>

Technological advance does not guarantee moral or ideological change.
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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 >

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. >

The argument isn't that the simulation is a video game with character creation screens and other such hellishness it's more like the engine itself which isn't a game at all. A physics simulation engine is nothing more than a set of rules acting on objects. The reason that I'm convinced that it could be true is because of the non linearity of spacetime and the observer effect. It is theorized that in-between a Planck length or time there exists nothing at all, suspiciously similar to a tickrate in a physics simulation. It is theorized that an object such as an electron is in all of the coordinates it can be in simultaneously until it's location is measured(called the particle wave function). To me this is similar to a technique to save on computational resources when an object is out of view of a camera. Humanity and indeed other forms of life are here because of the random distribution of matter that blinked into existence somehow and the not so random rules for how that matter can behave. It's my opinion that it could be a simulation or it could be real(whatever the fuck that even means) but it doesn't make a difference because there's no extra-universal intelligence that bothers to interfere or maybe even observe. >

I'm realizing now that I didn't attempt to convince you of anything so I'll tell you that when I was having a psychotic episode (not my first and not my last) I thought that the borg was real. I thought that organic life was grey goo already (I still think this except metaphorically). I thought that reality is a never ending chain of borgs with the power source being the radioactive decay of particles  causing the next one on the chain to have power somehow. The point is people who even care to think about such nonsense are nutjob gay nerds such as myself. >

What if this world is a prison, or hell? I'm thinking about "Surface Detail" by Iain m. Banks where the civilization had a powerful religious establishment, and their technology had reached the point where a digital "soul" could be downloaded into an electronic afterlife at the same time they realized there probably wasn't a real soul or afterlife, so this church made a simulation to punish or reward everyone who died the way they had said their god would. >

I mean, I don't think it is for the title of my post. I think whoever would be capable of simulating and putting people into hell would be uninterested in doing so >

In the novel, the wider culture was disgusted by what this cult had done and at the end destroyed the data banks and transferred the consciousnesses of those trapped inside it into more acceptable realities. >

Would you load up the sims and kill people / torture them if you knew they were real people as intelligent as you? >

I think the simulation theory assumes an advanced civilization is intending to simulate real beings, not play a video game. As some people pointed out I guess they could accidentally simulate people but that is not the basis of this idea >

I am assuming whoever is doing the simulating knows what they are doing.
The creator of the sims knows they are not real people, whereas the creator of real simulated beings would be aware they are simulating real living beings >

An assumption I am making is that more advanced societies would be less violent, more concerned with the rights of living beings, etc. I think so because that is the general trend of our population. If the average human suddenly became very interested in causing other people to suffer, our society would regress, and we would not be able to achieve something like simulating a universe of real people. I can apply the same logic to aliens without really knowing anything about them. I am not sure how they would become technologically advanced while also being interested in causing pain
Human sensibilities have changed. Women were barely considered people in a lot of cases in the not too distant past. Perhaps our morals are not inherent to us but rather inherent to any society that manages to advance this far >

Have you ever played the sims? >

Alternatively, what if the matrix tried to give us eden, a paradise and we rejected it? >

What about some PhD student writing a dissertation on suffering in 21st century? >

if you're saying writing could create a universe (and contained within the written word, not just somehow conjured into being in the multiverse by it) in the same way simulating could that just opens up even more pandora's cans of worms regardless of the suffering bit >

The student is obviously running our simulation. Whatever he’s writing is none of my concern. >

So I don't personally believe we are in a simulation, but I think your argument is wrong.
If we were on a somulation, they will most likely set up a bunch of initial parameters, and just see how things evolve. The universe will somehow make it to whatever state it is now, but that will most likely be due to the set of initial parameters + rules of the simulation and not really due to any moral reason. >

so many reasons. They might want to simulate different political systems to see which one works best, or see what would happen with global warming if it ever happened to them. There's no reason there would be a simulation without suffering if REAL life includes suffering >

