reply to post by blocula
Whenever I try to imagine something like that my mind goes blank. I just cannot picture us living inside our simulations because I believe if people
are given a reasonable choice between simulated reality and real reality they'll always choose the real one. The weaker members of society might
choose the simulated reality, but it's in our nature to always move forward and discover what's not known and to bolster our strongest members to
ensure our survival. Thus, living in simulations is moving backwards and not natural.
I do see us one day being able to live on computers, but I don't see us particularly living in simulations. Living on a computer is not the same thing
as living in a simulation, understand? I think that by living as fundamental energy we will be able to travel easier to other places in the universe.
Not being dependent on a physical body will remove some of the barriers we presently have to deal with. That will relieve us and allow us to expand
into areas we currently cannot afford to. And again, these areas are real, not fictional.
But when I say "real," the meaning is sort of loose. For example, if you live in an apartment in San Francisco, this is not a whole lot different than
if you lived in a simulated San Francisco that exists on a computer. The whole premise is a comfortable living and whether you live on a computer or
live on a planet doesn't matter much. Everything is made of atoms and whether you live on a computer or not, you're living in a world of atoms and
electrons and so on. The thing is that where we live is not as important as what we strive for. We strive for REAL things, not for fictional things.
So while I see us living inside computers and maybe even living in a virtual San Francisco, I do not see us deriving our desires and dreams and
purpose from these computers. This will almost always come from the real universe, especially for the strongest members of society. I think that
virtual places where people live will be often modeled after REAL places. People will have a desire for that. For example, they might have a probe
orbiting an actual planet and all of this data about the planet is fed into the computer and the computer recreates the planet and thus the people
that live in the computer are living in a world that originates in reality.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There will many many people living in reality. Bodies will be created and can be inhabited by these souls.
Who knows? Maybe we'll be able to travel as a sort of energy. So I may be exaggerating the extent of living on computers. How we live in reality will
dramatically change. We will start out living almost everywhere on planets: surface, underground, oceans, sky cities, etc. We're halfway there.
There're many people in military that live underground and many people work underground. There're people that work on submarines that travel the ocean
and people that sail on ships. The same can be said for all of our airplanes and blimps. So we're halfway to living everywhere on our planet already!!
We'll move on to space ships, moons, etc. During this process we might start living on computers too. We may figure out how to exist purely as energy
and be able to transmit ourselves at light speed to any point in the universe. I cannot fathom what we will invent. That's what gives reality its
purpose - the unknown.
You see, I don't think what humans manage to produce will ever outshine the real universe. Look around you. The universe is immense. Nothing we have
made compares. There's a good chance this trend continues. This is why we will almost always find our passions and motives in the real universe.
That doesn't mean humans can't create beautiful things that inspire people. It doesn't mean that some people won't be enchanted by it and made
fanciful. What's a billion planets if we've already seen a couple? What're other galaxies if we've already seen a few already? Perhaps the rest of the
universe will lose its luster as we expand our awareness of other things. Maybe we will even find holes in our universe that lead to other universes.
Or maybe humans and other intelligences are actually an evolution of the universe itself and we were meant to create. Maybe we're the universe's
children and we weren't meant to rely on it.
About living on planets:
The case could be made we shouldn't live on planets so that other life has a chance to evolve. But another case could be made that life SHOULDN'T
evolve as we did - the amount of suffering is uncountable. So... Once we explore and find other planets, we will have to determine the ethics of
living on them, especially if we discover the extra-terrestrial life is common. Why would we supplant ET life in our pursuit of other planets? Why
would we revoke them of the right to be free? And lastly, SHOULD life evolve and experience suffering? Or should we "save" it from having to do that?
Either way, it brings into question a lot of things.
edit on 1-4-2012 by jonnywhite because: (no reason given)