[MagicMoonlight]

A completely artificial computer simulation exhibiting properties of life is meaningless. Of course if you call SimulateLife() it will appear to simulate life. But if the things you’re building the supposed life from are made up and you can’t do it in nature then you’re basically just making a video game.

[meheleventyone]

But the point is that they’re not calling SimulateLife() the properties are emergent out of the rules of the simulation. In the same way life emerges from the rules of our universe. It’s just a different substrate and is interesting for its own sake.

Their site actually does a good job of explaining this: https://google-research.github.io/self-organising-systems/pa...

[wizeman]

> A completely artificial computer simulation exhibiting properties of life is meaningless.

> if the things you’re building the supposed life from are made up and you can’t do it in nature then you’re basically just making a video game.

It would be pretty cool to have video games with realistic artificial lifeforms...

[aatd86]

I wouldn't want to be one of these life forms....

Why would I then play with another conscious life form...

Don't do unto others what you wouldn't want to be done unto you.

[wizeman]

> I wouldn't want to be one of these life forms....

How do you know you are not one of these life forms?

[aatd86]

I don't. If I were I wouldn't like being toyed with.

So I wouldn't toy with other lifeforms like that.

That's the point.

[wizeman]

Let's say that tomorrow you literally find out (beyond doubt) that you are one of these lifeforms that lives inside a simulation, along with everyone else in this world.

Would you kill yourself? Would you prefer to never have lived?

What if life were extremely boring unless you were being toyed with? I.e. what if being toyed with actually makes life more fun and worth living.

It seems to me that the criteria for whether it's ethical to create conscious life is not whether someone plays with it, but rather whether the created creature experiences extreme and/or very prolonged suffering.

Even then it's questionable how real and problematic those experiences are, depending on context.

Perhaps suffering is just a trick the mind plays on you to motivate you to achieve something (mental health problems notwithstanding). Perhaps suffering can be relative and/or the mind can adapt to it, depending on how the mind in question works.

Perhaps it can be more ethical to create life, even if it can only live inside a simulation.

[aatd86]

Well, my issue is not with existence or life creation itself.

My issue is of free will and the lack thereof.

Do you think that you'd be happy without free will?

I'd rather free will. Even if the choice is to be toyed with, the fundamental has to be free will.

It's easy to think that people would gravitate toward free will.