playing God

[Matt R.]

One last somewhat nitty point:

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In our program, the pain mechanism evolved to help the sentient beings cope with the world.


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No, the pain mechanism evolved to help the organisms acquire the resources and environments necessary to sustain themselves. It is useless ("not selected for" or "not fit," I should say - evolution doesn't work toward a purpose, it just happens) when those resources are abundant.


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Your first sentence is just restating what I said in different words. Coping with the world in terms of survival means helping the organisms acquire resources and reproduce. Your second sentence I disagree with, and although it's nitty I think it is important. Even when resources are abundant it's kind of crazy to claim that pain becomes "useless", imo. If someone has tons of resources, food, shelter, etc. does it becomes useless for your body to tell you "stop doing that" when you put your hand on a hot stove?

[FortunaMaximus]

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Since you are completely omnipotent over this universe, what are your responsibilities to these life forms, and at what point do you become responsible?

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Any responsibility is to yourself as creator, nothing more, nothing less. If the usage of energy is sustainable and not a drain on your overall resources, there is no reason the experiment shouldn't continue in perpetuity assuming those conditions are met.

Any moral obligation to the individual entities within a civilization, be it created or emergent, should be internal obligations. So it's the omnipotent being's own moral code that determines. If a ethical and moral code emerges in the experiment, it's an artifact of the experiment and has no bearing on the creator.

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And if your computing power should, at the end of the semester, be required by the university for other purposes and projects, are you prepared to break any rules to prevent your program from being deleted?

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Preference bias, perhaps, but if the experiment serves no useful purpose and the energy requirements are a drain and enough conclusions have been made based on the iteration, and the creator is able to resume similar when he is again able to summon the energy levels necessary... <takes a moment to squint at language, oh well>

If I glossed over the replies, that's only because those are internal functions within the experiment and really has no major bearing on its continuation.

As for the data collected, if it cannot be preserved out of the experiment, then it shouldn't be initially run at all. If it has to be run, and stoppage of the experiment causes loss of data, and there is always a way to sustain the energy requirements, the perpetuity point made applies.

That and a cup of coffee can run a civilization for a very long time. A couple of centuries is somewhat pessimistic, is it not?

[madnak]

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If we have an individual who is very unhappy and experiences a lot of pain in their life, I don't think it is a stretch to say that it doesn't take much to make that person feel good in some way. Of course it depends on the individual, but in general, if someone has a lot of crappy things happening to them at once, and someone goes out of their way to do even the tiniest thing to make them feel better, it can potentially make a huge difference. Now if we take away that extreme discomfort, it would appear that it takes "more" to make that person happy. A starving person may be ecstatic over a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but a wealthy person who eats like a king probably doesn't go nuts when someone offers them a PB&J. For strong evidence of this, look at the opposite extreme. People who are extremely spoiled may get angry because their birthday present is a Mercedez in the WRONG COLOR. When we remove all the bad stuff and the struggle in their life, they tend to lose all perspective about what is important.

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I think in many cases you're just making claims that are plain false. It seems that way to you, but not to me. Still, what you're referring to is a psychological mechanic that exists - I have seen nothing to suggest it exists in the form you're expressing, but it does exist. Sometimes I go take a walk in the cold, more because I'll feel warm and refreshed when I get back in than because I feel good outside. Sometimes I won't eat breakfast or lunch if I'm having a good dinner, because hunger amplifies the experience.

But "amplifies" is the critical term here. If my "happiness level" is at -320 because I'm starving, and then I get a peanut butter sandwich, that sandwich might have a dramatic effect on my "happiness level." It might raise it all the way up to -240. And a +80 increase is cause for celebration. But if I'm at +130 because I'm wealthy and live like a king, then a peanut butter sandwich may actually cause a decrease to +128 for me. If I'm at +50 and a "normal" human being, then it might be pretty unremarkable and have no effect. If I'm just famished and at 0, maybe it will raise me to +3.

So the significance of the sandwich does certainly depend on my current happiness level. But it will never improve my happiness level beyond a certain point. And if I'm above that point, of course the sandwich won't appeal to me - the point that it brings me closer to is only +50, and if I'm at +70, then it constitutes a pretty poor meal.

There may be ways to exploit this mechanic - in fact, my habits represent such exploitations. There are also situations in which it doesn't apply - past a certain level of starvation it actually gets better, and eating something may only give you the energy to feel more hungry. These things typically go in waves.

Still, the fact I might want to exploit the mechanic among the people of my universe is no indication that I would permit torture among them. Allowing them to get a bit nippy before a dinner they're looking forward to is a long way from allowing them to starve (which is categorically unjustifiable, in my opinion).

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Now what some of you appear to be suggesting to do, is to alter the code of our program in some way to remove short spans of torture, which is certainly caused by pain. What I am wondering, is why would you do such a thing? I could understand re-coding occasionally if it suits your fancy, but to insure no unhappiness or pain seems like a stretch to me. Especially when it almost certainly leads to a sense of being spoiled in the sentient beings, and their getting angry over the color of their new Mercedez.

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Still not buying it. The phenomenon of being "spoiled" is probably, according to every scholar I respect, the result of receiving insufficient emotional care, especially during early childhood. They're spoiled because they have too much pain, not too little. Once again I'll repeat that emotional concerns are a bigger issue than physical concerns, especially in developed nations, and this is not a topic you've touched on at all.

So I'll touch on it in a more powerful way - I'm in a psychiatric ward right now. To some extent this is due to early trauma. Let me make something very clear - extreme pain is qualitatively different from minor pain. And it makes you feel things that most people never have to feel. Let me make one other thing clear - the people at the bottom are the hardest to make happy, by far. I and others in this facility have sought treatment for many years (50+ in some cases). We've been through dozens of medications in addition to various physical and psychological forms of treatment, and nothing has worked. Some people who are tortured do seem to have an inherent ability to "spring back." Still, most end up dealing with severe psychological abnormalities for the rest of their lives.

You said earlier that the people who suffer most are the easiest to make happy. You don't think it's a stretch. I do. And to me the facts about the issue are so numerous and so fully in support of my position that your statement indicates major ignorance regarding how people and their emotions actually work.

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As to the claim that you are not suggesting to remove all displeasure: this goes back to Metric's point. Once you remove the "lowest common denominator" of discomfort, won't your programs then demand that the next level up be removed as well? When does it stop?

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When I say it does. Did you forget for a second that I'm God?

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I guess what I am wondering is this. Say you decide you want to re-code your program to feed a starving young person from a poor region. How do you justify intervening to give someone with X amount of food a free ticket, yet NOT give the person with X + dX (tiniest amount possible) the food? If you say, "well I'll give both of them the food" it appears to me you've just started a giant cascade where you must give into everyone's demands to not turn into an almighty ass. Better get that infinite Ferrari well working.

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I don't want to call you ignorant about economics as well, but giving everyone sufficient food and other vital resources (oil, metals, crops) would go without saying. There are theorists (I don't agree with them) who even suggest that all of society's problems stem directly from resource limitations. My divisions would be made along qualitative, not quantitative, lines. There might be areas where I'd have to make quantitative decisions, and I'd probably just use calculus for those. Call me superstitious - I think every direct problem of quantitative balance can be expressed in the form of a curve with maxima and minima.

[madnak]

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My point in using the prissy spoiled teen as an example, is that even after you give someone all the resources they could ever need and want

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Like stable, appropriate family life and a general sense of validation? Oh wait, you didn't give that to the prissy teen. And, while I'm no expert on prissy teens, I'd still take 3:2 that 95% of those particular teens come from families that are clearly dysfunctional, and that plenty of rich girls who get "everything they want" don't express such symptoms.

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they will almost certainly STILL FIND SOMETHING TO COMPLAIN ABOUT.

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I don't really care what they complain about.

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And if we do decide to just relegate our intervention to consumable necessities

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Who ever said that?

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what happens if we give our starving person a meal yet someone with more power steals it from them?

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Specific solutions would depend on program structure. I might just make thieves up and die, if something more complex weren't possible. If someone is stealing simply to deprive someone else, I have no trouble with them dying. Painlessly, needless to say - fearlessly, peacefully...but still dying. I might even give extra happy pills to the surviving family members! Then again, if it were possible I could send criminals to prison. "Prison" being a personal pleasure universe for the individual.

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Or what happens when they can't find clothes or shelter?

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Providing those goes without saying. Or at least providing the constituent components and making it clear that I'll smite anyone who tries to dominate the supply. Or just send them to prison.

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What if the climate they are in is unbearably cold or hot?

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Obviously they can teleport anywhere they want geographically, and I'll make it easy for them to create buildings that are bigger on the inside than the outside, maybe even materials that will assume whatever shape they want but will be otherwise completely static (and indestructible). And a kind of pendant they can wear that will make them immune to the effects of extreme temperature (and eliminate the need to breath, eat, and sleep - unless they want to). I could go on all day.

And then there's the whole proposition mechanism. They can just ask for a climate change, and I might even grant it if they have good reasons.

[madnak]

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Your first sentence is just restating what I said in different words. Coping with the world in terms of survival means helping the organisms acquire resources and reproduce. Your second sentence I disagree with, and although it's nitty I think it is important. Even when resources are abundant it's kind of crazy to claim that pain becomes "useless", imo. If someone has tons of resources, food, shelter, etc. does it becomes useless for your body to tell you "stop doing that" when you put your hand on a hot stove?

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No, and it's true I might not be able to stop that level of pain. So oh well. But the "resource" they "aren't getting enough of" here is protection from burns. Make them all immune to burns and then they can touch hot stoves all they like without feeling pain. I am a proponent of the theory that pain is a response that tells us something is undesirable. Making everything desirable, then, eliminates any need for coping with undesirable situations - they don't exist!

[Matt R.]

Bump to reply. I haven't been to the forum in awhile. I'll break the responses up into a couple posts for clarity.

I'll be honest, I don't understand the overall point you are getting at. In particular, it seems your are disagreeing with me in one breath yet agreeing with in another, yet disagreeing with me again when you apply the reasoning to our programmed world.

For instance:

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I think in many cases you're just making claims that are plain false.

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Okay, so my claim is that someone's happiness level is a dynamic quantity which varies with their comfort level. You disagree with this. Roughly, my claim is that if someone is uncomfortable, then it takes less "absolute resources" to make that person comfortable and happy. For instance, it only takes a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to make a starving person comfortable and happy (even if it is somewhat brief). If you give a rich man a PB&J, it won't increase his happiness at all. In fact, if you force him to eat it, as you said it may even decrease his happiness. Happiness and comfort level clearly depends on what the baseline is for the individual. Increasing someone's baseline by giving them INFINITE resources will increase someone's basal resource requirements to become happy.

I don't understand why you disagree with this assertion, and in fact it appears that you don't in your next paragraphs:

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Still, what you're referring to is a psychological mechanic that exists - I have seen nothing to suggest it exists in the form you're expressing, but it does exist. Sometimes I go take a walk in the cold, more because I'll feel warm and refreshed when I get back in than because I feel good outside. Sometimes I won't eat breakfast or lunch if I'm having a good dinner, because hunger amplifies the experience.


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OK, so I guess you agree? I don't understand what you mean when you say that you have never "seen it in the form I'm suggesting". Is it the Mercedez example? So, the girl is lying when she says she wants a different color Mercedez? She just wants a hug? I don't completely disagree with this -- but the emotional detachment almost certainly stems from her parents flinging resources at her just because she wants them. In other words, pain/unhappiness STILL EXISTS when you start giving people tons of the stuff they want. So, we certainly have not solved the problem of unhappiness simply by feeding someone when they are hungry. And as for the Mercedez girl that I used as an example, I knew someone similar (although it wasn't as extreme as "omg, this color is totally not what I want). Her parents were fantastic and were always there for her. Yet she still always needed that extra $900 purse or $600 pair of shoes that were in fashion. She was quite the unhappy camper when she didn't get the material things she wanted. Essentially, she trained herself over time to psychologically need the trivial outlandishly expensive clothes and accessories -- and when she didn't get them she was clearly less happy.

So I think you agree with me on my overall point, but you disagree with the example I used with the car. I do agree that it is a *combination* of emotional and material needs. But I think the emotional needs actually are a result of using material possessions as a substitute -- and even if you give that person the emotional part, giving them all the resources they want obviously "shifts" the baseline level of happiness/comfort that I referred to earlier.

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Still, the fact I might want to exploit the mechanic among the people of my universe is no indication that I would permit torture among them. Allowing them to get a bit nippy before a dinner they're looking forward to is a long way from allowing them to starve (which is categorically unjustifiable, in my opinion).


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I agree that it's a BIG difference. But the pain caused by both is rooted in the same psychological mechanisms. They are just on different ends of the spectrum.

The problem, which is my main point, is that once you give the food, their baseline requirements for happiness clearly will "shift up", as I discussed before. This is not a problem by itself, but remember, you can simply encode WHATEVER YOU WANT TO in your program. What justification you have to stop there? You have now shifted the basal level of happiness up -- we have solved the food problem for some people (as long as no one comes along and steals it, btw. Considering that this will likely happen at some point, we certainly haven't solved it for everyone). Now the "bottom feeders" on our happiness scale aren't the starving individuals, it is someone else. We have not removed unhappiness or torture -- on the contrary it will become the same as before over time. One could easily argue that our population will evolve to accodomate their infinite food wells and then the "suffering" ones will have other problems. They will certainly have something to complain about, and it will be justifiable. After all, you are god of the computer world and you can easily fix it. So you do. Now you've shifted the baseline again. So you fix the new problem. Do this enough, and it's easy to see that you're now dealing with problems of infinities where you're just giving them everything. Which you HAVE TO DO if you want to remove "all pain and temporary torture".

