Create worlds unto others as you would have created unto you: A speculative ethics and metacosmology

We live in profound ignorance about it all, that is to say, about our cosmic situation. We do not know whether we are in a simulation, or the dream of a God or Daeva, or, heavens, possibly even everything is just exactly as it appears. All we can do is orient ourselves to the good and hope either that it is within our power to accomplish good, or that it is within the power and will of someone else to accomplish it. All you can choose, in a given moment, is whether to stand for the good or not.

People have claimed that the simulation hypothesis is a reversion to religion. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

---

-Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

Jesus of Nazareth according to the Gospel of Matthew

-I will attain the immortal, undecaying, pain-free Bodhi, and free the world from all pain

Siddhartha Gautama according to the Lalitavistara Sūtra

-“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

Immanuel Kant, who I don’t agree with on much but anyway, The Critique of Practical Reason

Would you create a simulation in which awful things were happening to sentient beings? Probably not- at least not deliberately. Would you create that wicked simulation if you were wholly selfish and creating it be useful to you? Maybe not. After all, you don’t know that you’re not in a simulation yourself, and if you use your power to create suffering for others who suffer for your own selfish benefit, well doesn’t that feel like it increases the risk that others have already done that to you? Even though, at face value, it looks like this outcome has no relation to the already answered question of whether you are in a malicious simulated universe.

You find yourself in a world [no really, you do- this isn’t a thought experiment]. There are four possibilities:

1. You are at the (a?) base level of reality and neither you nor anyone you can influence will ever create a simulation of sentient beings.

2. You are in a simulation and neither you nor anyone you can influence will ever create a simulation of sentient beings.

3. You are at the (a?) base level of reality and either you will create simulations of sentient beings or people you can influence will create simulations of sentient beings.

4. You are in a simulation and either you will create simulations of sentient beings or people you can influence will create simulations of sentient beings.

Now, if you are in a simulation, there are two additional possibilities:

A) Your simulator is benevolent. They care about your welfare.

B) Your simulator is not benevolent. They are either indifferent or, terrifyingly, are sadists.

Both possibilities are live options. If our world has simulators, it may not seem like the simulators of our world could possibly be benevolent- but there are at least a few ways:

1. Our world might be a Fedorovian simulation designed to recreate the dead.

2. Our world might be a kind of simulation we have descended into willingly in order to experience grappling with good and evil- suffering and joy against the background of suffering- for ourselves, temporarily shedding our higher selves.

3. Suppose that copies of the same person or very similar people experiencing bliss do not add to goodness or add to goodness of the cosmos, or add in a reduced way. Our world might be a mechanism to create diverse beings, after all painless ways of creating additional beings are exhausted. After death, we ascend to some kind of higher, paradisical realm.

4. Something I haven’t thought of and possibly can scarcely comprehend.

Some of these possibilities may seem far-fetched, but all I am trying to do is establish that it is possible we are in a simulation run by benevolent simulators. Note also that from the point of view of a mortal circa 2024 these kinds of motivations for simulating the universe suggest the existence of some kind of positive ‘afterlife’ whereas non-benevolent reasons for simulating a world rarely give reason for that. To spell it out, if you’re a benevolent simulator, you don’t just let subjects die permanently and involuntarily, especially after a life with plenty of pain. If you’re a non-benevolent simulator you don’t care.

Thus there is a possibility greater than zero but less than one that our world is a benevolent simulation, a possibility greater than zero but less than one that our world is a non-benevolent situation, and a possible greater than zero and less than one that our world is not a simulation at all. It would be nice to be able to alter these probabilities. and in particular drive the likelihood of being in a non-benevolent simulation down. Now if we have simulators, you (we) would very much prefer that your (our) simulator(s) be benevolent, because this means it is overwhelmingly likely that our lives will go better. We can’t influence that, though, right?

