SimWorld without suffering

[Midnight Pete]

SimWorld without suffering

A Sim can't suffer. A Sim is just a bunch of pixels. And even if SimWorld were complex enough --insanely complex-- to let you the programmer know when one of your Sims has a urinary infection or is clinically depressed, they're still just pixels. And Simworld is just a computer program.

 

[PolyHedral]

And the difference between a man and a sufficiently advanced program is...?

 

[Midnight Pete]

And the difference between a man and a sufficiently advanced program is...?

Life!

A sufficiently advanced program, a hard AI with human-level intelligence is never going to be human.

 

[PolyHedral]

Life, as in Game Of?

(Incidentally, a fancy bit of mathematics proves that that game can simulate the whole universe, life itself included.)

 

[Zadok]

There's nothing clever about leukemia, melanoma, breast cancer, tornadoes, testicular cancer, frostbite, lymes disease, malaria, toxoplsmosis, trichinosis, mental retardation, schizophrenia, alzheimer's, toxic shock syndrome, volcanoes, thyroid disease, dismemberment, paralysis, tetanus, cholera, influenza, diabetes, earthquakes, tsunamis, ovarian cysts, cystic fibrosis, parkinson's disease, SARS, blindness, deafness, muteness, hemophilia, hurricanes, bronchitis, bulimia, anorexia, bunions, cold sores, impotence, ingrown nails, sudden infant death syndrome, menstrual cramps, melanoma, human papilloma virus, syphillis, mumps, malasia, myopia, scabies, scars, sleepwalking, allergies, osteoperosis, ear infections, nausea, obesity, meteor impacts, famine...

One could literally go on for pages... pages and pages and pages.

Now.. how much of that is really necessary for God's "game" even in this short life span when it's possible to have NONE of it and still have free will and complete happiness?

Have to say for myself, it's hard to fathom the scope of it but when a list is made like that... and with the realization that such a list is woefully inadequate to really even BEGIN to describe the suffering God allows in this world...

It really begins to look like God is an ***hole without explanation.

You may have missed the point. If you do not have a stake in the game (something to give or lose); what is the reason to play it? What is a choice without consequences?

Often when I am consulting with a company they will present me with problems that they want solved, my first question is – What have you tried or done about this so far? What is the solution worth to your company?

You have a fine list of concerns – now what are you doing about anything on the list? Why do you expect more of G-d than you do yourself or those you call friends?

Zadok

 

[Falvlun]

Virtual reality isn't hard when you control the whole universe.

There's a difference between saying "God controls the universe" and "I understand how God controls the universe."

That's Meow's point; Assuming that God is both omnipotent and omnibenevolant directly contradicts reality (since suffering exists) and therefore can't be true.

Unless, of course, suffering is necessary for the greatest amount of good.

Cue Meow claiming that this is special pleading, cue me asking why it is special pleading.

 

[Willamena]

I really doubt that leukemia kids can wish their suffering away or try to ignore it. I really... really doubt it.

That's not implied in what I said.

 

[Meow Mix]

Unless, of course, suffering is necessary for the greatest amount of good.

Cue Meow claiming that this is special pleading, cue me asking why it is special pleading.

Evidence for suffering being necessary for the greatest amount of good?

If none, then it's special pleading.

 

[Quagmire]

This is a tie-in to my earlier thread "God the Programmer," where I made the argument that if we can program it, God can do it. This is in response to people who say that the reason suffering exists is because of some inexplicable good that comes from it or that God was somehow forced to create suffering in order to make a world.

If we can program a world that doesn't have physical suffering or innocent victims then why couldn't God have made reality that way?

Consider a hypothetical program designed to demonstrate this, a "SimWorld."

Normally in the course of programming a video game, programmers will program the basic "universal rules" which govern how objects behave, which usually consist of rules like "objects at rest stay at rest until acted on by a force" and things like that. But what happens in a game that isn't finished being developed yet?

For instance, in an unfinished version of Grand Theft Auto where collision detection hasn't been worked out yet between cars and pedestrians, if you tried to hit a pedestrian you would actually pass right through them -- the pedestrians would be completely unscathed and so would the driver without violating any of the world's game rules up to that point. The same is true for swinging a sword at someone such as in Mount & Blade, in order to cut someone the game has to have collision detection specifically programmed to recognize when a sword strikes a person. It doesn't violate any game rules for the sword to pass right through a person if this collision detection isn't programmed in yet.

