I think that most people would agree that a universe only counts as "simulated" if it was created by conscious beings intentionally.

In other words, proponents of simulation theories have basically reinvented god. But they've done something even more mind bogglingly self important: by posing God as a sysadmin of a celestial server farm, they have essentially written themselves into the role.

From a certain point of view, this kind of behavior from self proclaimed rationalists is pretty hilarious. It's also deeply human. But ultimately it's also very silly.

In ancient Greece the gods were fickle, horny warlords; in medieval times God was seen as an absolute monarch. And now, he is being posed as an overworked it professional. And that is absolutely fascinating for what it says about our culture and psychology. But it says nothing useful or testable about the universe.

If I had a magic button I would not only pause AI development but set it back 10 years. Sadly I have no influence on events and those who do, don't care about the future of humankind or actively wish us dead.

I don't know, maybe if you were generally not very informed the AI might seem knowledgeable by comparison?

Sorry but we've been committing war crimes as a matter of policy for decades at least.

They only started the war

Why should they go out to fight?

They leave that role to the poor"

Nothing ever changes.

And then some lazy birdbrain will come up with some new way to either jump to a random place in the code without guardrails on program state, or referencing data that other code or threads could have touched, and they'll call it a time saving feature.

And then we will all learn the hard way that those annoying restrictions were in place for a reason.

This is the great circle of life and death and rebirth

I feel that I cannot properly voice my feelings about him without being banned from hacker news.

Of course taking a huge pay cut is not something most people are willing to do, so you'd probably actually see mass unemployment and salaries being inflated away.

In response the fed will do the only thing it knows, which is to rev up the money printer even more. But thats going to make all these problems worse, leading to a vicious cycle.

And in the midst of economic chaos, people's danger switches get activated and they will turn to an authoritarian strongman who will make them feel safe.

And generally speaking, once such a person is in power, they can only think of one way to solve their problems, which is to plunder their neighbors by going to war. Thats basically the imperial cycle.

It sucks to be able to see all this coming and yet be powerless to stop it..

I suspect that imports would become enormously more expensive, which would reveal the catastrophic erosion in worker rights and pay due to neoliberalism. People would be suddenly aware of how much less they are making and how much more the wealthy are taking than was the case 40 years ago. This in turn might result in political instability. But who knows.

Music out there in the real world runs in clusters and communities that form around real world places where people go to be together and make and share things. Its so much more colorful and interesting than you can imagine. But, it is admittedly just a small slice of the weirdest and most creative and crazy people who participate in those communities. For everyone else music is just a recording that appears out of thin air in their car stereo without context and the glossiest product is the one they pick.

What do you think of this?

https://youtu.be/5KszaGOsFR8?si=YVorLTuTMr7jjAvY

Or this? https://youtu.be/pdEmM79MRmU?si=CMGkWs6CyZxXyVaH

Or this?

https://youtu.be/Bdzt39vX1Sw?si=06NNB4m0xuB7Lcbl