Intelligence isn’t the important factor there - consciousness is. Does it feel like something to be those entities in the simulation? If yes, then I’d argue that ending the simulation is like killing a person painlessly in their sleep.
I personally don’t think ending the simulation is even the most troubling part. We could unintentionally create a simulation that’s effectively a hell and then populate it with entities that have subjective experiences we don’t realize exist. The only thing worse than ending a life is creating one just for it to suffer through its entire existence.
We could unintentionally create a simulation that’s effectively a hell and then populate it with entities that have subjective experiences we don’t realize exist. The only thing worse than ending a life is creating one just for it to suffer through its entire existence.
And this is basically the plot of the TV series Severance. Has me wondering how they intend to address it.
Didn’t scientists train brain cells to exclusively play Doom? It’s like their whole conscience is stuck in a video game version of hell through a brain in a vat experience.
Not really. It’s not nearly enough cells to have any kind of consciousness as we know it. A few neurons learning to play a game is a far cry from tying a being into a simulation of hell.
I dunno. Some life forms have only a few brain cells. It could mean their whole world for those little cells, wouldn’t it?
It is definitely their entire world, but the point is it takes far more than a few cells to create actual human-relatable sentience.
That’s coming from someone who fully understands and knows that many more animals than most humans care to admit also have sentience.
Those petri dishes are not sentient nor conscious.
Doom, not Far Cry
exclusively play Doom?
How dare they take away their right to variety! /s
The only thing worse than ending a life is creating one just for it to suffer through its entire existence.
Antinatalism entered the chat
Or maybe just well reasoned morality?
USS Calister
Somewhere in a box in your childhood home, a Tamagotchi is slowly dying…
Slowly? Those things would ‘die’ in under 24 hours!
What the fuck is a Tamagotchi
Just turn down the simulation speed real low and run it at one tick per 20 years, then you can technically keep it going without such great expense. The people inside won’t notice the difference.
“Now playing human music, on Earth Radio”
Hahahaha. Eat apple!
If you take the limit of that you’ll realize that people won’t raise if you turn it off either.
the simulacrants wouldn’t realize the simulation is ever not running.
Kurzgesagt made a video about how in a dying universe (from heat death) civilizations that uploaded their consciousness into a simulation could live forever, by intermittently running the simulation and pausing it for greater and greater amounts of time as expendable energy in the universe diminishes. The consciousness would not perceive the time the simulation isn’t running and to them things just go on and on for eternity.
Now imagine an eternal being sitting in a cold planet and seeing the stars fade one by one, until there is nothing to see… And then be there, conscious forever. Alone. In the dark.
If this is a way for our simulation creator to decide to pull the plug without guilt, I guess just go ahead and do it. I was holding out hope that this was all real, but it has been getting more clear that it’s not.
Couldn’t they just make us all infertile and let us die naturally or something?
I’d say that whether or not it’s in a simulation doesn’t matter. If the beings you created were recognizable as people (human or otherwise) then they have rights and you’d be trampling those rights if you ended their existence. The creation of such life should not be done without an appropriate sense of responsibility.
then they have rights
Why? I’m not trolling, I just really think it’s interesting where people think “rights” come from. Some people think they come from God. Which is great, because in this scenario we are God. So anything we do is ethical because we did it.
I contend they come from States. Because I notice that rights are different in different States. And I don’t think a god would obey jurisdiction.
Another way of saying this is that the beings themselves have to recognize and demand rights. Because a state is just people deciding things after all.
So where do the rights come from? Are they a legal/socail construct, or inherent in the universe some how? Some third thing I didn’t think of?
People forget how scary the real world is. We are the only creatures to create this concept of rights. You think that grizzly bear cares about your rights? Got some news for you…
And shit, even we don’t respect other people’s right to exist.
:: gestures very very briefly to… EVERYTHING going on right now::
You think the asteroid that ended 90+% of life on earth cared about the dinosaurs’ rights?
All that being said, I wouldn’t be able to pull the plug.
I wouldn’t want to shut down the simulation, but it would depend on the energy expenditure. A hospital could theoretically save more people if they allocated fifty million dollars per patient. A person’s right to life is contingent on the cost to maintain it.
Good call, I didn’t consider power consumption. I agree with you.
I am of the opinion that rights come from understanding, that recognizing and respecting them is a hallmark of advancing human understanding. States/religions/whatever that lack rights are either less advanced in understanding or motivated to avoid recognizing/respecting them.
If you set the simulation to end before it has begun, do you dodge the question of ethics?
Long story short, no, depending on certain conditions.
Only if it makes a trolley kill someone first.
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Anything above 0 is already entering unethical territory, so…
Yes because then your car battery won’t start
The old question right? Does a simulated (or rather emulated) brain actually think and feel? Or does the computer just output what it would be if it was alive?
I think before I am, but I can’t prove that I’m self aware and not just “pretending” to do so. But because you are a human being like me, I understand that you do too. But that assumption is broken when you are not a physical organism but software running on a computer.
I mean, I get that a software on a computer is something.else. But why is the asumption broken?
One of the Minds in Ian M Banks’ last novel, The Hydrogen Sonata, faces and addresses exactly this problem. Much is at stake, so it’s a meaningful discussion.
You may be referring to the hells, but he had a discussion about having a Mind simulating a particular situation to the point where the participants were basically sentient. In that instance, I do not think it is ethical to end the simulation, but I think it would be ethical to freeze the simulation. If the whole simulation was paused and stored with the potential to be restarted, then no perceivable harm would come to the participants.
You may be referring to the hells
Wasn’t that in Surface Detail?
@dadifer@lemmy.world is talking about Surface Detail, while I was talking about the Hydrogen Sonata.
No this was the simulation of the entire group that was about to subsume as to how they would react to finding out their very important religious document was actually an alien experiment. I think the mind was the Mistake Not… .
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The ethics of a slave owner.
So if a more advanced alien race came over and started torturing and butchering humans, by your logic you’d be perfectly OK with that.
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Do explain then.
Edit: since he’s not picking up, I’ll raise what I think his point might be.
He sees ethics applying to his equals or betters. In that case, even if a more advanced race comes along, it would still apply to him, because he made himself the measuring stick, so he would oppose torturing of, at least, some humans.
Where our dimwitted friend failed to follow the reasoning is that, if value (in the case, being worthy of ethical concern) is in the eye of the beholder, a more advanced race then would see our dimwitted friend as a lesser animal and butcher him with no qualms.
He can’t, he’s merely an unprincipled edgelord.
You’re either a psychopath or an edgy teen (overlapping affairs though).
How do you get to the point where you consider someone to be inferior to you?
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Being stupider
So nobody ever has to worry? Good to know.
criteria
lol
Would killing babies or elderly people be okay then? They can both be much more ignorant than the average person.
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I mean they are “stupider”, at least the babies. Wouldn’t that be enough to be considered inferior in your book?
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You were referring to non-human animals then?
That’s a dangerous line of reasoning. Depending on who you ask, people won’t consider a lot of things “equal or better”.
In no particulary order, a lot of people would not apply ethics to: Animals in general, pets, children, woman or all people of different ethnicitiy, religion or even political views.
I’d argue that ethics should be applied to all living things. Well, at least all things capable of suffering, but that keeps people arguing again - doctors even used to think that human babies aren’t fully capable of that.
Regarding the original question: The simulation isn’t alive. Stopping it won’t ‘kill’ it, assuming it can be resumed. Deleting it, however, argubly is be unethical, yet it does not cause suffering at the very least.
I’d argue that ethics should be applied to all living things.
So what do you eat then?
Applying ethics isn’t saying that it’s unethical.
I’m making this distinction because the post he’s replying to said they “only applied ethics to their equals or betters”, which is appalling: it’s not even concluding that something bad is ethical, it was just outright denying that ethics even applied to “lesser beings”.
Regarding your point, I think it’s widely consensual that killing for sustenance, if no other choices exist, is ethical - even vegans agree with this, and by nature, they don’t tend to agree with much (haha joke, calm down vegans!).
Where it gets more debatable is killing animals, who are very much capable of suffering and do possess a measure of self awareness and intelligence, when alternatives exist.
Makes sense, misunderstood you there.
Since “veganism” is the rejection of exploitation of animals by Man, I’m not sure most vegans would say it’s ethical even when there’s no other option, but they probably wouldn’t judge either way.
It is the rejection of exploitation of animals as far as is possible and practicable, as per the vegan society’s definition.
I’m sure individual opinions can differ and that others might hold more restrictive views, but like you said, in extreme circumstances people would probably not judge, we’re in agreement 🤝
I’m vegan. Even if you argue that plants can suffer - it’s the least amount of suffering I can cause without starving myself.
Also “applying ethics” does not mean it’s automatically unethical - just that I think about it beforehand instead of categorically thinking “it’s okay because I’m something better”.
Dead things.
Thoughts on disabled people?
The fun thing about ethics is that not everyone shares the same rules. Personally, I would probably say it is. (Though is more worse than what we do to cows? Or what we do to other humans in war?) However, others may say they aren’t real, and only an illusion manufactured by the simulation, so it’s fine. There are other arguments I’m sure someone could make too. It’s up for you to decide what your ethics are, not others. There is no universal code of ethics just as there is no universal morality.
Did you just watch “Plaything” on Black Mirror?
I was thinking the microverse battery from Rick and Morty!
Sometimes I think of that episode when I play Rimworld and start harvesting blood and organs from a prisoner
