Welcome to the Machine, Part 1: The ethics of simulated beings

Without a doubt some of my favorite video games of all time have been those that involve simulations, including SimCity and The Sims. When I play these games I fancy myself a demigod, managing and manipulating the slew of variables made available to me; with the click of a mouse I can alter the environment and adjust the nature of the simulated inhabitants themselves.

...

Complete entry

Posted by jcs  on  04/10  at  12:11 AM

My initial reaction is that the motivation for this problem, as you've stated it, is a little like seeing a photograph in another photograph and then wondering if you were merely a photograph!

First off, I'm assuming that I'm in what you suspect may be a "simulation" and two things I'm very certain about is that I can feel pain and I don't like it. I also assume, although I can't prove, that others feel pain. Therefore, even if we can't figure out what exactly is going on, we still have a pretty good foundation for some sort of ethics based on avoiding suffering, like utilitarianism. I would also argue that the existence of pain in this world is incompatible with the idea of us being "merely simulants" in the same sense that a video game character is a "mere simulant".

Now, assuming that something like functionalism is true and that being a "simulant" makes sense, you've basically stated a version of creationism where the creator has decided to be apparently silent when it comes to his/her expectations. The silence assumption must be true from at least someone's perspective since it wouldn't make much sense for you to say that we need to figure out something that everyone has already figured out.

Therefore, someone to whom he has remained silent (assuming they even care) should probably:

a) Look for indirect evidence of his/her purpose in the simulation itself.
b) Seek out chosen people who he has decided to communicate his will to.
c) Seek to become one of the chosen who he communicates directly to.

Welcome to Theism!

Of course you've also left open the possibility of the creator being himself a "simulant". This could be seen as a restatement of the gnostic idea of a Demiurge or even some Christian ideas regarding Satan. The natural extension of this idea is that if we become capable of creating simulants like ourselves, then we actually become a sort of inauthentic god, or Demiurge, since we aren't ourselves certain about or in control of the absolute reality that enslaves us. So the question is then flipped on it's head. What do we expect from our simulants and how do we convey our will to them?

Given the fact that our major selling point for creating these simulants so far seems to be variations on either "just to see what happens" or to "make them our virtual slaves", it strikes me that we wouldn't be very good Demiurges. This in turn could come in conflict with someone in our own chain of creators. For some ideas about what might happen next see any apocalyptic text.

So, all this seems to imply the need for some sort of ethics based on the expectations of the creator at the highest level of control.

Welcome to Monotheism!

-jcs

---

Add your comment here:

Name:

Email:

Location:

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Please enter the word you see in the image below: