Chapter 14: YES! (1)
After Jack and Madison's embarrassing encounter in the hallway, Jack had ordered pizza while Madison set up her air mattress. Once the pizza arrived, they both sat on the couch and ate while watching WebTube videos. Most of the videos they chose were science or maker related. But occasionally Jack picked something else entirely just to keep WebTube's recommendation algorithm guessing. The selection was getting too full of plasma related videos, so he started scrolling down to find something else and finally spotted something that piqued his interest.
When he selected "Philosophical implications of simulated life," Madison asked, "I thought you didn't like philosophy videos?"
"I don't dislike them so much as I would rather read the source material myself and form my own opinion. But this isn't yet another video about Plato's Allegory of the cave. I mean, maybe it's just someone reviewing that philosophy paper that postulated that we are living in a simulation. And, if that's true, I'll skip it and find something else, but the title implies this is something else."
The video started with an older man sitting at a desk with the classic WebTuber's take on a scholar's office backdrop, bookcases, and certificates, with a few potted plants and professional lighting. He started by saying, "For those that are wondering, this will not be yet another review of Nick Bostrom's 'Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?'. However, I will need to give a brief overview of his paper so that those not familiar with it will be able to follow along later in the video."
Nick Bostrom had postulated that, given the rate of growth in computing power, it was likely that we could eventually create computer simulations capable of simulating entire ecosystems, including sapient people. And, he had concluded, if we could reasonably expect to achieve such capabilities ourselves, it was just as reasonable to conclude that we were ourselves already in such a simulation.
"Now," the WebTuber continued, "Let's ask the question, 'What if we develop the technology capable of simulating life itself?'. If we could create a simulation that is indistinguishable from reality, capable of hosting sapiens, human or otherwise, what moral or ethical questions would that raise? If the simulation hosts, or gives rise to, sapient life, do we have any moral or ethical obligations towards those sapiens? Is there a difference, morally or ethically, between a sapient life that arises within the simulation and a person that is a simulated copy of a still living real person? What happens if you unplug the computer? Is it murder, genocide, or just data loss? If you perform some medical or psychological experiment on people in the simulation, such that they suffer or die, then roll the state of the simulation back to a point in time prior to the experiments, did anything even happen? You, the controller of the simulation, have the experimental data, but the people in the simulation, because of the rollback, have no knowledge or memory of the experiments. If, from the simulated people's point of view, nothing happened, what reason would real people have to complain?"
Jack paused the video and looked at Madison. "Those are excellent questions. What do you think?"
While Madison would occasionally get annoyingly emotional, she was also highly intelligent, and he always found her way of thinking interesting, at least when she wasn't annoying him. Her overwrought concern probably wouldn't be so annoying if she did it to everyone, but it seemed like she only did it around him. He'd get a scrape, and she'd freak out, but if someone else got injured, she'd be rather clinical. One time in chemistry class, Madison's lab partner dropped a beaker in the sink, then panic grabbed at it while it shattered and gashed her hand. Instead of freaking out, Madison and calmly said, "Wow, that is a lot of blood. You should probably put pressure on it or something." Jack had been both impressed and annoyed at the contrast in how Madison responded. Impressed that she could be so calm about a serious wound, and annoyed that she wasn't as calm with him.