Clearly, collision detection rules are a significant source of suffering in God's program (the world). So it's an important thing to keep in mind if we're making a hypothetical world that's completely consistent but that doesn't contain physical suffering or innocent victims.

Next important topic is inertia. There's a game called Big Rigs that's a notoriously bad game because of several programming flaws (for a racing game): one of which involves the fact that if you put your truck in reverse, you can accelerate infinitely and if you release the button you just stop instantly to a dead stop no matter how fast you were accelerating. Why would this happen? Because the game "designers" (I refuse to call them that ) forgot to deliberately program inertia into this action (inertia works if you move forward, which is important to realize that the rules can be different for different circumstances in a program).

Inertia is a source of suffering: the reason a baseball bat hurts is because of its inertia. If you conditionally remove the inertia of something that's going to strike someone, then it will just come to a dead stop without imparting any force (and therefore pain) into the person.

It's really quite easy to program a world without suffering. One method is removing collision detection between anything that could hurt a person and that person, another is taking away inertia of anything that could hurt a person when it strikes them. Likewise it's easy to see how a virus could be stopped by just adding more lines of code to prevent people from getting sick.

I don't buy into this argument that God "had" to create suffering for some inexplicable reason. It's entirely possible to completely cognitively construct a fully functional world in which suffering never enters the picture and in which citizens would still have free will and happiness.

The Problem of Evil takes it away from there.

You forgot to take into account the fact that without these "collision detection rules", no one would buy or play these games.

 

[Willamena]

Evidence for suffering being necessary for the greatest amount of good?

If none, then it's special pleading.

A world without suffering is a world without compassion. Does the loss of compassion contribute to "good"?

 

[PolyHedral]

A world without suffering is a world without compassion.

Why? I can't think of any reason for that to be true.

 

[Willamena]

Why? I can't think of any reason for that to be true.

"compassion: Deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it"

 

[Meow Mix]

You forgot to take into account the fact that without these "collision detection rules", no one would buy or play these games.

There's a difference between playing a game for pleasure and simulating a universe.

The universe can still be fun without suffering. For instance, imagine if you were in this simworld and you were playing Grand Theft Auto (WITH the detection rules). You'd experience challenge, but you wouldn't suffer yourself.

Why does the programmer of OUR world find it necessary to program child leukemia into the mix? Does that make our "sim" fun? Should we not bother "playing" our sim if there are no leukemia rules?? I don't think anyone would argue so!

 

[Meow Mix]

A world without suffering is a world without compassion. Does the loss of compassion contribute to "good"?

Yep, actually.

To have compassion -- or heroes, for instance -- you have to have suffering.

A world without compassion but that still has suffering is pretty awful.

But a world without compassion because there's no suffering is a wonderful world.

Think of it like this: a world without antibodies to a terrible disease where that disease exists is awful.

But a world without antibodies to a terrible disease that doesn't exist -- what's the problem? Is our world somehow less good than a world that has awful disease X and antibodies for it? Are we lacking in goodness because we don't have these heroic antibodies in our universe? NO -- we're just FINE without them. And so would people be just fine without compassion if suffering didn't exist.

Ultimately, the existence of compassion is a bad thing. It means suffering exists at all. And please, nobody take that out of context. Compassion is good IF suffering exists.

 

[Zadok]

Yep, actually.

To have compassion -- or heroes, for instance -- you have to have suffering.

A world without compassion but that still has suffering is pretty awful.

But a world without compassion because there's no suffering is a wonderful world.

Think of it like this: a world without antibodies to a terrible disease where that disease exists is awful.

But a world without antibodies to a terrible disease that doesn't exist -- what's the problem? Is our world somehow less good than a world that has awful disease X and antibodies for it? Are we lacking in goodness because we don't have these heroic antibodies in our universe? NO -- we're just FINE without them. And so would people be just fine without compassion if suffering didn't exist.

Ultimately, the existence of compassion is a bad thing. It means suffering exists at all. And please, nobody take that out of context. Compassion is good IF suffering exists.

I have been pondering your responses and this thread for a while and have some more thoughts. The universe is quite old and has been around for billions of years while our life experience is at best around 100 years. I suggested in the past that the amount of suffering we experience and observe while living is of very little consequence in the overall dynamics of this vast universe and possible universes for both space and time. Against this very minuscule landscape of time and space we are assuming that we understand the entire scheme of things. Maybe but then again maybe not!

