I would accept Omega's offer to 'pop' me up a level. I would accept even if it meant misery and pain. I would always accept this offer. Actually, bar that. I would accept the offer conditional on the fact that I'd be able to impact the 'real' world more outside the simulation than inside. I'd be comfortable staying in my current level if it was providing some useful effect in the higher levels of reality that I couldn't provide if I were 'popped' out.
Would you consider yourself "dead" if you knew you were being simulated?
Upon learning I was in a simulation, I would make it my life's sole purpose to escape. I think this would be a common reaction. It is my understanding that Buddhism believes this world is a simulation and the goal of each Buddhist is to 'pop' themselves unto a higher plane of reality. Many branches of Christianity also put strong emphasis on proving one's worth on Earth solely to be in as good a position as possible once we die and 'pop' into the 'real' world in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Exploring your question more, I realize that there are at least two situations this wouldn't work in. The first situation would be if reality consisted of a circularly linked list of 'real' worlds, and 'popping' up or 'pushing' down enough times would bring you back to the same world you started at. The second situation would be if there were infinitely many layers to 'pop' up through. I'm actually not sure what I would do if reality were in such an impossible configuration.
Why do you think infinitely many layers would be an impossible configuration? If anyone, anywhere has an actual real turing machine (as opposed to a finite approximation of a turing machine), creating such a configuration is basically child's play.
Have you read The Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover which explores just this possibility ?
I've been thinking about wireheading and the nature of my values. Many people here have defended the importance of external referents or complex desires. My problem is, I can't understand these claims at all.
To clarify, I mean wireheading in the strict "collapsing into orgasmium" sense. A successful implementation would identify all the reward circuitry and directly stimulate it, or do something equivalent. It would essentially be a vastly improved heroin. A good argument for either keeping complex values (e.g. by requiring at least a personal matrix) or external referents (e.g. by showing that a simulation can never suffice) would work for me.
Also, I use "reward" as short-hand for any enjoyable feeling, as "pleasure" tends to be used for a specific one of them, among bliss, excitement and so on, and "it's not about feeling X, but X and Y" is still wireheading after all.
I tried collecting all related arguments I could find. (Roughly sorted from weak to very weak, as I understand them, plus link to example instances. I also searched any literature/other sites I could think of, but didn't find other (not blatantly incoherent) arguments.)
(There have also been technical arguments against specific implementations of wireheading. I'm not concerned with those, as long as they don't show impossibility.)
Overall, none of this sounds remotely plausible to me. Most of it is outright question-begging or relies on intuition pumps that don't even work for me.
It confuses me that others might be convinced by arguments of this sort, so it seems likely that I have a fundamental misunderstanding or there are implicit assumptions I don't see. I fear that I have a large inferential gap here, so please be explicit and assume I'm a Martian. I genuinely feel like Gamma in A Much Better Life.
To me, all this talk about "valueing something" sounds like someone talking about "feeling the presence of the Holy Ghost". I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but the pattern "sense something funny, therefore some very specific and otherwise unsupported claim" matches. How do you know it's not just, you know, indigestion?
What is this "valuing"? How do you know that something is a "value", terminal or not? How do you know what it's about? How would you know if you were mistaken? What about unconscious hypocrisy or confabulation? Where do these "values" come from (i.e. what process creates them)? Overall, it sounds to me like people are confusing their feelings about (predicted) states of the world with caring about states directly.
To me, it seems like it's all about anticipating and achieving rewards (and avoiding punishments, but for the sake of the wireheading argument, it's equivalent). I make predicitions about what actions will trigger rewards (or instrumentally help me pursue those actions) and then engage in them. If my prediction was wrong, I drop the activity and try something else. If I "wanted" something, but getting it didn't trigger a rewarding feeling, I wouldn't take that as evidence that I "value" the activity for its own sake. I'd assume I suck at predicting or was ripped off.
Can someone give a reason why wireheading would be bad?