impossible to find work at the moment, I'd
have had to have killed myself long ago. Simply unable to survive. Even worse
some place like Syria, where for the last 4 and a half years have been having
the equivalent of a Paris Terrorist attack every single day. People are forced
into shitty boats, into countries that don't want them, to escape bombs made
in the countries that don't want them.

Suicide is the one of the leading causes of death worldwide. In countries
privileged enough to have data collection and less cultural taboos on the
issue, the largest groups that suicide are also the most likely to be the most
disadvantaged. In some Aboriginal communities, for instance, child suicide is
a common occurrence.

Do you know what it is like to be a parent and to lose your child in any kind
of way? My god! What kind of a monster would _create_ a world like this?

OK... step back..

Let's say we discovered a scientist was deliberately rearing children
genetically engineered to have some kind of un-treatable illness. IT WOULD BE
UNACCEPTABLE. Now multiply by millions every year.

How do you not understand that that is unacceptable and unethical?

You think the holocaust would be a interesting game? Maybe pop into a body
just as it's being gassed? Or maybe to observe?

Doctor Mengele type shit right there, son.

edit: I am not complaining, or bitter about my own situation, however, I WOULD
NOT WISH IT ON MY OWN WORSE ENEMY. I do not believe in the death penalty, nor
seeking vengeance by torture. Certainly wouldn't want to be the axe-weilding
bag of high-functioning idiot dildos who thought up the idea to create this
universe.

~~~
CuriouslyC
I have overcome ASD, crippling social anxiety to the point that I never left
the house, extreme morbid obesity, homelessness, drug abuse and depression so
bad not only was I contemplating suicide multiple times a day, I spent a
significant amount of time researching and planning it. My game setting was
extreme hard-mode.

I never gave up, and in the end I overcame it all. Now I've got a body that
could make an underwear model jealous, I have an amazing career, I regularly
win speech contests, I've got several inventions in the patent process, I'm
about 150 pages deep in a book I'm writing, the list goes on.

For every person who endures great suffering, there is someone else out there
experiencing incredible joy. You need to be able to experience one in order to
have the other - our emotional systems are relative. Furthermore, the freedom
that makes it a game rather than a show to be passively observed unfortunately
implies the freedom to be nasty to other people. Nasty stuff like natural
disasters, killer viruses and painful genetic conditions are unfortunate, but
there is so much out there that is wonderful.

I don't want to be preachy, but I've been to the darkest part of the abyss, so
maybe I could offer you a little bit of advice. You need to stop paying so
much attention to the negative messages floating around in the world and open
your eyes to the beauty that is abundant all around you. Additionally, you are
stronger than you think, you can take control of your life, you don't have to
be a victim.

~~~
cairo_x
"The water supply of south Asia comes mostly from glaciers in the Himalayas.
They're melting. What happens when they disappear? There goes the water supply
for South Asia. Couple billion people in India alone, an estimated 300 million
_barely_ have access to water, what's going to happen to them? All over the
place. Coastal cities will disappear. Extreme weather events will increase.
One person per-second is now fleeing the severe effects of weather -- more
than refugees right now. We're seeing a major disaster right now." \- Noam
Chomsky, not to mention _all suffering and torture that has happened in the
past_

I'm really glad for your cool situation. You are one of the lucky ones.

Maybe it's a simulation created by accident, as a by-product of some other
process. That isn't what you're saying. What you're saying is that you think
there is a possibility this is a game, or some kind of VR hologram. Your
reasoning seems to be that you need to go through bad experience to then feel
good ones. Which is completely flawed on its own. Social and cultural
relativism has been debunked by science over and over again. We see morals
emerging independent of experience. Some people will never know what it means
to be a paraplegic, or blind, and on and on. The idea that one needs to pay
their dues assumes some kind of karmic balance, which is garbage. Thankfully
many people have a good life, but through history, all of this suffering,
death, carnage -- no intelligent being alive would think that was worth a dime
for your washboard abs. Stop victimising yourself by going with this ignorance
is bliss bullshit. It will make you feel good in the short term, but... I
think we've gotten personal enough. Let's try to keep it with the simulation
thing, eh? I've done some awesome shit too. Wouldn't use that as an excuse to
play Dr Mengele though. Kind of messed up.

~~~
CuriouslyC
The need to be able to experience pain to know pleasure isn't about social or
cultural relativism, it's a function of how we perceive stimuli. Try putting
your hand in hot water for a while, then put your hand in cold water, and
repeat the procedure without first putting your hand in hot water. The cold
water will feel much colder going from the hot water. Research has also
demonstrated that pain that doesn't change in character or intensity is
noticed less over time. Our perceptions are not based on some absolute scale
but relative to other perceptions.

My argument is that in order for a game or story to be compelling, the outcome
must be uncertain, and the possibility of loss or failure must exist. Nobody
wants to play a game that is basically "push start to win" and nobody wants to
read a story that is basically "a long time ago, in a land far far away,
everybody lived happily ever after".

I'm happy to stay out of the personal, you were the one that brought up your
depression. I'll leave that track with the suggestion that maybe it is worth
entertaining the possibility that your depression isn't the result of some
chemical imbalance resulting from a bad draw of the genetic lottery, but
rather a product of your beliefs and thought process.

I don't see how I'm "victimising" myself by recognizing that there is both
good and bad in the universe, and put on the cosmic scale, the good massively
outweighs the bad.

~~~
cairo_x
OMG I'm cured. Thanks Mr Mansplain. Great therapeutic use of passive
aggression! I can't tell you how useful this has been! All my own doing! Of
course! You should write a monograph on the subject: "Depression is
existential angst in people with whom one disagrees: how I created a universe
of suffering and lifeless rocks in order to provide relative validity to my
own thoroughly dealt with existential angst, which I am in complete control
of, and for which is certainly not the reason for having created said universe
in the first place."

