>

You're assuming the programmers, or their clients, do have our best interests at heart. Not necessarily so.  First, if there are bad people in our "simulation", why can't there be bad people in the next level up realm?  Second, the next-level-up realm could be researchers simply trying to get a better handle on how evolution works. Intervening in this "program" we're in would be scientifically disingenuous and frankly dishonest for them.  This remains true even if they are much more advanced than we are in this "program".  Also, even strong ethical rules won't stop an unscrupulous scientist (let alone a bored teenager, if this is within their capacity) from setting up a morally dubious program like our universe.
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Grand Theft Auto >

Well for the purpose of this argument, I am talking about simulating real beings that are actually conscious and feel pain >

…and you are talking about a more advanced civilization, but you supposed that they would not want to simulate suffering. If it is a simulation, it’s possible that the simulators don’t consider the beings in the simulation as conscious just as we do not consider the characters in Grand Theft Auto as conscious. >

I'm pretty sure they would realize we were conscious because they would need to program it. >

Are we conscious? >

I know I am >

Do you really though? >

Yes, In fact its pretty much the only thing you can really know for sure I think >

Its impossible to compare your consciousness to a theoretical advanced species. It could be as vast a difference as you and an ant. So its hard to say if you would be conscious in the same way they define their own conscious. >

I think a much more reasonable proposition  to make would be that they didn’t program it. They had an AI do it and simply don’t know how it works. >

While I'm not a follower of the simulation theory, you're arguing from our views of morals.
Different civilizations could have very different interpretations of our moral concepts. It would be possible, for instance, to keep the simulation as untouched as possible - even in the event of suffering - purely for scientific interest. After all, in the case of a simulation, none of the suffering is real, it's all just simulated.
And even if it was "real": scientific progress can, with a different moral outlook, easily justify suffering - if a couple billion suffer to save many trillion, would that not be a win? >

What could possibly be the scientific interest? >

Similar to studying ant colonies?
"Take a simplified model of reality and simulate the outcomes". It could be trying to show how a species of our makeup would act politically, what our development would look like, what the effect of changes in the environment would be... or, depending on the scale, what our impact could be on the (simulated) universe at large. Maybe they're studying conscious itself and how a simplified form could be created through chemical interactions.
Alternatively, it could of course be a completely nebulous interest that we cannot even comprehend. After all, they are significantly more complex than us. >

I think you raise some really good points. Hell, most people in the thread are focusing on "us" as if we are the true test subjects. What if that isn't the case?
It's just as likely that we're a side product of something else. The simulation could be about how a universe would function within a specific set of parameters, and humanity is just one of the many products that occurred. It's not that suffering was never specifically an aim, but rather, it was allowed in order for accuracy in the test. >

Have you ever played the Sims? Half the fun of the game is making the people suffer. Let someone go into the pool and remove the ladder. Put someone in a room and remove the door and watch them poop all over the ground. 
Same with games like Rollercoaster tycoon. You could try to make the most efficient theme park, or you could make Rollercoasters that kill all the riders and trap the inhabitants inside your park and remove the bathrooms so they poop all over the ground.
Heck sim city has different type of apocalyptic events you can do to your city voluntarily.
Why would a more advanced simulation not include more detailed ways to torment the characters?
(Pooping all over the ground is a common theme in these games) >

Would you torment sims characters if they were real? If so, why? >

They're not real, and neither are we if this is a simulation. >

real conscious beings that experience things >

Why do you assume that our creators would empathize with us? If they are sufficiently advanced to simulate us, they would look at us in much the same way that we might look at a single-called organism >

Single celled organisms are not concerned with suffering. You could argue some animals are concerned with decreasing suffering for themselves and offspring. You can argue humans are considerably more motivated than animals to decrease suffering. Following the chain, I think humans in 1000 years or some far advanced species is even MORE interested in reducing suffering than us >

Honestly, I’ve been through the thread and every argument you’ve made starts with “I think” and then has nothing to back it up. There are a lot of well thought-out and well-written responses that you make no real attempt to dispute other than to say “ya well I think future society would probably make that illegal” and in one case you even cited “space movies”  for fuck’s sake.
It’s pretty clear that you either don’t want your mind changed or are too young/intellectually undeveloped to interact with the arguments brought to the table. >

The arguments so far are mostly that they would not consider us conscious or would not mind inflicting pain on us. I explained why I think that is not the case >

