That could be possible. In which case this universe would still end in heat death. It’s also possible that we could create a new universe but have no way to travel there. Or potentially be unable to even verify that we were successful. We may even be living in such a universe right now.

Well technically you’re not wrong. The universe will be around forever. Heat death isn’t the death of the universe. It’s the death of things happening in the universe. When heat death eventually occurs it means the universe has finally cooled down to a stable state. It will remain eternal and unchanging and time will become meaningless.

Because based on our current understanding of the physics of the universe, which is probably more or less correct, there is no way to stop it. It’s not an engineering problem like building a space elevator or a fusion reactor or spaceships to go to other plants. It’s a result of the fundamental laws of the universe. There is a finite amount of “fuel” available. I really recommend this video. It’s a Timelapse of the future and a real trip.

https://youtu.be/uD4izuDMUQA

The point of the line of thinking isn’t to encourage people to have more empathy. It’s just an interesting thing to talk about. Things don’t have to have a real world application to be interesting.

I don’t think anyone here is suggesting that this line of thinking is any tangible impact on our day to day lives. Beyond perhaps having more empathy for others.

Never said there was. How could there be?

Well that’s fair enough. But to the point of the first comment in this chain. It’s my opinion that a super intelligent AI would take immense interest in humankind. In a similar way to the way we take immense interest in the first single cellular organisms. They are manny orders of magnitude simpler than us. And had no intelligence at all. But they have immense importance to us. I think human kind will be similarly though of by a super AI. And just as we run simulations of microbes, an AI might run simulations of us.

Well for one thing if this is a simulation there is no reason for the whole universe to actually be simulated, only the parts we are looking at. Even modern game designers are able to get around that one.

It will have as emotions whatever it is designed to have, that is whatever it’s creators build it to have, or whatever it evolves to have. It will be presumable be possible for it to change it’s own core programming. But it seems to me that it is unlikely it would desire to cut out parts of it’s ‘self’. We don’t need our limbic system, but we still want it. I think saying that a super intelligent AI wouldn’t have things it doesn’t need is very short sighted.

In the infinity of time that a super AI would have available to it I think its a reasonable suggestion that at some point it would simulate just about everything that it is possible to simulate. You have to remember that such a being would be around for trillions of trillions of years. It would possible for it to change it’s perception of time, such that, from it’s own experience, it is as close to eternal as can be imagined. What else is there to do but run though all the possible things that could be?

Emotions are just our programmed behaviour, an AI could have any of them, non of them, or all of them, or completely different ones. My point is that they remain important for an AI if it is to be autonomous, to have autonomy is to have desires and person goals. Without any innate drives or motives an AI would have no reason to do anything.

The difference in intelligence between a human and a chimpanzee is not negligible. the human brain is absurdly large, three times the size of a chimpanzee brian. The human brian is insanely complex compared to anything else in nature. It is an evolutionary marvel.

We make fictional movies, books, stories ext about terrible things all the time. How is that any different?

God damnit man that is the single best most concise explanation I’ve ever heard. I’d ask your permission to steal it but we’re the same entity so I guess that’s irrelevant?

This resonates.

The cosmos viewed without emotion is nothing but numbers. There is no drive or desire to do anything for a purely logical being. Consider that even the desire for self preservation is ultimately emotional. I would argue that an AI without any emotion would be an AI without any desire to do anything. You could even make a case that without some sort of desire for autonomy it isn’t even alive. Emotions give us purpose, desire, drive, ext. They are our evolved software drivers. Without them we don’t have a reason to be autonomous, they are the drivers of life. The idea that a super AI would be devoid of them is bizarre to me. They may be vastly different than our own, and in fact a super AI would probably be able to experience a vastly more complex array of drivers/emotions.

A post singularity super AI would need to have emotions in order to have a purpose for it’s existence. After the job is done, that is collecting stars or even galaxies worth of raw material to secure it’s resources ensuring it’s self preservation for as long as possible, what else would there be to do in the trillions of trillions of years before heat death? Other than seek out new experiences? If you were said super AI with a trillion trillion trillion years to kill, and the ability to experience anything that could be simulated by a computer, what would you do?

Pleasure might be the sugar or the salt of life, but pain, anger, sadness ext are just as worth experiencing. Without pain pleasure would lose it’s meaning. If we were driven only to seek pleasure then every human alive today would be on a morphine drip. And no one would bother hiking up a mountain to get a dopamine high.

Why not? Emotions are fun. If anything I expect post biological organisms to have vastly more, not less, emotional capabilities.

I did a heroic dose of shrooms in the back country a couple years ago. Had a mother of a trip where I felt deeply that this was the true nature of things. I wrote a thing about it here.

TLDR

We are all the same entity, that entity is simultaneously simulating infinite experiences. Each of us is an instance of that entity. And that entity would be appropriately called god.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Psychonaut/comments/sfzva1/two_years_ago_i_did_a_heroic_dose_of_mushrooms_on/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf