Does Reality Have Any Significant Value?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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Ashurean
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Does Reality Have Any Significant Value?

Post by Ashurean »

I'm not here to discuss whether reality is, in and of itself, real. What I'd like to know is if anyone can come up with a genuine, non-biased argument that defines a significant value for reality.

With virtual reality and quantum computing entering the general public consciousness, I feel like this is a topic that requires genuine discussion. I've considered whether existing in a virtual world, identical or not to our own, remove any aspect of being human. Nothing came to mind. I've considered if something critical was present in reality that even a sufficiently complex simulation could not reproduce. Nothing came to mind. The only argument I could come up for in this mental battle of reality vs simulation is that, to some degree, reality had a defined beginning point.

It's a subject currently up in the air on the specifics, but we "know" that our universe had a beginning of some kind. However, I feel as though this argument could barely be considered significant enough to give value to reality. I've personally come to the conclusion that, plain and simple, there is no significant value unique to reality. Anything present in reality can be simulated, any value copied, and any story played out. I'd dare say that, perhaps, reality actually has less value in comparison to one simulated by sufficiently powerful quantum computers.

Of course, I've considered the fact that reality is more solidly defined than a simulation could be. What I mean by that is that a simulation can be turned "off" or deleted, but reality is more difficult to destroy. Of course, our universe will fade away eventually, but, in some form, everything will continue to exist at that point, even if the concept of "existence" has to be redefined to acknowledge this new mode of being. At the same time, the simulated universe will also fade away as particles break down unless we discover some way to subvert this eventuality through a currently unknown process or principle. I could go on and on with the arguments I made up and broke down mentally, but I'd really like to see if anyone can come up with a good argument of if reality has a significant value unique to itself.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Does Reality Have Any Significant Value?

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Wouldn't you say we already have a foot in that virtual world? Maybe a toe dipped in?

Can we be satisfied with pure abstraction without the, I guess, joy and pain of processing energy? Increasingly I think we will be, although today's humans are adapted to be energy-processing beings rather than fully virtual ones. However, each generation accepts ever more privacy intrusions and corporate controls and "herding", which will be necessary if one's mental contents are to be digitised. Ever more, simple visceral pleasures are being replaced by abstract and virtual ones.

Being alive means killing, threatening and exploiting other species. It also means experiencing pain and suffering when we fail to achieve suitable said killing, threatening and exploiting of other species. For humans to transcend this inherently problematic state they (or most) will effectively need to become autotrophic - living pain-free (or suitably pained) virtual lives run by solar or nuclear energy sources.

While the problems of energetic life forms may be solved, including there being no more scarcity or limitations, what new problems may be introduced?

For instance, if our ideal virtual world involved natural settings with other species, what would the nature of those virtual animals and plants be? Would they too be as capable of feeling and suffering or would they be shallow props placed for our amusement. A digital environment that Includes naturalistic suffering and competing nature in a digitised reality raises ethical questions. However, if our environment consisted of blank ciphers of the real thing, that would seem too cheap a thrill.
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Frost
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Re: Does Reality Have Any Significant Value?

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Ashurean wrote: January 25th, 2018, 1:14 pm I've considered if something critical was present in reality that even a sufficiently complex simulation could not reproduce. Nothing came to mind.
How can consciousness be simulated?
Gertie
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Re: Does Reality Have Any Significant Value?

Post by Gertie »

Well presumably you need something real to create the simulation.

And as Frost says, we don't know if consciousness can be simulated.

And would it be as satisfying knowingly interacting with simulated people, food, anything really?

Otherwise, and if you don't know you're in a virtual world, I tend to agree.
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Ashurean
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Re: Does Reality Have Any Significant Value?

Post by Ashurean »

Gertie wrote: January 25th, 2018, 7:09 pm Well presumably you need something real to create the simulation.

And as Frost says, we don't know if consciousness can be simulated.

And would it be as satisfying knowingly interacting with simulated people, food, anything really?

Otherwise, and if you don't know you're in a virtual world, I tend to agree.
I see no reason why a good simulation of consciousness wouldn't be any different from the real thing. As far as it seems, there's no straightforward answer to what consciousness is, what can have it, and what forms it can appear in. If it talks the talk and walks the walk, I say it's conscious. We might be a little bit away from being able to do this, but I'm looking into the future and assuming that the technologies we have now will only continue to advance. For the argument asking if it would be as satisfying to live in a simulated world, well, why wouldn't it be? A lot of people have this idea that a reproduction can't be just as good or even better than the original, or in this case, that something fake can't be as good or better than something real. I could care less if I knew or not, I'm not all that attached. The points for reality being innately better kind of fall apart if you're just willing to assume that there will be a point where technology has developed far enough that the line between the two becomes sufficiently blurred. For the argument of needing something real to create the simulation, of course, that's pretty obvious. However, it doesn't mean that these systems can't run themselves, nor does it mean that there aren't unknown principles that will change the entire way we think about these things. It's the future, it's unknowable. We just decide for ourselves whether, under these conditions, if reality still holds any unique value. In the face of these arguments, I still say that reality lacks any value significantly unique to itself.
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Ashurean
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Re: Does Reality Have Any Significant Value?

Post by Ashurean »

Greta wrote: January 25th, 2018, 6:36 pm Wouldn't you say we already have a foot in that virtual world? Maybe a toe dipped in?

Can we be satisfied with pure abstraction without the, I guess, joy and pain of processing energy? Increasingly I think we will be, although today's humans are adapted to be energy-processing beings rather than fully virtual ones. However, each generation accepts ever more privacy intrusions and corporate controls and "herding", which will be necessary if one's mental contents are to be digitised. Ever more, simple visceral pleasures are being replaced by abstract and virtual ones.

Being alive means killing, threatening and exploiting other species. It also means experiencing pain and suffering when we fail to achieve suitable said killing, threatening and exploiting of other species. For humans to transcend this inherently problematic state they (or most) will effectively need to become autotrophic - living pain-free (or suitably pained) virtual lives run by solar or nuclear energy sources.

While the problems of energetic life forms may be solved, including there being no more scarcity or limitations, what new problems may be introduced?

For instance, if our ideal virtual world involved natural settings with other species, what would the nature of those virtual animals and plants be? Would they too be as capable of feeling and suffering or would they be shallow props placed for our amusement. A digital environment that Includes naturalistic suffering and competing nature in a digitised reality raises ethical questions. However, if our environment consisted of blank ciphers of the real thing, that would seem too cheap a thrill.
I wouldn't say we've put our foot in the virtual world so much as we're kind of staring at it from a distance. What we have now isn't even close to what I mean by virtual reality. We include two senses, sound and sight and then only slightly more than the same degree a TV and a headset can produce virtual reality. We're struggling to include any other sense and the current kinds we have now are the furthest thing from completely immersive. We have a ways to go, probably several decades at the least, before we even get close to true virtual reality, and even then it will likely be incredibly limited in the same way open-world games like GTA are. Other aspects of technology need to advance quite a ways as well.

On your second argument there, I'll admit, ethics are not my strong suit. I've never really understood them nor really cared to. They've always seemed irrelevant in an entirely logical perspective of the world. While there would be some depth to any non-simulated residents of a virtual world, it would only go so far. Then you get into Westworld concepts, as in the sense of why, in this virtual world, would we need to have everything the same way? The concept of suffering could easily be twisted into a good and positive thing. All because it looks the same doesn't mean it has to follow the same rules. Of course this is diverging slightly from the original question. I can't answer all of these specifics in a satisfactory way for any person who has them. I can only present the hypothetical scenario and the question of whether there is any significant value unique to reality if we are able to create a sufficiently believable, although different simulation.
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Frost
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Re: Does Reality Have Any Significant Value?

Post by Frost »

Ashurean wrote: January 25th, 2018, 8:20 pm I see no reason why a good simulation of consciousness wouldn't be any different from the real thing. As far as it seems, there's no straightforward answer to what consciousness is, what can have it, and what forms it can appear in.
If there is no answer to what consciousness is, how can you say that there is no reason why a simulation of consciousness would be any different from the real thing?
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Re: Does Reality Have Any Significant Value?

Post by Gertie »

Ashuran
I see no reason why a good simulation of consciousness wouldn't be any different from the real thing. As far as it seems, there's no straightforward answer to what consciousness is, what can have it, and what forms it can appear in. If it talks the talk and walks the walk, I say it's conscious.
You can say that, but it doesn't make it so. Anyway, that's a whole nother can of worms!
For the argument asking if it would be as satisfying to live in a simulated world, well, why wouldn't it be? A lot of people have this idea that a reproduction can't be just as good or even better than the original, or in this case, that something fake can't be as good or better than something real. I could care less if I knew or not, I'm not all that attached. The points for reality being innately better kind of fall apart if you're just willing to assume that there will be a point where technology has developed far enough that the line between the two becomes sufficiently blurred. For the argument of needing something real to create the simulation, of course, that's pretty obvious. However, it doesn't mean that these systems can't run themselves, nor does it mean that there aren't unknown principles that will change the entire way we think about these things. It's the future, it's unknowable. We just decide for ourselves whether, under these conditions, if reality still holds any unique value. In the face of these arguments, I still say that reality lacks any value significantly unique to itself.