The problem evil/suffering is the argument being made here. It's the same argument countless atheists have advocated against the existence of God. Why does evil and suffering exist? Idk. Life is boring, pointless and we learn nothing otherwise though. >

Wanting to understand  suffering is a pretty great use of a simulation, isn't it?  
That they would regard things within the simulation as warranting empathy is a very large assumption.  In an infinite depth set of simulations there would certainly be both simulators who are evil or unconcerned and in randomly generated simulations some would produce suffering. >

Human beings, at any point of their evolution, did that experiment tho, so '' advanced '' beings doing the same wouldn't shock me. >

A few plausible options:
We exist for some kind of research purposes. The simulation model includes things like suffering because whatever "real" world also has suffering.
Such a society capable of a simulation at this scale is far beyond ourselves in terms of capability. We may be the equivalent of virtual ants to them, completely incapable of whatever mental functions they have.
The individual creator(s) are just cruel. It's the hyper-advanced version of a kid torturing his dog for fun. >

First, you do acknowledge that simulations do exist correct?  The Sims, WoW, GTA etc… these are low level simulations with beings that are not self aware, but they are simulations regardless of that.   
So long as you acknowledge that, the next thing you have to acknowledge is that within the universe, or multiverse, there is one overarching ‘reality’ and there are an infinite number of simulations.   If the laws of physics allow for a simulation containing characters that are, for all intents and purposes, self aware, then that makes it purely a question of probability.
Based purely off of probability, the odds that our reality is the 1 that isn’t a simulation, and not one of the infinite simulations, are effectively 0.
Which makes your point moot does it not?
We can’t know for certain what creators of a simulation will think of the characters they create, but we do know that the odds of our reality not being a simulation are basically zero. >

We do not know that. That is not accepted as a scientific fact >

Which part?  
1) Simulations exist
2) They outnumber reality.  
We are either part of reality, or we are part of one of the countless simulations built within reality.   Not only are there countless simulations, those simulations contain countless simulations within them as well. >

You said the odds that we are not in a simulation are essentially zero. It is a heavily debated topic, not a fact you can present.
As you point out, this doesn't change my view anyways even if it were true... >

Nick Bostrom’s argument(the one I’m positing) is mostly accepted within the field.  Not only that, the known philosophers and scientists who argue against Bostrom’s claims still agree the probability is quite high.   The lowest probability I’ve read is 50%, and all others are well above 99% that we are not in base reality.
I realize this doesn’t change your view, so let me target your specific argument around “intelligent beings wouldn’t simulate suffering”.   I would  assert that intelligence and ethics are not linked.   Anecdotally I’m sure you’ve met plenty of really ‘slow’ people who are complete sweethearts filled with nothing but love and empathy.  While you’ve met plenty of smart people who are extremely cruel.  Maybe you’re thinking “no actually, I haven’t.”  If that’s the case, you are the first person I’ve ever spoken to about this who hasn’t had that anecdotal experience.
Regardless, there are real life examples that can be provided.  Not only that, they go beyond just ‘smart’.  Some of the smartest people to ever live were quite despicable.   Scientists like Josef Mengele and Shiro Ishii come to mind.
Morality is so subjective that it can be completely disconnected from intelligence.
To create an extreme example:  There’s no scientific, fact based argument one can make that says it is morally wrong to dish out maximum and endless suffering.   It is simply a subjective moral claim that we’ve agreed upon because we all have a desire to avoid it.  Having a desire to avoid suffering doesn’t scientifically prove that suffering is ‘bad’ though.  Something is only bad because people agree that it is bad.
One additional edit:  In order to create a simulation as advanced as our perceived reality, yes, a civilization would have to be extremely advanced.  Yes, this would almost certainly mean that they are incredibly peaceful and not likely to want to see unnecessary suffering be inflicted upon conscious beings such as ourselves.  I agree.   Even despite the massive gap in intelligence.  We may be to then as ants are to us, but they would not wish to inflict suffering.   HOWEVER, no matter how advanced a society may be as a whole, a key to advancement and survival for a species is variation amongst individuals.   There would still be evil individuals found within a very advanced and peaceful society.   Probably with the capability of creating simulations like our current reality.  
From most objective perspectives, it’s incredibly difficult to look at our reality as likely to be THE BASE reality, no matter the arguments made. >