Well…

There are a thousand people each in a separate room with a lever. Only one of the levers works and opens the door to every single room and lets everyone out. Everyone wants to get out of the room as quickly as possible. The person in the room with the lever that works doesn’t get out like everyone else- their door will open in a minute- regardless of whether you pull the lever or not before. What should you do? There is, I think, a rationality to walking immediately to the lever and pulling it. It is a rationality that is not only supported by altruism, even though sitting down and waiting for someone else to pull the lever, or the door to open after a minute, dominates alternative choices it does not seem to me prudentially rational. As everyone sits in their rooms motionless and no one escapes except for the one lucky guy whose door opens after 60 seconds you can say everyone was being rational but I’m not sure I believe it. I am attracted to decision-theoretic ideas that say you should do otherwise and all go and push the lever in your room.

Assume that no being in existence knows whether they are in the base level of reality or not. Such beings might wish for security, and there is a way they could get it- if only they could make a binding agreement across the cosmos. Suppose that every being in existence made a pact as follows:

1. I will not create non-benevolent simulations.

2. I will try to prevent the creation of malign simulations.

3. I will create many benevolent simulations.

4. I will try to promote the creation of benevolent simulations.

If we could all make that pact, and make it bindingly, our chances of being in a benevolent simulation conditional on us being a simulation would be greatly higher.

Of course, on causal decision theory, this is not rational hope, because there is no way to bindingly make the pact. Yet various concepts indicate that it may be rational to treat ourselves as already having made this pact, including:

Evidential Decision Theory (EDT)

Functional Decision Theory (FDT)

Superrationality (SR)

Of course, even on these theories, not every being is going to make or keep the pact, but there is an argument it might be rational to do so yourself, even if not everyone does it. The good news is also that if the pact is rational, we have reason to think that more beings will act in accordance with it. In general, something being rational makes it more likely more entities will do it, rather than less.

Normally, arguments for the conclusion that we should be altruistic based on considerations like this fail because there isn’t this unique setup. We find ourselves in a darkened room behind a cosmic veil of ignorance choosing our orientation to an important class of actions (creating worlds). In doing so we may be gods over insects, insects under gods or both. We making decisions under comparable circumstances- none of us have much reason for confidence we are at the base level of reality. It would be really good for all of us if we were not in a non-benevolent simulation, and really bad for us all if we were.

If these arguments go through, you should dedicate yourself to ensuring only benevolent simulations are created, even if you’re selfish. What does dedicating yourself to that look like? Well:

1. You should advance the arguments herein.

2. You should try to promote the values of impartial altruism- an altruism so impartial that it cares about those so disconnected from us as to be in a different (simulated) world.

Even if you will not be alive (or in this earthly realm) when humanity creates its first simulated sapient beings, doing these things increases the likelihood of the simulations we create being beneficial simulations.

The Angelus Novus, which Walter Benjamin imagined as the angel of history

There’s an even more speculative argument here. If this pact works, you live in a world that, although it may not be clear from where we are standing, is most likely structured by benevolence, since beings that create worlds have reason to create them benevolently. If the world is most likely structured by benevolence, then for various reasons it might be in your interests to be benevolent even in ways unrelated to the chances that you are in a benevolent simulation.

In the introduction, I promised an approach to the simulation hypothesis more like a religion than ever before. To review, we have:

1. The possibility of an afterlife.

2. God-like supernatural beings (our probable simulators, or ourselves from the point of view of what we simulate)

3. A theory of why one should (prudentially) be good.

4. A variety of speculative answers to the problem of evil

5. A reason to spread these ideas.

So we have a kind of religious orientation- a very classically religious orientation- created solely through the Simulation Hypothesis. I’m not even sure that I’m being tongue-in-cheek. You don’t get lot of speculative philosophy these days, so right or wrong I’m pleased to do my portion.

Edit: Also worth noting that if this establishes a high likelihood we like live in a simulation created by a moral being (big if) this may give us another reason to be moral- our “afterlife”. For example, if this is a simulation intended to recreate the dead, you’re presumably going to have the reputation of what you do in this life follow you indefinitely.

I write this blog over many hours a week and make it available for free. I am far from rich. If you would charitably become a paid subscriber and/or help spread the word about this blog I would be grateful.