Well I'd say Value is a property associated with conscious experiencing Subjects, rather than intrinsic to the real object/simulation being experienced. I'm the one assigning the value to my experience, and you to yours. So I agree with you that external reality lacks any particular value in itself, value is a property assigned to it by the experiencer of it.

And for me, I think that if I knew I was interacting with simulated people, presumably programmed to respond in certain ways, it could make that interaction less meaningful to me, less valuable. Did they really find my joke funny, do they really like me, share my interests,etc or is it just programming? (Tho if I didn't know it was a simulation, it wouldn't be an issue).
But in some ways might be better, maybe I could experience flying and having impossible adventures. Boldly go, torture my co-workers and whatnot ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Callister

So I might find a simulation less fulfilling than reality, but you might not, and the value for each of us would be different. Rather than the value being a property of the thing being experienced, whether real or simulated.
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Re: Does Reality Have Any Significant Value?

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'Value" is something that is intimately associated with purpose, so you could similarly ask whether Reality (or Nature) has any purpose. These concepts are also associated with function, in that a process is functional if it creates value toward some purpose.

Now some people (like me, but I can find others if pressed) describe two kinds of purpose: primary and secondary. Primary purpose is something that emerges in Nature, the paradigm example being that which leads to natural selection. With the emergence of life you get function, such as eyes for seeing. That function provides value referred to as fitness.

Secondary purpose arises when primary purpose results in entities that can generate goals. These goals become meta-purposes, or secondary purposes.

Regarding living in a simulated world, I would only be interested to the extent that doing so would align with the primary purpose. If nothing I did in such an environment would impact the real world in any way, then I wouldn't be interested. On the other hand, if I could communicate with the real world, or be part of a process that generates knowledge usable in the real world, then it might be a consideration.

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Re: Does Reality Have Any Significant Value?

Post by Frost »

JamesOfSeattle wrote: January 26th, 2018, 7:01 pm 'Value" is something that is intimately associated with purpose, so you could similarly ask whether Reality (or Nature) has any purpose. These concepts are also associated with function, in that a process is functional if it creates value toward some purpose.

Now some people (like me, but I can find others if pressed) describe two kinds of purpose: primary and secondary. Primary purpose is something that emerges in Nature, the paradigm example being that which leads to natural selection. With the emergence of life you get function, such as eyes for seeing. That function provides value referred to as fitness.

Secondary purpose arises when primary purpose results in entities that can generate goals. These goals become meta-purposes, or secondary purposes.

Regarding living in a simulated world, I would only be interested to the extent that doing so would align with the primary purpose. If nothing I did in such an environment would impact the real world in any way, then I wouldn't be interested. On the other hand, if I could communicate with the real world, or be part of a process that generates knowledge usable in the real world, then it might be a consideration.
I really enjoyed your first paragraph; I find myself agreeing with you in a really profound way. However, with purposes, I would argue that there is no purpose in biology and evolution until consciousness emerges. The advent of consciousness is the advent of meaning and purpose in reality. Prior to this emergence, biology, while not mechanical, functions in a more mechanistic manner as a self-organizing system which is fundamental to the structure of reality. Biological functions can only be identified as functions relative to the Intentionality of conscious beings.

Perhaps a minor quibble, but I wanted to respond because I liked what you said so much.
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Re: Does Reality Have Any Significant Value?

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I would say that consciousness co-emerges with function, pretty much by definition, but I would argue that purpose was a prerequisite for function, so necessarily existed before any functional mechanism. I would suggest that the purpose you are thinking of is secondary purpose, which purpose did not exist until creatures with very sophisticated consciousness, as opposed to simple consciousness, existed. Such creatures could generate sophisticated concepts, such as goals, and these goals generate the drive for intentional purposes.

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Frost
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Re: Does Reality Have Any Significant Value?

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JamesOfSeattle wrote: January 26th, 2018, 9:46 pm I would say that consciousness co-emerges with function, pretty much by definition, but I would argue that purpose was a prerequisite for function, so necessarily existed before any functional mechanism. I would suggest that the purpose you are thinking of is secondary purpose, which purpose did not exist until creatures with very sophisticated consciousness, as opposed to simple consciousness, existed. Such creatures could generate sophisticated concepts, such as goals, and these goals generate the drive for intentional purposes.