It is very possible that for millions and even billions of years we have been playing with G-d’s simulation games where there was no suffering – no collision or minimal software to register pain and suffering. We have evolved and mastered “the game” at every level possible – with one exception. There is a lot of indication in many ancient writings (including Biblical) that our current life is a “final test” or “trial” that will have a significant impact moving forward.

So here is my thought. This short test of extremely minuscule proportions is the final level in which we are tested and play against the very most or highest level possible of G-d’s games. As we don our mortal avatar for this last and final test we are playing with all the “realism” possible and all the reality possibilities set to maximum. We are playing in the “holo-deck” for real including all the suffering there is possible. An evil trick? Not if all other levels have been mastered and have become boring.

What good is a pilot that has only flown simulations and never a real plane? How practical is the surgeon that has ever performed on a live patient? What is a seaman that has never been on actual water or experienced a storm? How much can we trust a soldier that has never even used live ammo or been in actual combat? I can still remember the first time I performed with a band before a live audience. I remember it well because it was nothing like practice.

There are some things that can only be learned under real circumstances and one great class of the great things learned is your own strengths, weaknesses and abilities when really put to the test.

Thanks for bring up this subject

Zadok

 

[PolyHedral]

It is very possible that for millions and even billions of years we have been playing with G-d’s simulation games where there was no suffering – no collision or minimal software to register pain and suffering. We have evolved and mastered “the game” at every level possible – with one exception. There is a lot of indication in many ancient writings (including Biblical) that our current life is a “final test” or “trial” that will have a significant impact moving forward.

If some of the more optimistic predictions are right, you may be among the last generation to die. Or you might not even die at all.

What good is a pilot that has only flown simulations and never a real plane? How practical is the surgeon that has ever performed on a live patient? What is a seaman that has never been on actual water or experienced a storm?

If the simulation is absolutely realistic, (and why not? We're talking about universe-creating powers here.) exactly as good, if not better, than the real thing.

 

[Meow Mix]

I have been pondering your responses and this thread for a while and have some more thoughts. The universe is quite old and has been around for billions of years while our life experience is at best around 100 years. I suggested in the past that the amount of suffering we experience and observe while living is of very little consequence in the overall dynamics of this vast universe and possible universes for both space and time. Against this very minuscule landscape of time and space we are assuming that we understand the entire scheme of things. Maybe but then again maybe not!

It is very possible that for millions and even billions of years we have been playing with G-d’s simulation games where there was no suffering – no collision or minimal software to register pain and suffering. We have evolved and mastered “the game” at every level possible – with one exception. There is a lot of indication in many ancient writings (including Biblical) that our current life is a “final test” or “trial” that will have a significant impact moving forward.

So here is my thought. This short test of extremely minuscule proportions is the final level in which we are tested and play against the very most or highest level possible of G-d’s games. As we don our mortal avatar for this last and final test we are playing with all the “realism” possible and all the reality possibilities set to maximum. We are playing in the “holo-deck” for real including all the suffering there is possible. An evil trick? Not if all other levels have been mastered and have become boring.

What good is a pilot that has only flown simulations and never a real plane? How practical is the surgeon that has ever performed on a live patient? What is a seaman that has never been on actual water or experienced a storm? How much can we trust a soldier that has never even used live ammo or been in actual combat? I can still remember the first time I performed with a band before a live audience. I remember it well because it was nothing like practice.

There are some things that can only be learned under real circumstances and one great class of the great things learned is your own strengths, weaknesses and abilities when really put to the test.

Thanks for bring up this subject

Zadok

But why would an omniscient being need to "test" anything?

If the test is for us to learn something rather than for God to learn something, why can't an omnipotent being just impart the knowledge to us directly and painlessly?

What is there to learn through pain if pain didn't exist? Consider for a moment that some arguments are correct, and that pain is there to teach: then consider that pain disapears shortly after. What could we have possibly learned from the pain that couldn't have been learned otherwise, or that isn't now completely extraneous? (For instance, "don't touch the hot stove" becomes completely extraneous in the absence of suffering!)

 

[Meow Mix]

If the simulation is absolutely realistic, (and why not? We're talking about universe-creating powers here.) exactly as good, if not better, than the real thing.

But reality isn't qualitatively different from a program.

Reality IS a program if a god exists, and god created it. That's what the universe is: a program.

Thus there is ZERO difference (only one of scale) between us programming a simulation and God creating the universe.

 

[PolyHedral]

 

[Meow Mix]

LMAO. I'm not familiar with LISP or PERL but that's great.