How To Live In A Simulation

by Robin Hanson

5 pages, ebook

Published September 1, 2001

About the author

Robin Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He has a doctorate in social science, master's degrees in physics and philosophy, and nine years of experience as a research programmer in artificial intelligence and Bayesian statistics. With over 3100 citations and sixty academic publications, he's recognized not only for his contributions to economics (especially, pioneering the theory and use of prediction markets), but also for the wide range of fields in which he's been published. He is the author of The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life when Robots Rule the Earth (OUP 2016).

Reviews

[Seth · Rating 2 out of 5]

If, if, if, if, if... so much guesswork involved here.

Hanson thinks that since simulations are most likely to be small, short-lived, and designed for entertainment purposes, to the extent that we have credence in the simulation hypothesis, we should become more disposed to have small moral circles, live for the moment, and make our own lives as fun and interesting as possible. There's an obvious troll response to this, which is that we should instead, on evidential decision theory grounds, keep our lives as boring as they can possibly be and avoid the sort of events simulators might be interested in, to minimize the credence we should have in the simulation hypothesis and obviate the need for all this guesswork. By that standard, I'm succeeding wonderfully.

The obvious troll response to the troll response, of course, is to write a short story about a character who takes the troll response seriously and to paranoid extremes, with an ironic metafictional twist ending in which it is revealed to the protagonist that they are in a simulation and taking the troll response seriously is what made them so interesting and worth simulating. Hey, Scott Alexander, get on this, would ya?

Update 2023-03-20: I made ChatGPT write the thing. Here's its output:

Once upon a time, there was a man named John who had an unusual belief that he lived in a simulation created by a posthuman civilization. He was convinced that his every move and action were being monitored and controlled by an external force. This belief consumed him and led him to live his life in constant fear and paranoia.

John believed that the more interesting and exciting his life was, the more likely it was that he would be discovered as a simulated being. Therefore, he made a conscious effort to be as boring and unremarkable as possible. He would avoid any social interactions, stick to a strict daily routine, and never deviate from it.

Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and John's life remained dull and monotonous. He had convinced himself that his efforts were working, and that he was successfully minimizing his credence in the simulation hypothesis.

But one day, as John was walking down the street, he overheard a conversation between two strangers. They were discussing how interesting it was that John never seemed to deviate from his routine, and how they found it strange that he never engaged in any social activities. John was shocked to hear that he had become a topic of conversation, and his paranoia only grew stronger.

As time passed, John became increasingly isolated and afraid, convinced that the simulation was becoming more aware of his existence. He continued to live his life in the same boring and monotonous way, until one day, he stumbled upon a strange book in a library.

The book was titled "The Simulation Paradox", and as John began to read it, he realized that his paranoia had been unfounded all along. The more he read, the more he realized that his aversion to being interesting was what had made him such an interesting protagonist in his own story.

John was horrified to discover that he was nothing more than a fictional character in a story. He had been created by an author who had used his paranoid behavior as a means of making him more compelling and engaging to readers. His efforts to be as boring as possible had backfired, and he was now trapped in a story that he had no control over.

In the end, John realized that his paranoia had been a self-fulfilling prophecy. By striving to be maximally boring, he had inadvertently made himself one of the most interesting characters in his story. And with that realization, he was forced to confront the fact that his life was nothing more than a fiction, and that he was at the mercy of an unknown author.

[Angelino Desmet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Living to please famous people? Come on... that's not a rabbit hole but a heap of horse dung.