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

[Samantha Atkins]

On May 23, 2006, at 7:27 PM, Russell Wallace wrote:

> On 5/24/06, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
> I also suspect that one reason for creating a  historical sim is to
> tweak the factors involved as minimally as possible to get a
> different and better outcome.  This could be one way to learn more
> deeply from experience.
>
> There might be other reasons for doing it too.
>
> Suppose you invented a time machine (of the science fiction variety  
> that can take you back to any point in history without announcing  
> your presence by flinging solar masses of unobtainium around the  
> place). What's the first thing you do with it? Well, the  
> traditional answer is straightforward: maybe you want to attend  
> Woodstock or talk philosophy with Socrates or go dinosaur hunting  
> or whatever, but along the way you stop off and kill Hitler.
>
> If you subscribe to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum  
> mechanics (as I do) then you have created an Everett branch in  
> which Hitler died early, therefore hopefully in which the Holocaust  
> didn't occur. This is good, is it not?

As I understand it QM interpretations do not apply to macro level  
reality generally speaking.  So I don't think MWI can be claimed to  
give you such a macro level branching.

>
> Now suppose you create a simulation of Earth ~1930 onward, accurate  
> in every respect except that Hitler died early in your simulation  
> and therefore the Holocaust didn't occur. Given that by hypothesis  
> a simulation is subjectively indistinguishable from a "real"  
> Everett branch, should this not be considered good in exactly the  
> same way?
>

Hmm.  I don't know.  Do the beings within have the same chances for  
Singularity and transcendence?

- samantha
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