We are in a simulation of a college kid who's just experimenting with us >

Who's to say this advanced civilization is even interested in us or our suffering? It could just be they're simulating the universe and we're just an unintended and unnoticed little accident. To think any simulation is like the Sims seems a bit myopic. >

Well that is an assumption I am making. If humans were to do this in the far distant future, I think we would "disable" suffering, or perhaps just not simulate real beings at all >

Have you ever played The Sims? A lot of people do. A lot of people deliberately try to get every type/cause of death they offer. >

Your premise is that an advanced civilization would be unlikely to want to simulate suffering.
In counter to this I present Sierra Sam. He was the first crash test dummy. The whole idea of his existence was to simulate harm on a human being, so we could understand what happens in order to prevent it. Suffering is one of the main things we would want to simulate today, so why not in the future? >

It just proves my point. A more advanced society would not need to simulate real people to test their theories or entertain themselves, they could simulate NPCs that were indistinguishable from real people
Presumably if we understand how to simulate advanced consciousness, we will also know how to simulate an advanced being that is not conscious >


A more advanced society would not need to simulate real people to test their theories or entertain themselves, they could simulate NPCs that were indistinguishable from real people

You seem to not understand the entire concept you are trying to debate. The idea is that everyone is NPCs in a simulation, even you! They only seem "real" in the sense that you have no basis of comparison and it is beneficial to the simulation for the people to be as human-like as possible. If for example the advance civilization wanted to simulate a society in order to see the effects of certain political policies or constricted natural resources they would want each element of the simulation to react as much like a human would as possible. The result would be components of the simulation which believe themselves to be humans and act accordingly, and the idea is that we are all those simulation components!

Presumably if we understand how to simulate advanced consciousness, we will also know how to simulate an advanced being that is not conscious

But we would need the simulated consciousness to react within the simulation as if it were conscious, so it would need to believe itself to be conscious for the simulation to be worthwhile. >

I know I am not an NPC, NPCs don't experience consciousness, and I do.
If you are just saying NPCs are anyone not in base reality than I disagree with your definition
I dont know what "believing you are conscious" actually means. You can tell me a banana believes it is conscious, doesn't mean anything >


I know I am not an NPC, NPCs don't experience consciousness, and I do.

That is just something an NPC that believed itself to be a real person would say. How would you really know if your consciousness was real vs. simulated? A simulated person wouldn't be able to tell, they would feel like they were as real as the rest of the world in which they inhabited. All you have is your own feelings and no way to know if there is anything more "real" than what you experience and feel right now. >

A person in a simulation with consciousness is a real person. 
Whether or not I am in a simulation, I know I am conscious. 
You don't know if I am conscious, but you know that you are conscious >


A person in a simulation with consciousness is a real person. 

A person in a simulation without a consciousness but which believes it has one is not a real person. You can't tell yourself apart from a person with a consciousness and one who just believes they have a consciousness. Your personal feelings about you having a consciousness are not a valid argument against this concept.

Whether or not I am in a simulation, I know I am conscious. 

No you don't, you just believe you are conscious. There is no way for you to know if you are correct or not.
Suppose we create a simulation in which we make an NPC called Pinocchio that believes itself to be a real boy. We ask Pinocchio if he is real and he replies that he is. How does he know? Because he feels like a real boy, and feels like he is conscious. Of course he feels like he is conscious because we programmed him to feel that way. Pinocchio lacks the capacity to know that he isn't a real boy from within the simulated reality.
You are like Pinocchio. You feeling as if you are conscious doesn't disprove reality being a simulation and you being an artificial construct that believes itself to be conscious. More broadly your overall position in the OP doesn't work because you fail to understand the entire premise of simulation theory. >

