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Well, the work would become worse, no doubt. I think that's the safest starting point.
I'll do you one better. This LW post writes about a variation of the experience machine thought experiment where you wake up one day in a strange lab and you are told that everything you thought you knew about your life was actually just a result of you being plugged into a simulation in the experience machine. You have the choice to either stop using the machine, or go back to your (simulated) life as you knew it. The author of the LW post seems to imply that he thinks we would feel a pull to return to our "friends, loved ones, and projects". To which my response would be: hell no, don't put me back in that thing! Ex hypothesi, your "friends, loved ones, and projects" never existed in the first place, so there is no reason to act on any imagined attachment to them.
I have experienced this sort of thing in miniature already. Occasionally I'll catch a glance at a picture, maybe in thumbnail form and go "hey that looks pretty g- awww man, it's AI". Because upon closer inspection I'll see a telltale sign of AI generation. It does feel like something gets ruined, like the work immediately loses value.
If it turned out my absolute favorite works were written by AI, works that I've reread multiple times and consider central to my life, I would probably no longer be able to reread them. And obviously it would engender some reflection.
Hell no, put me back in! If the only difference between the simulation and reality is my knowledge (so everything I experience in the simulation feels as real as outside) then put me back in the simulation immediately. Now I can live in a world where I know for a fact there are zero consequences for my actions? I'd like to say move over Marquis de Sade, but my sexual preferences are closer to water than vanilla, so I'll just say it's fucking party time!
For a more serious answer, my friends, family and loved ones already only exist in my imagination. The people I associate those memories and emotions with are not the simulacra in my head, my brain has shaped them into identities based on our relationship. That will not change in the real world. I will still have learned all of my values from my simulated father and mother, my first love will remain warped by my memory into the lessons I refuse to learn, I will not suddenly value the friends I make in the lab more because I consider them real.
As any schizophrenic will tell you your perception of reality has and always will be an illusion, hostage to brain chemistry we don't understand. I will always be trapped in the fantasies of my imagination, and either way I am at the mercy of my captors and any freedom I have will be an illusion, so if the only difference is that I 'know' out here is 'real' and in there is not, then why does my choice even matter? As I see it it's a choice between the lotus eater machine I now know the truth of, and the lotus eater machine I know nothing about. Give me the one I can make myself a God in.
Edit: God damn it, just as I was hitting post it occurred to me that anyone capable of accurately simulating reality would indeed have to understand brain chemistry, making it a nigh infinitely better world to live in.
One of the stipulations of going back in is that you forget it's a simulation, but, minor detail.
Despite possibly being more sympathetic to "postmodernism" than anyone else on this forum, I've never been able to get on board with this sort of thing. Assuming we're not already in a simulation, I think we have pretty direct access to reality most of the time. Truck comes barreling towards you on the highway, do you think "ah but I'm trapped in a prison built out of my own perceptions so really there's no way to know what to do in this situation"? No of course not, you get out of the way. Looks like you rely on your senses to give you accurate information about reality after all.
And if you were actually inside the simulation and aware of it, would your response be different? Or would you jump out of the way, even though you know the truck isn't actually real?
It doesn't matter if we are in the hypothetical simulation or reality, or if we are already in a simulation right now imagining another simulation - no matter what, we have to act as if reality is real, because it's all we get.
And we do have pretty direct access to what we perceive as reality most of the time. Right up until we don't. Some synapses fire wrong and our version of reality branches from everyone else's, but for us reality hasn't changed. Any discrepancies we notice are easily explained away, and a lot of the time those explanations aren't excuses, they are genuinely believed, because to the psychotic they are real. And when the delusion is broken, do the psychotic feel relief at having reality corrected? Generally no, they are sad because their reality has been broken. People with schizophrenia who recover and return to their normal lives don't forget though, they just don't think about it. Because that's the only option available - act as if it's real anyway or fill a shopping trolley with garbage, put on five or six coats and start screaming at pigeons.
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How can you tell that the experience of waking up one day in a strange lab is the real one and the old life is just a simulation and not the other way around? What if you are instead being controlled by the despair squid?
The thought experiment is meant specifically to stress test our intuitions about how much we value the reality of the thing vs the mere experience of the thing, and like all thought experiments, it only performs its intended function if we accept its premises as true from the outset. You can’t respond to the do-you-pull-the-lever-on-the-train-tracks thought experiment by saying “yeah but, how do we know that the train won’t derail off the tracks and end up killing no one?”
By questioning the premises of the scenario itself, you’re turning it into an exercise in epistemology instead of an exercise in value theory. Which might be fine in other contexts, but it’s not the point here.
If I woke up in a lab and my perception of reality was qualitatively more real than what I had experienced on Earth, then sure, I would look upon my virtual experiences the way I look upon my dreams: they are interesting, maybe nostalgic, but ultimately not important.
If the new reality is indistinguishable from the other one, why should I accept the premise that one is truer than the other? But fine, let's transform the premise into something more tangible than VR. Let's say you learned that you were adopted and the only reason your adoptive parents cared about you was monetary compensation. They showered you with affection and cared about you, but they were the world's best actors. Then you turned 18, and they told you the truth and kicked you out. Would you really never think, "man, I wish I never learned that my parents weren't actually my parents and didn't really care about me"? Would this revelation really irreversibly and unconditionally taint the memories of your childhood?
Of course I wouldn't think that. I would certainly prefer to know the truth. No question. Now, if part of the deal is, "you can either know the truth and get kicked out, or you could never know the truth but keep receiving their financial support" then obviously it gets more complicated. But all other things being equal, I would rather know the truth.
Well, I don't think it would taint them, but that's mainly because I would find it to be a fascinating story and I would enjoy being at the center of such a story. You could say that the memories would trade one type of value for another.
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Every time I have one of those "you're stuck back in highschool" dreams, the memory of having graduated, having a job, and a normal adult life is vague and foggy like it was a dream. How do you tell which is which? How do you know you're not being fucked with with drugs, or just going insane?
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