X-Message-Number: 32913
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2010 23:12:42 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Re: Cruel World
References: <>

At 02:00 2010-10-06, Robert Ettinger  wrote:
>Message #32909
>From: 
>[...]
>It has been argued that, if uploading becomes possible,  and more generally
>the creation of virtual worlds, then there will be scads of  virtual worlds
>and any world chosen at random is almost sure to be a virtual  one.
>However, it seems likely that virtual worlds will tend to  be pleasant
>ones, since the programmers are unlikely to be sadists. Yet 
>the  world we see or
>whose past we infer is overwhelmingly a cruel one, built that way.

Our world does indeed seem to be built by accident, especially if you 
invoke anthropic selection, which says that the reason things are 
"just right" for our minimal needs is simply that we wouldn't be here 
to discuss the matter, if anything else had happened. With so much 
haphazard suffering, including creatures able to feel pain but not 
able to have moral responsibility like humans, the world seems 
clearly not to have been shaped by any intelligent design, or at 
least, not a particularly benevolent design, and in fact, a design, 
overall, with "neither malice nor mercy"--as Robert Ettinger himself 
has said. This would not square with the thought that most worlds 
should be virtual worlds created by benign advanced beings--we should 
find ourselves in one of these already. It doesn't follow, however, 
that advanced intelligent beings would go out of their way to create 
vast numbers of virtual worlds populated by beings such as ourselves 
who are far inferior and who don't appear to have any direct contact 
with more advanced beings than ourselves (despite some famous 
claims). They might have virtual worlds of a sort for themselves and 
those they would interact directly with only. I say "of a sort" 
because arguably an advanced being would not want to simply immerse 
itself in some illusory environment, but would probably want to 
maintain sensory links with an outside world.

Mike Perry

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