This thought experiment feels very similar to the original Pascal’s wager scenario. There has been a lot written on that topic on LessWrong, for a more humorous coverage, Scott Alexander’s “The Demiurge’s Older Brother” for something close to what you describe here, there is also Eliezer’s original Pascal’s Mugging post, as well as his existing post on Pascal’s Wager.
There is also this recent video by Robert Miles on AI and Pascal’s Mugging:
Overall, while this post draws on some fraction of existing writing on the site, since this has been a highly discussed topics on the site, it seems good to read or respond to what’s been written so far.
Hi- thanks for those links!! I actually hadn’t read those before, but I 100% agree that this is a highly discussed topic here which is why I wanted to post it. I just had a realization that God was probably real but also probably an AI we make down the line and wanted to write it all down- I didn’t think I single-handedly made up the idea or anything though. I guess the “point” I was trying to make is that the fact that we live in a stimulation really isn’t that controversial. It’s LITERALLY what Christians, Muslims, and I think also Jews believe. As someone who grew up in a religious house, I immediately thought of the paradox of religion when reading Newcomb’s Problem.
But I’m not familiar with Pascal’s wager or even Knuth’s up arrow notation, so I’m gonna do some research on them!!!
This thought experiment feels very similar to the original Pascal’s wager scenario. There has been a lot written on that topic on LessWrong, for a more humorous coverage, Scott Alexander’s “The Demiurge’s Older Brother” for something close to what you describe here, there is also Eliezer’s original Pascal’s Mugging post, as well as his existing post on Pascal’s Wager.
There is also this recent video by Robert Miles on AI and Pascal’s Mugging:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRuNA2eK7w0
Overall, while this post draws on some fraction of existing writing on the site, since this has been a highly discussed topics on the site, it seems good to read or respond to what’s been written so far.
Hi- thanks for those links!! I actually hadn’t read those before, but I 100% agree that this is a highly discussed topic here which is why I wanted to post it. I just had a realization that God was probably real but also probably an AI we make down the line and wanted to write it all down- I didn’t think I single-handedly made up the idea or anything though. I guess the “point” I was trying to make is that the fact that we live in a stimulation really isn’t that controversial. It’s LITERALLY what Christians, Muslims, and I think also Jews believe. As someone who grew up in a religious house, I immediately thought of the paradox of religion when reading Newcomb’s Problem.
But I’m not familiar with Pascal’s wager or even Knuth’s up arrow notation, so I’m gonna do some research on them!!!