And your reasoning is based 100% on assumptions, whereas the reasoning of the people arguing against you is based on NOT making assumptions.  Most of them aren’t actually arguing that a being that created our simulation wouldn’t consider us conscious, they’re arguing that the idea that they would consider us conscious is an assumption for which you have no evidence.
No one is trying to (and no one needs to) prove that a specific alternate argument to yours is true; the thing that has been repeatedly proved is that all of your arguments are built on baseless assumptions. And your response when that is pointed out makes it apparent that you can’t grasp that distinction.
You don’t seem to be particularly aggressive so I don’t think you’re arguing in bad faith; I think you’re probably just a confused teenager making a foray into intellectual waters that are above your head at the moment. >

Literally every argument in this thread is built on assumptions. By nature of the very topic at hand, the only conclusion which doesn't make assumptions is "this argument is unfalsifiable and therefore fallacious". >

There's a lot of versions of the simulation idea, but here are a few possible scenarios.
One is that they're not trying to simulate anything specific. Like, it could be nobody is out there saying "let's build a humanity simulator". They could be saying "let's build a physics simulator" and then they just look and see what happens. If you simulate the underlying building block of a universe, you have no idea what's going to come out. And once you have sentient life in your simulation, would they really feel right just turning it off to prevent suffering? If we are in a simulation like this, would you want it to be deactivated? I would prefer to continue existing personally!
Another possibility is they are trying to simulate brings of a particular style. But a civilization that does this might have a bit of a god complex. I think it's a genuinely interesting question of if a "heaven" could be truly engineered. If you simulated a billion people and fed them and gave them their every need and turned off illness and aging and suffering, would they actually be happy in that world? I don't know! But I think it's worth considering that suffering and death are in some ways necessary ingredients for a fulfilling existence, or at least the possibility that future simulation designers might think that.
Finally, you mention animal suffering, which I take seriously in what I personally believe to be a non stimulated real world. But if the world is simulated, chickens don't necessarily have any kind of feelings or sentience at all. If you are starting from the premise that the civilization can simulate sentient humans, it doesn't seem out of the picture that they could populate the world with non-sentient "chicken bots" that don't have any moral significance.
That said, I think the first possibility is the one I think you should think about the most. With arbitrary computing power, doing full physics simulations seems like a notable route towards the kind of simulation we could be in. >

I think you're misunderstanding the argument.
The beings that created the simulation wouldn't be IN it.
If life is a simulation, I imagine we're either an experiment of some sort or we're a source of entertainment. Maybe a video game, where players can interact with the world, and we might just be in one of millions and our player is just someone who wants to watch things happen.
To be fair, though, we have absolutely no idea what nonhuman civilizations would want, so for all we know the simulation of life is a award winning TV show.
If it is some other human civilization that invented it, it's probably entertainment. Humans have found entertainment in violence, fear, tragedy, etc since day one. From gladiator arenas to depressing plays to roller coasters to horror movies to literal torture simulator video games. >

But humans find violence and tragedy increasingly less entertaining and more disgusting as years go on. Human rights improve, and technological advancement increases in a society that is working together with low suffering. That leads me to believe that less suffering / interest in suffering is correlated to a more advanced society (Like one capable of simulating a universe) >

If it's not human, which is more likely, we have absolutely no idea what they like.
Then there were a few other things we could be besides entertainment. >

We have one data point for what advanced societies could be like, which is humans. It is better than nothing. 
And I think it is more likely for an advanced society to simulate beings with similar motivations to themselves. Most characters in space movies / games are pretty much humanoid >


And I think it is more likely for an advanced society to simulate beings with similar motivations to themselves. Most characters in space movies / games are pretty much humanoid

Humans made pacman. That's not humanoid.
Truth is, you don't know anything about the advanced civilization. If they had the capability to simulate the literal world we live in, you don't know anything about their intentions either. You can't know. You can't tell if something about them is likely or unlikely. There is no real answer here. Maybe we're a simulation for a research lab, in which case their motivations could be anything and it would not be immoral. >

You make a lot of implicit assumptions I'm not comfortable with just accepting. 
1) We are relevant to the simulation. In a simulation of this scale we might just be an unintended side effect, we might not even matter. 
2) The simulators have ethics that prevent them from causing in-simulation suffering. Even if the civilization as a whole frowns upon such a simulation, there might still be groups or individuals who are motivated to still do such a thing. Or they might use insights from the simulation to prevent more "real" suffering. 
3) Conscious suffering. They might have consciousness far beyond our own and might just not consider us conscious. 
I don't think that we are in a simulation, although it's probably not possible to prove or disprove, but I don't think your argument holds up. >