You said you would not permit them to starve, but now you would allow them to (for example) freeze to death. If one of your computer world residents now makes the claim "Clearly madnak does not care about us, because if he did he would simply program our world so everyone was at a comfortable temperature", would he be justified. Why or why not?

[Matt R.]

Continuing...

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Still not buying it. The phenomenon of being "spoiled" is probably, according to every scholar I respect, the result of receiving insufficient emotional care, especially during early childhood. They're spoiled because they have too much pain, not too little. Once again I'll repeat that emotional concerns are a bigger issue than physical concerns, especially in developed nations, and this is not a topic you've touched on at all

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The reason I have not touched on it is because I am not the one suggesting to re-program the world to remove unhappiness and pain. Of course there will be people who are emotionally distraught and unhappy. YOU need to be the one to fix this, as you are the one suggesting to remove all the bad stuff that hurts people. I think the universe that evolves based on our programmed algorithms is perfectly fine as is.

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So I'll touch on it in a more powerful way - I'm in a psychiatric ward right now. To some extent this is due to early trauma. Let me make something very clear - extreme pain is qualitatively different from minor pain. And it makes you feel things that most people never have to feel. Let me make one other thing clear - the people at the bottom are the hardest to make happy, by far. I and others in this facility have sought treatment for many years (50+ in some cases). We've been through dozens of medications in addition to various physical and psychological forms of treatment, and nothing has worked. Some people who are tortured do seem to have an inherent ability to "spring back." Still, most end up dealing with severe psychological abnormalities for the rest of their lives.


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OK, their psychological problems are clearly a result of genetics or some defect that is rooted in biology. This is why I said "in general" and "not always" that people's happiness varies with their baseline level of comfort/resources. You have pointed out an instance where this is not true, and I agree it is not true here. Their biology is the problem. Again, I am not suggesting we fix EVERY INSTANCE OF UNHAPPINESS. You are. It is now your responsibility to fix our psych ward patients. Otherwise you clearly have not solved the problem of unhappiness. Are you now suggesting we re-program unfit genotypes? Or are we just re-programming the genotypes which result in unhappiness? How often are we intervening here, and are we going to allow our program to evolve? If we start removing everything but the optimum psychological genotype, this will certainly cause problems with our "brain" evolution. Which genotypes are you fixing or removing exactly? If it is not due to genetics, but severe trauma in the environment (causing long term psychological problems), are you going to "remove" all instances of extreme psychological trauma in your universe? You must see how complicated this becomes in a very short amount of time when you start "fixing" things that are not ideal and cause pain.

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You said earlier that the people who suffer most are the easiest to make happy. You don't think it's a stretch. I do. And to me the facts about the issue are so numerous and so fully in support of my position that your statement indicates major ignorance regarding how people and their emotions actually work.


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Alright, so I guess all I need to be convinced is your solution to the problem. I admit I do not have a degree in psychology and it is not a prime interest of mine. I do agree that the people who are "hardest to make happy" are the ones with biological defects in the brain. This is, again, why I said "in general" for my mechanism of happiness in my previous post. There are definitely exceptions -- which are rooted in brain physiology. But again, I am not the one proposing to fix all brain physiology that results in unhappiness. This is not a problem to me -- some people will clearly be less happy due to their genes AND/OR environment. I do not propose that I should fix every little thing to make everyone happy. I admit that I may be ignorant on psychology -- so prove your case. You claim it is feasible to make everyone happy and have a functioning universe. Show me how you will fix the psychological defects.

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As to the claim that you are not suggesting to remove all displeasure: this goes back to Metric's point. Once you remove the "lowest common denominator" of discomfort, won't your programs then demand that the next level up be removed as well? When does it stop?


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When I say it does. Did you forget for a second that I'm God?



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FANTASTIC! So you're saying you need no justification for your cut-off point, and it's completely arbitrary based on what you want? This is basically what I am saying. And since we can't promise everyone everything, I do not think our conscious program is justified in claiming "clearly, Matt R. does not love us because he doesn't give us X". I completely agree that the god of a programmed universe should be able give whatever he/she/it wants to the individuals within the universe and not be subject to criticism if he/she/it does not give a little bit more.