At this point you are just arguing against simulation theory itself based on the premise that you magically know it isn't true. Your argument as stated in the OP is irrelevant. >

Is that assuming any simulated being is not conscious? I think that is also not really popular, certainly a debate >

If we are in a simulation, who created us? but most important: who/what created them? And who/what created those that created them? An so goes on and on. 
*Who/what: beings or random cosmic stuff
Also: Maybe (if we are a simulation) why would you assume that who/what created us, is based on the same logic as us? Or the same relation to cause and purpose for their creation? >

Your issue is assuming that our potential simulation overlords would care about something like that. There is no reason to believe that they are also human. They could very easily be something incomprehensibly different. They might view us the same way as people in ancient Rome used to view gladiator battles. People throughout history have done much crueler things. >


would be uninterested in simulating suffering

That assumes they themselves have solved all suffering.
An easy counterpoint as relates to this position is that advanced societies aren't perfect and are running numerous concurrent simulations to try and find novel solutions to their own problems. >

Millions of Sims who drowned due to their creator removing their ladder would disagree. >

Suffering is the only way the human narrative sustains itself. Utopia literally collapses on itself in every real and fictional scenario discussed by modern phycology.... That being said... I'd be willing to give it a once round, just to see how it could go. Shake things up a bit. How about next life, I'll be birn the playboy jetsetter and YOU be the me? (Rhetoric) >

We are the most advanced civilization ever to exist on Earth, and we are extremely interested in simulating suffering.  
We have entire genres of fictional entertainment dedicated to it. >

We are certainly trending towards being opposed to actual living beings suffering. Would you be in favor of a strange experiment where we recreated human evolution on some remote island and watched it unfold? Basically watching cavemen struggle to survive or whatever, not sure of the best way to word it 
Honestly, I do think some people would be interested in it, but I don't think world governments of today would allow for it, certainly not governments of the future >

If we are in a simulation, we know NOTHING about what the outside world is really like. It could look nothing like our own, and the beings running it could have completely different thought processes to our own. There's zero reason to assume they would share our morals. >

There is a reason to assume so, which is that humans are mostly interested in simulating humans. That is the beings we would most likely simulate, and presumably that chain would continue down. So it is fair to assume it goes up as well if we are in a simulation
The other reason I think so is that I think ideal human morals actually represent a path to advanced life. It is a natural progression. If beings are more concerned with causing harm to each other than good, their society will not advance. I think advanced societies will be ones that are not interested in inflicting suffering, as it is opposed to what made them great. Totally a conjecture of course but I think it makes sense >

For your first paragraph, I don't follow your logic on how we can extrapolate about the outside world from what we would simulate. >

A civilization that completely eliminated suffering might find simulated suffering interesting and novel.
A future civilization could have developed a simulation of their past and participants choose to experience the past in complete authenticity.
Our entertainment is full of suffering. Movies intended to scare or horrify us, or simply depicting horrible and grotesque themes and imagery are popular. Rarely will we find any entertainment without struggle or conflict satisfactory.
In a sense, humans are infatuated or even addicted to suffering. So it's not so far fetched to imagine people wanting to simulate suffering, if life outside of the simulation has none. >

If it was for science or for war (an alien race simulating a recorded human existence) to better understand the enemy (the humans in the future). There’s other reasons than fun to simulate something. >

But if this is diablos simulation ….. >

It's possible that a society more advanced than our own feeds on negative emotions or just emotions in general, the suffering is irrelevant.
It's possible that running a simulation without suffering is incompatible with our brains or has adverse affects on the simulation.
It's possible that without suffering, we'd be able to advanced at a rate that allows us to escape or break the simulation. >

100 percent disagree. Without suffering there is nothing. The most pure form of yin and Yang. With no suffering no one would ever appreciate the good times. The good times are so good because the bad times are so bad.
Also the idea that these “creators” would see us as alive and have more empathy for us makes no sense. You don’t have any real empathy for computer generated people. There is no difference between real people and generated people if we’re in a simulation. >