Video games exist... I really don't know what more you need... of course an advanced civilization would want better video games including actual damage and even suffering. Of course not everyone would play these games but they'd absolutely be a market for them. They'd tone down the pain to tolerable levels obviously and probably even have an option to turn it off in most games aside from dark souls 10 but that's for the player characters, they would want the actual npcs to suffer as much as possible or atleast simulate it. 
So the question really boils down to would advance civilization that could make a video game like GTA with every single NPC being sentient give enough of a shit about that sentience to either ban people from making it or somehow make it so the sentient NPCs don't suffer (in which case how could they even tell if we are just simulating it or actually are and frankly would there even be a difference to us) the answer is maybe, but eventually the tech would get in the hands of someone who didn't give a shit. You don't know how an Iphone works but you still have one, the Taliban can't make a fighter jet but they got a bunch of them now. 
So yeah it'd happen eventually. >

What if the simulation is so big that we're just some backwater part of it? I'm willing to bet whatever created this universe has no idea we're even here. The universe is massive...even to our eyes.  I don't think we even register in the grand scheme of things. >


There is a great deal of suffering in the world, probably mostly among animals tbh but also humans of course. I am not sure why a society much more advanced than our own would want to simulate that. Seems more likely they would simulate heaven. 

This is the subjective perspective of us, not that of an advanced being outside the simulation. There is a negative value attached to suffering because it is a bad experience for us. There is no reason to believe that someone simulating us feels the same. They could look at us the same way we look at plants or rocks. >

I think you're making two assumptions that I don't agree with:  

That the simulators would be in any way like us. Maybe they exist in a universe so inconceivably alien to us that the concept of ethics and suffering are meaningless to them.
That the simulators engage with or think about our universe at a high level of abstraction. If you built a simulation of a universe you'd build it to model atoms, quarks, etc., not people. So they may not even know we exist, or care. They might be interested in building simulations of how universes exist and we're just a weird emergent side-effect. >

Yes I guess it is possible they made a simulation so complex they don't know we even exist in it Δ >

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/bubbagrub (1∆).
^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards >

All it takes is one sufficiently advanced simulation about suffering and there are infinite simulations about suffering. >

What if we're just a byproduct of a very advanced physics simulation and they don't even care or know about us, especially on an individual level?
Imagine us 300 years in the future, the best timeline where we put our differences aside and advance socially and technologically.
Our scientists create a simulation that they program with all the rules of physics that we know of to test them out. They set up some initial state and let it run on 100000000000000000...x speed. They stop after a while and observe what happened.
Wow, some planets have formed, just like in real life. So cool, new chemical elements that we don't have, let's see where this takes us etc.
For our scientists what was just a second that was fast forwarded, in random planets life, animals, sentient beings and civilizations were formed and destroyed.
Maybe we are also such a civilization. >

I think a future civilization would not allow that to happen. It would probably be illegal to simulate suffering. That is why I said perhaps they will simulate heaven instead. I also think it is likely that it will be illegal to simulate consciousness at all. Consider the rise of anti-natalism and dropping birth rates in more civilized societies >

I explicitly stated that we might be an accidental thing that they don't even know about. My point was that they didn't set out to simulate us, they wanted to simulate a universe, and we just happened to develop there by accident.
Also, why do you think in every possible scenario of the future simulating consciousness or suffering would be banned? Or if we go a step further, why do you think a completely aliens civilization would have the same morals as we do today?
Maybe we don't even have consciousness by their definition. We do animal testing even today, wouldn't it be more humane to test things out on virtual people whom we don't consider sentient?
You think with the head of a 21st century human from the west and assume that the beings running the simulation think the same way. If they're aliens with very different evolved traits, then we can't even have assumptions about their beliefs. >


We do animal testing even today, wouldn't it be more humane to test things out on virtual people whom we don't consider sentient?

then by that logic either us getting rid of animal testing is impossible, ends the world, or somehow affects whatever would be our outside world retroactively to make this have not been our purpose >