[Matt R.]

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I don't want to call you ignorant about economics as well, but giving everyone sufficient food and other vital resources (oil, metals, crops) would go without saying. There are theorists (I don't agree with them) who even suggest that all of society's problems stem directly from resource limitations. My divisions would be made along qualitative, not quantitative, lines. There might be areas where I'd have to make quantitative decisions, and I'd probably just use calculus for those. Call me superstitious - I think every direct problem of quantitative balance can be expressed in the form of a curve with maxima and minima.

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Whoa whoa whoa. You've completely lost me here. This question has nothing to do with economics. You are, for all intents and purposes, god of your programmed universe. You can program into the world WHATEVER YOU DESIRE. There is no such thing as scarce resources. There is no economic problem. Framing it as an economic problem is silly.

You *arbitrarily* set your cut-off to give everyone sufficient food and vital resources. If you decide to "use Calculus" and examine "maxima and minima on a curve", or something, could you provide an example of how this would work? I don't understand how you use Calculus to discover some magical "optimal level of resources" for your universe, which imo will be completely arbitrary. What maxima and minima are you looking at, exactly?

Also, do you realize as soon as you come up with a finite "resource value", you will increase the ceiling of your population size? If your universe behaves anything like ours, when you give them more resources their population sizes will simply grow over your previous boundary limited by resources. You now have a new ceiling, more scarce resources, and more suffering after they hit the new ceiling. We have to re-program *again*

I think earlier you said you would give wells of infinite resources. I'm not sure how this would work exactly. For instance, in our universe if you get an answer of infinity in a real physical problem it is a sure sign that something is awry. For instance, sporadically putting wells of infinite energy all over the world would cause huge problems. How do you get around these problems of infinite energies? I guess I'm not seeing how the program logic would work out if you start throwing infinities in there. (feel free to ignore this problem if you aren't suggesting to give your creation stuff like infinite energy).

[Matt R.]

Last post for now, promise:

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they will almost certainly STILL FIND SOMETHING TO COMPLAIN ABOUT.


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I don't really care what they complain about.


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Cool, me neither. So you agree that suffering in some form is inevitable, and removing all instances of suffering is ludicrous unless you constantly tweak the program, rendering all of your original algorithm invalid? I would re-program on occassion as well, but I wouldn't pretend I could fix all instances of unhappiness.

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And if we do decide to just relegate our intervention to consumable necessities


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Who ever said that?


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No one? That's why I said "and if". The reason I included it is because you seemed to be starting off by giving everyone food (a consumable necessity). Are you going to go beyond this, and fix everyone's happy neurons in their brain? If you make a programmed me in your universe, I'd like a Ferrari please that transforms into a Lamborghini at high speeds.

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Specific solutions would depend on program structure. I might just make thieves up and die, if something more complex weren't possible. If someone is stealing simply to deprive someone else, I have no trouble with them dying. Painlessly, needless to say - fearlessly, peacefully...but still dying. I might even give extra happy pills to the surviving family members! Then again, if it were possible I could send criminals to prison. "Prison" being a personal pleasure universe for the individual.


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Wowsa, this is getting complicated. Are you sure your original algorithm (allowing your conscious programs to evolve in the first place) has any value at this point?

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Obviously they can teleport anywhere they want geographically, and I'll make it easy for them to create buildings that are bigger on the inside than the outside, maybe even materials that will assume whatever shape they want but will be otherwise completely static (and indestructible). And a kind of pendant they can wear that will make them immune to the effects of extreme temperature (and eliminate the need to breath, eat, and sleep - unless they want to). I could go on all day.


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I'll admit, these are some cool suggestions. But I don't see how they fit in the framework of a logical algorithm that our universe is based on. What physics are you going to program to for instance, allow "indestructible materials that can take any shape they want"? Would it be some kind of psychic link between the material and individual where it takes on the shape they desire? What if someone made it take on the shape of a nuclear bomb strong enough to blow up the world? Would you just turn that program off? I also think the pendant of invulnerability idea is cool. I wouldn't do it myself because now we're delving into territory of giving people everything they want (I thought you weren't *really* doing this)? At least everyone is happy I guess. The more I think about it, the more I hate the God of our universe for not giving me a pendant that transports a supermodel into my room whenever I get the hormones going. Bastard!

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And then there's the whole proposition mechanism. They can just ask for a climate change, and I might even grant it if they have good reasons.

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Interesting. So if someone talks to you (let's call it prayer), you may or may not intervene to give them what they want? But you certainly wouldn't answer EVERY request. I agree, that would be crazy.