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Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 13, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Yeah, it's interesting. If I learned that we lived in a simulation, that wouldn't change my attitude towards life. It would be just as valuable, "real", and meaningful as I had previously thought it was. Still, reading about it in a story totally destroys any sense of stakes for me, regardless of the other details around it such as how permanent death is.

The one quasi-exception to this is qntm's Ra which handled it pretty well. MAJOR, MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD: in the end the main character is attempting to save the world from the quadrillions of simulated humans who already control the sun's power output and want still more power. There are an arbitrary number of them, they have an arbitrary amount of time to consider their next moves, and they already have control of the sun and far more power than the rest of humanity, collectively, has access to. In the minutes between their escape and the destruction of earth, she uses what's left of physical reality's sun-computer permissions to upload the entire earth. It was a fitting solution and really the only realistic one given the situation.

But yeah, for me it has nothing to do with whether death is permanent. I'm not sure I can even articulate a true reason fictional simulations don't appeal to me. They just don't. Not a criticism of your story at all.

EDIT: could we get links to not appear in spoiler text? They show up blue against the otherwise black spoiler highlight.

I'd like the spoilers to work at all, they're always open by default and I can't toggle them @ZorbaTHut.