A few days ago, when I was caught up in a game of Dota, my
friend who had just come back from work asked me an intriguing question which
heralded a long discussion and a chain of logic which I am yet to complete
contemplating.
“If you were to be forced into a virtual reality that is
indistinguishable from reality, and you know that the world you exist in is not
real, how would it affect your actions theron?” Provided that the only link
between the real and virtual world exists in only two actions
- You need to eat in the virtual world to survive in the
real world
- A death in the virtual world is a death in the real world
and is the only escape from the world
As we discussed we came up with a few sub cases and have
been asking around among people for as many differing viewpoints as possible on this.
You are welcome to respond in the comments. And yes, we do realize that the
person taking the trouble to do this might as well be doing you a favor or
could send you to a uniquely different world, but the assumption here being that the
world he is sending you to is in the exact same condition, ie the same global
warming threats, oil scarcity and risk of economic collapse as in real life. In
order to further refine the question, we came up with a few minor variations.
World 1: The other people in the world are Artificial
intelligence but respond exactly the same as humans in the real world.
A very large number of people noted that as their actions
would not impact the real world anymore, their actions would necessarily be more
self-inclined and would ignore their impact on the virtual-populace. A pleasure
seeking life was the natural course, a life of seclusion, book reading and
travelling. One person in particular
mentioned that if he ever got tired of a life of pleasure, he wouldn’t hesitate
to end it.
While I agree that I would personally like to do the same if
I were in the situation, further thinking resulted in a surprisingly different
result. If you consider every reaction as being a result of the perceptions and
emotions experienced by people, they are no different from AI, and what your
senses perceive is your reality, consequently, the life you seek now is the
life you would choose in the virtual world. The viewpoint can be further
substantiated by referring to the ability of the mind to forcefully forget
traumatic events to prevent insanity. Thus, the mind would assume as a
dream/forget the moment where the person enters virtual reality to save the person from an existential crisis
where his life would be perceived as meaningless and risk insanity. The point being
that while a calm, logical mind might look at the pleasure seeking life as
alluring, an emotional being like a man seeks meaning in his actions in
terms of their impact on the lives of others. A life where his actions are equivalent to those of Mario squashing turtles would drive people
crazy. It is with this presumption that I would like to present the idea that
the mind would protect itself by forgetting the event and assume the world to
be real such that the initial knowledge of it being unreal would itself fade.
The simulator syndrome is an example of a similar happening in real life where
a pilot who repeatedly teaches trainee pilots gets used to the ability to
control the amount of fuel etc available in flight and behaves similarly in
real flight. This was thought to be one of the reasons for the tragic crash of United
Airlines Flight 173. As a result of this
train of thought, I believe that the response of people will mirror the
response of a person who dreamt that they were sent into a virtual world, ie
literally none.
World 2: The world is a massively multiplayer virtual world
setup and maintained by machines with no will and no control over the
happenings in the world.
This is a world that most mimics the real world and almost
everyone agrees that the actions of people would not change. One person
mentions that the research in this world would not be about applications to
better life, but on how to break out of the world. A la matrix. If you do have
any ideas about this, please do mention.
World 3: The world is a massively multiplayer virtual world
setup and maintained by a man.
It was at this point that a lot of people stopped responding
so I would love to hear your opinions. This world had two widely different
ideas. One group thinks of the man as being a kindly man who was helping people
and that the world was a better place due to his existence treating this
virtual world as a real world with a responsive god. My friend believes that everyone in the world would be religious and fear the man and that this would do no good to the world, implying that they might or might not work towards escaping the world for fear of being reprimanded. He also mentions that at this point, it will come back to the nature of the man and that his decision of continuing to stay would depend on how the world takes it, and that he would live only in a free world with a benevolent god.
The other group thinks of
the existence of the man as being something which demotes this world to the
equivalent to World 1 as their actions would amount to nothing as the man could
alter everything in the world based on his mood, changing it from a prosperous,
calm world to a disaster torn wreck at a moment’s notice. One of the
respondents also mentions that as the actions of a person are the result of his
surroundings, the man could also alter the experiences and hence, the thoughts
and the will of the people in the virtual world, making it worse than World 1
as not even your will is spared in this case. Subliminal messaging at its best. I am yet to make up my mind and
have been contemplating on which view would reflect humanity better, though I
find myself edging to the second, as man does tend to abuse power.
