[extropy-chat] Are ancestor simulations immoral? (An attempted survey)

[Lee Corbin]

Samantha writes

> Also, I have a suspicion that any sufficiently powerful intelligence  
> creates de facto simulations just in the act of mulling over  
> scenarios due to the greater level of detail and scope involved.  If  
> so then simulations naturally arise from the very thoughts and  
> daydreams of sufficiently advanced minds.

A good point that should be kept in mind.

> I doubt this world or our current small selves are sufficiently  
> interesting for such astronomical numbers of simulated copies to be  
> at all likely.

I wish that those who believe that there is a good chance that *we*
are living in a simulation would remember this!

> [Robert wrote]
> > to run billions and billions of RBs (some of whom are bound to  
> > suffer horribly and die) then some holier than I people are going  
> > to be bound and determined to prevent me from doing that.  The only  
> > way that seems possible is to either (a) imprison me on the Earth  
> > (or even in a very high security prison) or (b) take the nanobots  
> > to my mind and force the removal of such "immoral" thoughts ( i.e.  
> > state or equivalent "mind control").
> 
> Who says it is immoral?  Silly maybe, but immoral?

Oh, I can easily see why folks might say it's immoral. Consider
even the case where mere rumination of an extremely advanced 
being---as you wrote before---amounts to horrible torture of
a human-equivalent sophont. It's *real* easy to say that such
thoughts on the part of such an advanced entity are not moral.
In fact, I concur, unless it can be shown that this vast 
creature gets such overwhelming benefit from the activity
that it becomes worth it, globally. 

> I would rather risk suffering and dying, even countless times,  in  
> some lunatic posthuman hell than allow some sophonts such unlimited  
> power to forbid absolutely anything and everything that might be used  
> somehow, sometime in a way they don't like.   That would be worse  
> than hell for me.

Sure that you are not exaggerating?  Provided that I fell in
to the clutches of a rather benevolent AI, life could still be
very full of almost everything I value. True, I couldn't engage
in "too accurate" historical simulations and a few other banned
activities, but I'd greatly prefer it to your "suffering and
and dying countless times in a posthuman hell".

Lee