I think suffering in a general sense is a fundamental part of existence. As long as we have death and existential dread there will always be suffering. It’s the unnecessary suffering that’s bad, ie cartel murders, pointless invasions, human trafficking etc…
Either way, if we’re in a simulation I would think it was just a base world. Anything social is our own bullshit brought into it. Kinda like the inverse of someone playing GTA and respecting traffic lights. Base is there, you can choose to do good, or creat suffering >

If you ever start a sentence with “A more advanced civilization would…”, anything that follows risks being a heavily biased and flawed prediction because it’s coming from a current day perspective. 

There would of course be a huge uproar

With the advancement of technology also comes the advancement of social philosophy too. 
With the little that I know about what amount of energy let alone technology it would take to create a single instance let alone a multitude of simulated universes, this society would be advanced beyond our comprehension. 
So not just their technology, but their entire societal construct would probably look entirely different than anything we could imagine.  
Why project todays moral framework onto a society that would be so advanced we couldn’t imagine most aspects of it?

We are on a general path of reducing/end suffering 

Hopefully this more advanced culture would hold these same principles as more important. But… what if they judge that running this simulation will bring insight that will guide them to a creating less suffering in their actual world. 
But maybe you’re even making another assumption that such a simulation would be a creation of such importance that it would require mass consensus in order to conduct?
What if we’re the equivalent of some adolescent advanced beings first sim on his new hyper-uber-quantum-neurocube that he got for the holidays? >


What if we’re the equivalent of some adolescent advanced beings first sim on his new hyper-uber-quantum-neurocube that he got for the holidays?

why do you assume that only the alien equivalent of some dumb teenage boy on his first console would create suffering in a simulation >

I don’t. >

Why do we watch sad movies? Why do we enjoy horror movies or movies like Saw? Why do we play violent video games? All of these questions point to one answer: Any form of positive emotion loses its value if it is always the default state. It is only through existing in a worse state that we can appreciate a shift into a better state. Happiness loses its essence if there is no suffering to give it meaning. 
Second of all, you are assuming these “greater beings” are similar in consciousness to humans. We may see our current situation as suffering, but they may see it as something completely different. It is impossible to speculate on how a different being would even interpret emotion, or if they even possess the ability to feel emotions at all. >

I think a better argument (not one that I came up with) against simulation theory is that if in fact there have been an essentially infinite series of civilizations advancing to the point of being able simulate another universe, as simulation theorists suggest, then the odds that we are the only civilization that cannot yet do that are extremely low to the point that it is statistically impossible. If simulation theory is reality, then we have to be the first civilization that will learn how to simulate a universe, the last one in the chain that hasn’t figured it out yet, or somewhere in the middle, and the odds (when extrapolated to near-infinity) are that we’re somewhere in the middle, yet we cannot simulate a universe. Therefore, statistically speaking, it’s extremely unlikely that simulation theory is actual reality. >

They could be simulating suffering for the purposes of understanding the nature of the beast, allowing them to more effectively minimise it in the "real world". >

I see two reasons for interest:

If we are part of a simulation for some level of scientific purpose
Civilization has eradicated suffering and the negative aspects of "utopia" drive people towards simulated experiences for fun and fulfillment without the risk of permanence, similar to us playing a video game. >

Because it’s life >

Yo OP jus reading all your replies… your seemingly trying to argue from a place of objective reason yet the premise of a higher being or entity would supersede any objectivity as you know it. So all of your arguments are simply faulted when you consider how your bubble of existence is neither a forecast of a simulators existence nor a mode of deduction for moral code/ethics relative to something that inherently reaches beyond the bounds of our creativity and understanding. In simpler words, your talking out of your ass >