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Thanks for your response. Could you please explain what you mean by "simple consciousness"?
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JamesOfSeattle
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Re: Does Reality Have Any Significant Value?

Post by JamesOfSeattle »

Frost wrote: January 26th, 2018, 9:56 pm Thanks for your response. Could you please explain what you mean by "simple consciousness"?
For me, consciousness is about certain kinds of processes, specifically, information processes (with a broader idea of information than most people have). So a conscious process looks like Input -> [agent] -> Output. The simplest consciousness has exactly one output, and the output is probably just a simple behavior, like moving toward a food source (chemotaxis). Some people might call that reflexive behavior. More sophisticated consciousness means more sophisticated output, and more of them. Examples of such outputs might include communication, memory, systemic influences (emotions). Probably the most sophisticated output would be the generation of new concepts. When you can generate new concepts, you can generate goals, and so, purpose.

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Frost
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Re: Does Reality Have Any Significant Value?

Post by Frost »

JamesOfSeattle wrote: January 26th, 2018, 11:32 pm For me, consciousness is about certain kinds of processes, specifically, information processes (with a broader idea of information than most people have). So a conscious process looks like Input -> [agent] -> Output. The simplest consciousness has exactly one output, and the output is probably just a simple behavior, like moving toward a food source (chemotaxis). Some people might call that reflexive behavior. More sophisticated consciousness means more sophisticated output, and more of them. Examples of such outputs might include communication, memory, systemic influences (emotions). Probably the most sophisticated output would be the generation of new concepts. When you can generate new concepts, you can generate goals, and so, purpose.
I understand what you mean. When I said that purpose is a result of consciousness, I have something a bit different in mind. I define consciousness neurobiologically, but in particular in the sense of specific types of mapping that generates a sense of self and a sense of changes in the self caused by experience which then generates knowledge. I see this the evolution of this neurobiological capacity as the advent of consciousness, knowledge, and agency, permitting phenomena such as purposeful action, or the attribution of functions.

However, I need to stress that I belief all life has experiential states. I think a single-celled organism has a basic experience, but I tend to call that primary experience and awareness. To me, awareness becomes more and more complex, up through the mapping of the state of its organism neurologically. I do not think that any purpose, teleology, function, etc. exists at this level, because the capacity for purposeful behavior cannot exist without the agency which emerges with the neurobiological capacity of consciousness. I think that experiential feeling states exist in even single-celled organisms, but the interaction of the feeling states with the physical organism are more mechanistic (not mechanical). I see it as the ontologically subjective mode of existence interacting with the ontologically objective mode. But it's not until consciousness that these feeling states can then ground purposeful action of agents. I suppose this is where I was really intrigued with your statement about the association of value, purpose, and function.

To try to tie this back in with the topic of the thread, I say it is the primary experiential state which cannot be simulated because there is no computation, quite literally by definition, that can generate such a non-algorithmic, non-physical phenomena. Even the processes of consciousness have many qualities which are non-algorithmic, so the idea that it can be created by algorithmic effective procedures seems like a very strange claim to make. I suppose I think of Nick Bostrom and his simulation hypothesis, and I can't help but think of it as a form of neo-scholasticism. I suppose I am quite biased against such views because of my solution to the Hard Problem and the Measurement Problem, and from my view the computational hypotheses are nomological impossibilities.
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Re: Does Reality Have Any Significant Value?

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Frost wrote: January 26th, 2018, 11:47 pm To try to tie this back in with the topic of the thread, I say it is the primary experiential state which cannot be simulated because there is no computation, quite literally by definition, that can generate such a non-algorithmic, non-physical phenomena.
Okay, let's break this down. What is a primary experiential state? What is the definition which excludes simulation? Exactly what is a phenomenon which is not physical?
Even the processes of consciousness have many qualities which are non-algorithmic, so the idea that it can be created by algorithmic effective procedures seems like a very strange claim to make.
What exactly are the qualities of consciousness that you refer to?
I suppose I think of Nick Bostrom and his simulation hypothesis, and I can't help but think of it as a form of neo-scholasticism.
Actually, I think it is a form of functionalism. Processes which have a function have a functional description that references only the functional aspects of the process. From the functional/subjective perspective such processes are multiply realizable, and a simulation would be a valid realization.
I suppose I am quite biased against such views because of my solution to the Hard Problem and the Measurement Problem, and from my view the computational hypotheses are nomological impossibilities.
Would love to hear your solutions to the Hard Problem and Measurement Problem.

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