I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion.
I was challenging your idea that an advanced civilization would most likely ban simulating consciousness or suffering, especially if they do it to prevent their own suffering. Animal testing was an example of how we do something that is very similar in principle.
For all we know the "real world" is nothing like ours, maybe it has very different rules of physics or the beings running the simulations are not human at all. Then, we can't make any assumptions of how they think or draw any kind of conclusion from human behavior.
~~But let's get back on topic, what's your opinion of my main argument that I expressed in my first comment, that we might be a byproduct of a very advanced and accurate physics simulation?~~ (I realized I was replying to another user, not OP) >

It wasn't my comment you were replying to originally, my point was if you were trying to draw a prescriptive parallel, and also if we were LIAS the simulators' world would have to be at least enough like ours that they could use their own as a reference frame to create ours as otherwise they'd need omniscience to even think the concept up and if they were omniscient there's many ways (ranging from that coming with omnipotence to a multiverse-containing infinite imagination) that they could create us without needing to make a digital simulation proper >

Oh, I didn't realize that you were not OP, sorry about that!
My main line of thinking is that we aren't the main characters in the simulation, or at least they didn't set out to create us specifically.
I wouldn't be so sure that they'd need omniscience, we can already simulate very accurate experiments related to physics, of course nothing like a universe but it might become possible in the far future.
I can certainly imagine our scientists in the future wanting to simulate the big bang so they set up a program with what they believed were the initial state of the universe and let it run its course. We can just be a random thing that happens inside that simulation without them knowing about it.
Or maybe they are close to omniscient and for them we are what video game characters are for us. Maybe their minds are so beyond what we can even imagine that they don't think of us as equals or worthy of consideration.
Maybe our universe is just a simplified version of theirs, or something very different. If we had the ability, I'm sure scientists would be curious what would happen if gravity worked differently for example. >

I have my own issues with the simulation "hypothesis," like how it explains nothing and shoves our curiosity upwards an entire plane of existence for no fucking reason. The idea we live in a simulation, or that the chances of it are even remotely close to 50/50, is absurd. 
To actually talk about what you said, though... That will all depend on what this simulation is meant for. I don't think they are generating a videogame world the size of the universe for fun... The likely scenario, as far as I know, is we would live in some sort of scientific simulation meant to explore the past, alternate histories, or even alternate physics/chemistry. They would want this simulation to be as realistic as possible, so they can get the best results.
Somehow fitting this raw data into any computer we could ever conceive would probably collapse it into a black hole. >

I think it would essentially be illegal in a future society as an extension of human rights. 
If people knew that right now I was torturing real living being I had managed to create in a software, they would want to put a stop to it. 
I also think that a realistic simulation could be made without real participants >

You build a system capable of simulating a universe completely enough that intelligent life is capable of arising within it independently (whether you realize it or not) and suddenly you're the bad guy. You just built the thing to to model how muons and neutrinos interact en masse or some other semi-related shit and now you're suddenly responsible for all the death and suffering in the world. You didn't even think to look at what the intelligent life was up to because, for the most part, most civilizations that have started in the thousands of simulation runs before have all mostly been peaceful or died out after a dozen or so generations of technological development.
Humans are so egotistical as to think that they're the objective of -- or even of interest to -- those simulating the universe. >

The simulation theory is just an advancement of religion, a new religion. The religion of science. 
The worth of discussing such a possibility is nil, you really won't be able to understand the thought process of a higher being. Your brain is limited to it's three dimensional understanding of the world. But, for the sake of CMV, I'll give a pretty convincing argument regardless.
To know happiness, you need to know sadness. You can't have one without the other, you would not know what happiness is if you have never been sad, and vice versa. Higher beings could program us to be absolutely unemotional, which would be the case if everyone was programmed for perpetual happiness. I imagine this would simply be too boring, and worthless of an simulation. Instead, emotions and unpredictability would play a huge factor in the simulation, it might be the reason for the simulation to exist at all. >

This fucking tread is painful to read, omg  
Then onto the topic.
First, you should probably define what "simulation" is in your view. Is it
A: A real human (you) is knocked out in real world, then put into a glass jar and connected to a PC that simulates a virtual world
or
B: There is no real human, and you and me and animals and stuff is equally just a bunch of code  
Then it's much easier to explore your view. For simulation A we have:

You're the only real human, and outside of the simulation you agreed to all the negative experiences
Simulation is used to teach us something b4 letting us go into the Real world

For simulation B - since we are not people, then our feelings don't matter in the global scheme >

It is all that simple if you believe simulated people are not real, which is not a presumption of the simulation theory as far as I know. If their experiences are indistinguishable then it doesn't matter, and a base reality could never be proved anyways