I might be able to explain, if you would indulge in a small thought experiment. 
Imagine we attach electrodes into a person’s brain. These electrodes are attached to the pleasure center of the brain, and there is a button that this person can press and always receives stimulation, which creates pleasure on demand. 
Would you find this ethical? Do you think this would be healthy long term? What are your thoughts on what would happen to the individual, and would this drastically change how this person behaves? 
In addition, our brains seek homeostasis. When we are bored, we what more stimulation. When we are overstimulated, we want less stimulation. Entirely dependent on a perpetually changing environment, our brains will inevitably encounter low points and high points, but they are relative to one another. You can’t have a concept of good without an understanding of bad. Pleasure only exists in the absence of suffering. 
You couldn’t simulate pleasure without an appearance of suffering, because pleasure wouldn’t take form or function. >

and yet people on r/antinatalism and subs like that still claim the "suffering makes the pleasure better" sorts of arguments really mean actually-strawmen like "I let my husband physically abuse me so his kisses feel sweeter" or "Can you eat chocolate cake without having to eat dog poop first" >

While I think I understand what you are referring too, it’s more probable that suffering and pleasure are interconnected than separate things. I don’t think more suffering = more pleasure, but I think pleasure only makes since in the context of suffering. >

When I play strategic video games I can get mentally attached to the characters I’m playing, but then I remember they’re not real. To the simulators the simulations are not real. Perhaps they run a simulation with suffering to understand how to eradicate their own suffering. Furthermore, any notions you have of what an advanced society is or is not, is programmed by the simulators, such as competing ethical systems. >

I don't know humans are pretty shitty seems like something we'd be interested in. You ever seen people play Sims? >


We are on a general path of reducing / ending suffering

We are not. And if we are, its only because we are eliminating nature at a massive rate.
Suffering is just prolonged pain and stress.
Prolonged pain and stress is is how most animals in the wild die. A lot of predators will start eating their prey before they are even dead. 
Pain and stress are mechanisms evolved to let animals (including us) to know something is wrong. Eliminating that is bad.
And advanced society will know that suffering is part of a very useful mechanism that helps correct things that are bad for you. 
If they simulated the universe, they would include this mechanism. >

What if there is information being taken out of the results of our simulation for the sake of reducing suffering down the road? 
Also, “suffering” could be subjective here. A more advanced society may look at our “suffering” and think it is not suffering. Similar to how when you were a child you would think certain things were the end of the world, yet now you would find it funny that you thought that was a big deal in the bigger picture. >

Its like god, you cannot prove him.
Even the simulation theory needs a god some how... >

You're making an unwarranted assumption about an advanced civilization being uninterested in pain. If the purpose of the simulation is to view the universe itself, and pain is something that emerges naturally in the universe, then it would be something simulated in a simulated universe. >

They'd want to simulate it because they don't experience it. I'd you've got the highest level of advancement per medicine technology etc then you can have basically anything you want and you'll suffer for nothing. At some point people are going to want that experience as it's the only thing not provided in a world of peak technological advancement. >

Honest question, why do you assume animals suffer? I mean obviously they can have pain and hunger etc, but in their day to day life, example a rabbit foraging for food, is he suffering unless caught by a predator? >

Have you thought that possibly they are trying to simulate heaven and its a work in progress? >

Simulations can be for a multitude of reasons. It is entirely possible that even if we are in a simulation, everything is not being simulated by choice.
We could be a class of "A.I" for them, which would make sense too, right, because as far as we know, we're the best AIs! Maybe they're using our simulation to figure out more about how the world works, maybe they're trying to figure out if morality is subjective/objective, we simply don't know what we're being used for if we're in a simulation.
Consider this - imagine if we could create a simulation with humans in it. We would 100% use it to figure out human behaviour, laws of physics, or evolution, or growth of a society by tweaking the variables and what not, there's so many cool theories you could test! Maybe we're that simulation. >

There can be millions of simulated universe and we might be occupying one of the earlier models where the technology wasnt perfected yet.  Thus there are some suffering.  There might be some internal discussion on whether to power us off but if on balance, there is more pleasure than suffering, there might be a push to continue on with our simulated world.